2 photostreams, 1 Mac: Is it possible?

No one responded to this? No one else at least had this question too? Well, I do - my wife and I are in exactly the same position and I'm completely perplexed how Apple could have messed this up. Seriously, NO ONE in Apple thought there might be multiple iDevices in a family that they might want to feed into one Photostream? I just don't get it. I feel like I must be missing something, yet I can't find anything to support it working the way it seems like it should.

Just ran into the exact same issue.

Anyone found a fix?

EDIT: Just found this after messing around with the iCloud settings for a bit.

When trying to switch to my wife's iCloud account..."This is not your primary iCloud account. Only your primary account can use bookmarks Photo Stream, Find my Mac, or iCloud Storage."

Our solution is to use two iCloud/photostreams, but one iPhoto library.

Tearabite said:

Our solution is to use two iCloud/photostreams, but one iPhoto library.

Click to expand...

But is there any way to make both photo streams appear in the one iPhoto library?

malnar said:

No one responded to this? No one else at least had this question too? Well, I do - my wife and I are in exactly the same position and I'm completely perplexed how Apple could have messed this up. Seriously, NO ONE in Apple thought there might be multiple iDevices in a family that they might want to feed into one Photostream? I just don't get it. I feel like I must be missing something, yet I can't find anything to support it working the way it seems like it should.

Click to expand...

Husband and I are having the same issue...lurking here for a fix...

Can't find a fix.

Does this means my wife account is not backing up to iCloud?

This pretty much sucks. My wife and I were looking forward to NOT having to upload any picture manually. Guess one of us will just have to live with it.

Looking for a solution as well. This sucks.

more info on how we do it, and the results.

We share an iMac and have separate logins.
We have a shared iPhoto Library on a mounted image
We both have separate iClouds and Photostreams

I open iPhoto: i see all of our shared photos and MY photostream. The pics from my photostream are automatically copied into an iPhoto event

She opens iPhoto: She sees all of her photos in her photostream, and the photos from my photostream that are now in an event (she cant actually see my photostream). All of her photstream is copied into an event in iPhoto

I open iPhoto and I can now see what was copied from her photostream into an event.

This explanation was very helpful. I was thinking about doing two logins on our MacBook to solve this...you confirmed it. I'll try it tonight. Thank you!

BeckyG said:

This explanation was very helpful. I was thinking about doing two logins on our MacBook to solve this...you confirmed it. I'll try it tonight. Thank you!

Click to expand...

I wonder if this will work on a PC as well. Although, will the computer have to be logged in to the account before it will download the photostream? Very annoying.

Thanks for the tips, guys. That'll have to do for now. Unfortunately this is no easier, and may actually be harder, than just connecting the iPhones directly prior to having Photostream. It totally defeats the purpose, that's for sure, chaining users to computers in order to make sure photos are stored away the right way. Totally ridiculous. Really, really cannot believe Apple flubbed this so badly.

I too have this problem... waiting for a proper solution.

I'm waiting on a good solution for this also. It seems like the iCloud developers on had single people in mind.

theres no solution, u each need a separate mac login with a different iphoto account. that's what im doing

Yep that is what I figured out. I setup a common iCloud account. Then I made this common account the primary iCloud account on each device and only selected photostream from the list. Then I added our individual accounts to each device for email, contacts, calendar, etc. So far this seems to be doing everything I want it to.

The key is that the common account has to be the first one you setup whether on the mac, iphone, ipad, etc. You can delete your individual account, add the common account and then add the individual account back.

Tearabite said:

more info on how we do it, and the results.

We share an iMac and have separate logins.
We have a shared iPhoto Library on a mounted image
We both have separate iClouds and Photostreams

I open iPhoto: i see all of our shared photos and MY photostream. The pics from my photostream are automatically copied into an iPhoto event

She opens iPhoto: She sees all of her photos in her photostream, and the photos from my photostream that are now in an event (she cant actually see my photostream). All of her photstream is copied into an event in iPhoto

I open iPhoto and I can now see what was copied from her photostream into an event.

Click to expand...

I've tried this and it works...kind of. My photos show up in my user's iPhoto and my wife's show up in hers, but only until I check mine again then hers disappear. Also, mine show up in hers, but hers don't show up in mine.

Do you leave her user logged in all the time so the changes register? I know you don't want to leave both instances of iPhoto open at the same time.

Any ideas would be awesome.

Mad Mac Maniac said:

Hmmm... But then you share the same 5gb of iCloud for backups and all documents in the cloud....

Click to expand...

yea exactly its the most retarded solution ive heard thus far. All my documents will be shown to everyone else

I use a similar set up as previously mentioned. We have two iPhones, each has their own cloud. On our iMac we each have our own login with a shared iPhoto library. I've played around with different setups and can't seem to find a better way of doing this.

Apple definitely designed cloud for single user interface. I won't even get into the issues with the address book that icloud has caused. MobileMe where are you?????

findley844 said:

I use a similar set up as previously mentioned. We have two iPhones, each has their own cloud. On our iMac we each have our own login with a shared iPhoto library. I've played around with different setups and can't seem to find a better way of doing this.

Apple definitely designed cloud for single user interface. I won't even get into the issues with the address book that icloud has caused. MobileMe where are you?????

Click to expand...

Does the two-iClouds-one-iPhoto work for you? It kind of works for me, but not quite. I feel like I'm missing something...

I set us up with one shared account for calendar and contacts sharing, and set up each up with our own account for PhotoStream. We have an older, fourth AppleID that we've always used for iTunes and App Store purchases. It's all working well so far, except for the stupid iPhoto thing...

protobiont said:

I wonder if this will work on a PC as well. Although, will the computer have to be logged in to the account before it will download the photostream? Very annoying.

Click to expand...

Yep, works the same with 2 logins on a Windows PC. Once the iCloud Control Panel is installed, each user must login and sign into their iCloud account and turn Photo Stream on. Once on, it creates a "Photo Stream" folder in each user's "my Pictures" folder.

Yes, a user must be logged in for it to download that user's pictures. This only takes a few minutes and has not been a problem in my experience.

I'm kinda surprised to see how many people use single logins on their computers. I guess multiple logins is just more ingrained in the Windows world that my wife and I never even considered sharing a single login. We both want to have different backgrounds, color schemes, desktop icons, and many other settings that sharing would be a nightmare. We do share the same iTunes library, which took a command line function to fix it where music she adds shows up in our library the next time I log on and open iTunes (and vise versa).