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jnjbrewer

macrumors newbie
Apr 28, 2015
7
5
So I guess my wife and I will just continue manually uploading our photos to a single Photo library on our Mac. If only there was a family solutions... we just aren't interested in maintaining separate libraries of photos, music, and videos.

Edit: Wait, maybe I'll give jnjbrewer's steps a shot.

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Can you just leave the secondary / wife's iCloud account set up on the secondary / wife's iPhone but just disable Photos? Then set up the primary / husband's iCloud account on the secondary / wife's iPhone and only enable Photos: iCloud Photo Library?

It doesn't give you the option to enable photos under that scenario.
 

EgbertAttrick

macrumors regular
Feb 25, 2008
234
89
I like Photos a lot, except one thing that is really bugging me. It doesn't properly address folks who may want to use it on 2 Macs... I would like to store full-res photos on my iMac only, and have access to just the thumbs on my MacBook Pro, much like I would from an iDevice.

Optimize Mac Storage is not a sufficient solution, as it takes up as much space as it can weasel in.

Until they address this, the closest I can get is using Photo Stream, but that helps me none for the older photos in my library.
 

Dayv

macrumors 6502
Aug 18, 2009
380
95
I wanted to warn our forum members of an isolated, but significant, bug that I (and some others) encountered.
When I started the upload process, my Internet died and would not respond until I reset my modem. It only took a couple of times for me to link this problem to my new iCloud/Photo settings.
And, no, it has nothing to do with my upload speed or internet connection.

I found a post in Apple Support Communities that speaks to this and one of the users offered a workaround.
Definitely worth visiting if you run into this issue and can't figure out what the heck is going on! It was maddening for me (still is, honestly).

Walt Mossberg ran into the exact same bug, detailed in his Photos review. Comments about the bug are near the end, under the section on iCloud Photo Library.

This isn't a bug, it's your provider not allowing you to use the service you're paying for. As the link regarding Network Link Conditioner states, "It appears that some ISPs (mine is Comcast) heavily throttle your connection if your computer is hitting the limit."

That's not a description of a bug, it's a description of an internet service provider ripping you off.
 

iMerik

macrumors 6502a
May 3, 2011
666
522
Upper Midwest
It doesn't give you the option to enable photos under that scenario.
So what else isn't available with the second iCloud account? Does that mean your wife is now also sharing Passbook, Backup, Keychain, and Find My iPhone with you, or are those iCloud items available through her secondary iCloud account?
 

SteveW928

macrumors 68000
May 28, 2010
1,834
1,380
Victoria, B.C. Canada
Isn't it better that the app automatically removes the full size photos when you need space and redownloads them if you need to actually view them? Do you really want to keep track of what to remove and what to keep manually for the rest of your life?

No, not really. I want to be able to limit how much space it uses, or better yet, only download the high-rez version when needed on any device except where the main library is stored (or let me tell it to download some range or album, etc.).

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I think what the original poster is saying is that it would be very nice to have the option to say "I would like no more than 4 GB used by the library".

Exactly, or as I noted above, to have it not download unless needed or told to.

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Charter is absolutely insane for offering a 100 Mbps down plan with only 5 Mbps up.

That's actually pretty good. I'd guess that the majority of people have between 1 and 3 Mbps.

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It doesn't properly address folks who may want to use it on 2 Macs... I would like to store full-res photos on my iMac only, and have access to just the thumbs on my MacBook Pro, much like I would from an iDevice.

Yes, that's another problem, as many people might have a main machine with lots of storage, but their other Mac(s) might well be a laptop with limited space (as most new models have pretty small SSDs now).

It's an easy fix though, if someone at Apple just starts to think about real usage cases for a few seconds.
 

iMerik

macrumors 6502a
May 3, 2011
666
522
Upper Midwest
According to: iCloud: Features that work with one account at a time on iOS 5 and OS X Lion or later
You can use iCloud Mail, Notes, Contacts, Calendars, and Reminders with multiple iCloud accounts on iOS 5 or later and OS X Lion or later.

iCloud Bookmarks, Photo Stream, Documents in the Cloud, Backup (iOS), Back to My Mac (OS X), and Find My iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac can only be used with one iCloud account at a time (the "primary" account).
So in order to share the iCloud Photo Library, the secondary phone has to give up their own Safari bookmarks, documents, backups, and Find My Phone. I'm guessing Keychain and Passbook also have to be forfeited / shared.

I was about to start paying for iCloud storage, but I don't think I will now. If I was single, Apple's iCloud services would be perfect. Having a family and wanting to share services and combine content is always a disappointment with Apple.

Edit: It would be nice if under "Settings app > Photos & Camera" we could just sign into an iCloud Apple ID, similar to the iTunes & App Store, Messages, and FaceTime.
 
Last edited:

darkslide29

macrumors 68000
Oct 5, 2011
1,860
886
San Francisco, California
Dumb question..
My girlfriend's phone always gets filled up because she does not take care of her photo library. Whether it's a 16gb or 32gb phone, she never has space left to update because of how larger her photo library is and only deletes when necessary.

This seems like a perfect solution
•In iOS, tap Settings > iCloud > Photos or Settings > Photos & Camera, then select a storage setting.

Question - As a ballpark, what are the options under storage settings? Just to figure out how useful this will really be for her.
 
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jnjbrewer

macrumors newbie
Apr 28, 2015
7
5
So what else isn't available with the second iCloud account? Does that mean your wife is now also sharing Passbook, Backup, Keychain, and Find My iPhone with you, or are those iCloud items available through her secondary iCloud account?

Yes, that is the unfortunate part about the solution. The backup doesn't matter because it will back her phone to another backup even if it is under the same account. The find my phone is separate as well. Passbook and Keychain are shared, but we share them anyway so I hadn't even thought about it. My litmus test was to see if she even noticed a difference in her phone setup... and so far with the exception of a starbucks reward popping up, she didn't.

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Are you able to use "Find My Friends" as two separate people?

Had to resend a request to follow her iCloud account. Waiting for her to accept to tell you for sure, but it seems like it should.
 

tzeshan

macrumors regular
Dec 12, 2009
205
3
The ideal use for iCloud photo library is to enable album syncing. This is what is wrong with Apple. Its software development is not strong. For third party developers they will already have done so.
 

KoolAid-Drink

macrumors 68000
Sep 18, 2013
1,811
843
USA
The ideal use for iCloud photo library is to enable album syncing. This is what is wrong with Apple. Its software development is not strong. For third party developers they will already have done so.

Unless I'm missing something, albums and folders ARE synced between iOS and OS X Photos. If you're referring to Smart Albums, those aren't (yet) synced, but hopefully will be synced with 10.11/iOS 9. Same thing with Faces; iOS doesn't get Faces as of now.
 

extricated

macrumors 6502
Jul 14, 2011
448
65
Arkansas
This isn't a bug, it's your provider not allowing you to use the service you're paying for. As the link regarding Network Link Conditioner states, "It appears that some ISPs (mine is Comcast) heavily throttle your connection if your computer is hitting the limit."

That's not a description of a bug, it's a description of an internet service provider ripping you off.

Perhaps, but this isn't a case of throttling.
As a comparison, I had no problems when I went to iTunes Match. My iTunes library is much larger than my photo library (and the majority of my music is not on iTunes). My connection was slow during the upload and it did take a couple of days, but never did my internet just crash. With this issue, even after closing Photos and logging off my computer, I had no internet until I reset my modem.
It wasn't throttled, it just stopped working.
 

SteveW928

macrumors 68000
May 28, 2010
1,834
1,380
Victoria, B.C. Canada
Perhaps, but this isn't a case of throttling.
As a comparison, I had no problems when I went to iTunes Match. My iTunes library is much larger than my photo library (and the majority of my music is not on iTunes). My connection was slow during the upload and it did take a couple of days, but never did my internet just crash. With this issue, even after closing Photos and logging off my computer, I had no internet until I reset my modem.
It wasn't throttled, it just stopped working.

While maybe something about this sync might be triggering the problem, it would seem the problem is your modem/ISP. You should be able to load your connection 100% 24/7 and it shouldn't do that.
 

extricated

macrumors 6502
Jul 14, 2011
448
65
Arkansas
While maybe something about this sync might be triggering the problem, it would seem the problem is your modem/ISP. You should be able to load your connection 100% 24/7 and it shouldn't do that.

It very well could be related to my modem/ISP, but I'm definitely not the only one experiencing this. I have pushed my connection very hard for long periods of time in the past. This issue strictly happens with Photos in the cloud.
I posted the link to a thread on Apple Support earlier. Several people have variations of my experience.
 

seventhedition

macrumors member
Jun 23, 2010
34
51
New Orleans, LA
Just finally pulled the trigger on using the iCloud photo library this weekend. I have a photo library of around 20k photos. Started uploading Friday, and now as of Sunday evening I still have 12k photos left to upload...so for those who are thinking about using this, just be aware it take some time...

That being said, I still have a couple of questions I was wondering if anyone could answer. I've looked around on Apple's website and haven't really found the answers I was looking for.

First, I noticed that on Photos on my iMac, I'm missing pictures for the past 4 months. They are uploaded and synced across my iCloud photo library on my iPad and iPhone (I had started using this feature on my iOS devices a few weeks ago), but they have still not appeared on my Photos app for Mac. Did anyone else have this issue? I'm wondering if they may download to the mac when all of my other photos (eventually) finish uploading?

Another question I had was regarding the storage optimization option. The way it is worded in iOS, it makes it sound like the phone will only reduce the size of the iCloud photo library once storage space begins to become an issue. Having 20k pictures, I don't really need or want access to every single one of those on my phone taking up space even if I DO have the space for it on my iPad and/or iPhone. Am I understanding this right? Or will all of the older pictures automatically be reduced in file size even if I have plenty of storage space?

As other members have noted, I really wish there was an option on what and how much was synced across all devices. Would be nice if you could just choose to have photos on your ipad/iphone from the past year, or only let photos take up 5gb of space and then it automatically deletes the older ones as you take new pictures.
 

SteveW928

macrumors 68000
May 28, 2010
1,834
1,380
Victoria, B.C. Canada
First, I noticed that on Photos on my iMac, I'm missing pictures for the past 4 months. ...

I'm not sure on this one, but the advice I can give you is to be sure you keep some master library/archive somewhere safe. Apple's cloud services have been notoriously buggy, so I'd not trust them with my photo collection, aside from the convenience aspect of having them on all my devices. This problem sounds kind of like iMessage's issues with not really keeping in sync... so maybe they still have some sync bugs to work out.


The way it is worded in iOS, it makes it sound like the phone will only reduce the size of the iCloud photo library once storage space begins to become an issue.

That is my understanding of it as well, which isn't acceptable to me. A previous comment seemed to indicate iOS takes care of managing this, but I sure don't like the sound of it.

As other members have noted, I really wish there was an option on what and how much was synced across all devices. Would be nice if you could just choose to have photos on your ipad/iphone from the past year, or only let photos take up 5gb of space and then it automatically deletes the older ones as you take new pictures.

Yes, that would be a much better way. Maybe the default could be to only download thumbnails and the full image when it is used or edited, etc. Then, have a setting where you can tell it to keep x GBs of photos based on some criteria.

I'm sure we'll get there eventually... but it just might be a while (i.e.: a year or two... iOS 10+).
 

Traverse

macrumors 604
Mar 11, 2013
7,688
4,399
Here
I finally got nearly 16,000 photos and almost 400 videos uploaded to iCloud. My biggest gripe with the process has nothing to do with Apple but rather with my ISP (Charter). Charter is absolutely insane for offering a 100 Mbps down plan with only 5 Mbps up. Charter's internet plans are stuck in 2007 when people didn't upload anything to the Cloud. Times have changed and Charter needs to get with it.

Poor thing. I have 1Mbps up and usually only get 75% of that in the US.
 

Ventris

macrumors newbie
Jun 9, 2015
1
0
Copenhagen
Hi - I wondered if anyone can help. I have my library sorted into folders in Photos for OS X on my mac but not all of the photos synced to iCloud photos. On iCloud there are many albums with no photos in or only a small amount of the the photos in the same album on the mac. So on the phone and iPad I only see the photos in iCloud which means again many of them are missing. Is there a way to force a new sync to try and upload correctly to iCloud?

Also I have an organised folder structure in Photos for OS X on the mac with folders within folders (exported from an Aperture library) but in iCloud this nested structure is lost and its just a scattergun of hundreds of folders which appear in random order. Not impressed with Photos so far.... Any advice would be welcomed!
 

class77

macrumors 6502a
Nov 16, 2010
831
92
I'd like to have some way to designate what pictures need to be synced on all your iPhone/iPad/computers and the pictures you want to keep locally on your main computer so they don't upload to the cloud. I have some pictures of homes that I like and I don't want to waste expensive storage or time spent uploading them.
 
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ocny01

macrumors newbie
Nov 14, 2015
1
0
Hi,

Does anyone know if one can sync specific albums with photo cloud? I have a huge amount of photos on my phone most of which I don't want on my new mac pro with limited ssd hard drive space.. I would want to curate the photo's I want to share between devices but having it only sync specific albums. Is this possible? I don't want to dump my whole iPhone camera roll onto my laptop..
 

SteveW928

macrumors 68000
May 28, 2010
1,834
1,380
Victoria, B.C. Canada
Hi,

Does anyone know if one can sync specific albums with photo cloud? I have a huge amount of photos on my phone most of which I don't want on my new mac pro with limited ssd hard drive space.. I would want to curate the photo's I want to share between devices but having it only sync specific albums. Is this possible? I don't want to dump my whole iPhone camera roll onto my laptop..

Yea, that seems to be the problem with most of these cloud-photo 'solutions.' I'm not sure why the people designing can't think real-world, but it seems they don't.

The closest solution I've found so far is using Dropbox and their Carousel app (though I've just been testing a bit so far... haven't gotten the workflow all setup yet). You can create a folder to put all your photos in, and then on some or most of the machines, tell it not to sync that folder. You'd have to have at least 1 master machine where you'd put everything... i.e.: with enough space.

(Note: In Carousel you have to exclude any other folders that contain images, as Dropbox seems to think you want *every* image on your Dropbox storage included in the images it displays. Since I do website design, you can imagine how many images I have that I wouldn't want included. Up until recently, that was my issue with Dropbox, as you couldn't exclude anything.)

Then, using the Carousel app on iOS or Carousel via the browser on OS X, you can actually browse your entire library (with Internet access), and download images locally. I'm not sure about all of it's abilities to manage local albums. I intend to use it more like a storage silo and download what I want on each device into Photos (i.e.: what I'd have on each device in Photos would be a sub-set of our entire collection on Dropbox and a master local machine)... and I would't be using iCloud at all for photo management. Since Apple pretty much bites at cloud stuff, this will probably be a more reliable solution anyway.
 
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