Photos/Photo Stream - my experience and a general question

[sdilley14]

Ok, so after a bunch of messing around in the new Photos app on iOS8, I decided that I really didn't like the way the new app organized my pictures. I was also wanting to free up some space on my phone. So I decided to give Photo Stream a try. The way I did it probably included a few more steps than necessary, but it worked.

1. Connect phone to MBP, launch iPhoto.
2. Upload all pictures from my phone to iPhoto.
3. In iPhoto, select all uploaded photos from my phone, click "Share", select "iCloud", and create new Photo Stream. I just named this one "All Photos".
4. Open up the Photos app on my phone, tap "Shared" on the bottom bar. The "All Photos" Photo Stream that I just created in iPhoto is now visible, with all of the pictures I uploaded now showing.
5. Navigate through that Photo Stream to verify that all of the photos were uploaded.
6. In the Photos app on my phone, tap "Photos" to pull up all of the photos still stored on the phone. Go through and manually delete all.
7. Just for good mesaure, go back into "Shared" > All Photos to verify that all of the pictures are still there.

Done. Now all of the photos I had stored locally on my phone are visible on all of my devices in one Photo Stream. This is basically my solution to the removal of "Camera Roll" in the new Photos app, and is also a measure to free up space on my phone, and obviously it makes all of my photos accessible on all of my devices. Now all photos I take going forward should automatically get uploaded to the "All Photos" Photo Stream.

One question I do have about this. Before I started all of this, Photos occupied about 850 MB on my phone. After doing this Photos still occupy about 250 MB on my phone. Are the photos (or just the thumbnails?) that are stored in the Photo Stream "cached" or something on the phone so you can quickly view all of the photos in that Stream without actually having to establish a data connection and "retrieve" them from the cloud? FYI I did go into "Recently Deleted" on my phone and deleted all of the photos out of there as well.

 

[cmChimera]

Ok, so after a bunch of messing around in the new Photos app on iOS8, I decided that I really didn't like the way the new app organized my pictures. I was also wanting to free up some space on my phone. So I decided to give Photo Stream a try. The way I did it probably included a few more steps than necessary, but it worked.

1. Connect phone to MBP, launch iPhoto.
2. Upload all pictures from my phone to iPhoto.
3. In iPhoto, select all uploaded photos from my phone, click "Share", select "iCloud", and create new Photo Stream. I just named this one "All Photos".
4. Open up the Photos app on my phone, tap "Shared" on the bottom bar. The "All Photos" Photo Stream that I just created in iPhoto is now visible, with all of the pictures I uploaded now showing.
5. Navigate through that Photo Stream to verify that all of the photos were uploaded.
6. In the Photos app on my phone, tap "Photos" to pull up all of the photos still stored on the phone. Go through and manually delete all.
7. Just for good mesaure, go back into "Shared" > All Photos to verify that all of the pictures are still there.

Done. Now all of the photos I had stored locally on my phone are visible on all of my devices in one Photo Stream. This is basically my solution to the removal of "Camera Roll" in the new Photos app, and is also a measure to free up space on my phone, and obviously it makes all of my photos accessible on all of my devices. Now all photos I take going forward should automatically get uploaded to the "All Photos" Photo Stream.

One question I do have about this. Before I started all of this, Photos occupied about 850 MB on my phone. After doing this Photos still occupy about 250 MB on my phone. Are the photos (or just the thumbnails?) that are stored in the Photo Stream "cached" or something on the phone so you can quickly view all of the photos in that Stream without actually having to establish a data connection and "retrieve" them from the cloud? FYI I did go into "Recently Deleted" on my phone and deleted all of the photos out of there as well.

Good idea. I'll have to try this so that i can get all my photos in my iCloud Library.

To answer your question, I do believe that Photostream saves an iPhone optimized image to your phone so that you can quickly view photos.

 

[sdilley14]

Good idea. I'll have to try this so that i can get all my photos in my iCloud Library.

To answer your question, I do believe that Photostream saves an iPhone optimized image to your phone so that you can quickly view photos.

That's kind of what I thought but I wasn't sure. I heard they were developing that with the new iOS but also read that that feature got pushed back to beta and wasn't implemented yet. Hmmm, who knows!

 

[cmChimera]

That's kind of what I thought but I wasn't sure. I heard they were developing that with the new iOS but also read that that feature got pushed back to beta and wasn't implemented yet. Hmmm, who knows!

iCloud Photo Library shows up in my options, but it says it's in beta. I've turned it on, but haven't been able to add photos from my mac until I saw this suggestion.

 

[yanki01]

I had all my pictures that I've ever taken with my iPhones (original iPhone, 3GS, 4 and 5) on my MBP at home. Being I'm getting a bigger model this time around (64GB iPhone 6), I plan on transferring ALL photos to my iPhone 6. All of them are on iPhoto so I plan on doing this. thanks!

 

[sdilley14]

iCloud Photo Library shows up in my options, but it says it's in beta. I've turned it on, but haven't been able to add photos from my mac until I saw this suggestion.

Where are you seeing "iCloud Photo Library"? In iPhoto or somewhere on your phone?

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I had all my pictures that I've ever taken with my iPhones (original iPhone, 3GS, 4 and 5) on my MBP at home. Being I'm getting a bigger model this time around (64GB iPhone 6), I plan on transferring ALL photos to my iPhone 6. All of them are on iPhoto so I plan on doing this. thanks!

No problem!

And once you upload them to your Photo Stream via iPhoto, you should be able to access them on your iPhone under "Shared" in the Photos app and also download them onto your phone so you have them stored locally on your phone (in case you want them stored right on your phone, if you're someone who doesn't fully trust the cloud and wants files stored locally, etc.).

 

[IeU]

Under iCloud, Fotos, at the top, you can turn it on.