Help needed understanding Family Sharing and Photostream

[acousticbiker]

iOS7: My wife and I used the same iTunes and iCloud logins (with the exception of separate logins just for FaceTime & iMessage). This way we were able to share apps and also have a unified Photostream.

iOS8: Now using Family Sharing, we are using separate Apple IDs. Clear and works well for sharing app purchases. What is unclear is photos. There is now a Family Shared Album - some have called it a Photostream but is it really (i.e., any photos taken on either of our devices can be viewed automatically on both devices) or is it an album that requires photos to be manually updated to be shared? Do we also have separate Photostreams for our own iCloud accounts (not visible to each other)? And how does this work with iCloud Photo Library enabled?

I'm pretty experienced Apple/iOS user and this is confusing! I can't seem to find simple/clear documentation from Apple, either. Any help would be appreciated!

 

[drarrex7]

iOS7: My wife and I used the same iTunes and iCloud logins (with the exception of separate logins just for FaceTime & iMessage). This way we were able to share apps and also have a unified Photostream.

iOS8: Now using Family Sharing, we are using separate Apple IDs. Clear and works well for sharing app purchases. What is unclear is photos. There is now a Family Shared Album - some have called it a Photostream but is it really (i.e., any photos taken on either of our devices can be viewed automatically on both devices) or is it an album that requires photos to be manually updated to be shared? Do we also have separate Photostreams for our own iCloud accounts (not visible to each other)? And how does this work with iCloud Photo Library enabled?

I'm pretty experienced Apple/iOS user and this is confusing! I can't seem to find simple/clear documentation from Apple, either. Any help would be appreciated!

I'm in the exact same boat! My wife and I handled the iCloud situation the same as you pre-iOS 8. I wasn't even planning to use the Family Sharing, but Find My Friends seems to force you to use your primary iCloud account now, so that pushed us to switch to separate accounts.

From what I can tell, the Family Sharing photo album is no different/better than the iOS 7 shared photo streams. It requires you to manually put the photo/video into the stream. What's worse, to me, is that the full size image does not come across to iPhoto when shared through the "Family" stream. I don't want to lose image quality, so that won't work for me as a mechanism for capturing our photos.

Personally, I'm fine with our iOS devices being separate; however, I need my Mac to be able to easily pull in the complete "firehose" of our photos. Maybe the Photos app for Mac that's coming next year will be able to handle multiple iCloud accounts? Haven't seen that anywhere, but it would be nice. Otherwise... I'm not sure what the best solution is...