"iCloud Photo sharing" - how to download photos on my Mac

[j-a-x]

I've been using photostream to transfer photos from my iPhone to my Mac for a long time but I've been thinking about trying iCloud photo sharing instead - which means my entire photo album is sent to iCloud and kept in sync between devices. This sounds like a great alternative because I hate it when iCloud uploads my unedited photos and by the time I edit them and delete the ones I don't want they are already all on iCloud and I have to sort them again on my Mac.

If I were to enabled this feature on a phone with iOS8 beta today, would I be able to access these photos on my Mac, or only on other iOS8 beta devices?

 

[bigjnyc]

This is a great question. I haven't seen any definitive answers anywhere about how iCloud photos is going to work on Mac until the new Photos app is released next year. I don't think Apple has addressed that.

 

[Patriot24]

It is strange that the new Photos Mac app won't be ready upon Yosemite's release.

As far as I can tell, the new "iCloud Photo Library" is essentially Photostream with expanded capabilities (they will display all photos, rather than just the last 1,000). It is conceivable that they push an update to iPhoto upon release of iOS 8/Yosemite that enables the ability to see all of your photos and download those locally as you wish. Then at some point they release the new Photos app, and you're good to go.

I suspect they will have to do something like the above to address the gap. It would be strange to be able to access your entire library on your iOS device, but not on a Mac where serious editing and so forth could take place.

We shall see.

 

[j-a-x]

Yes, it would make sense at the very least to be able to access it on a Mac the same way you access shared photostreams in the meantime but as of now it does not show up. I'd love to enable the iCloud Photo Sharing in the beta and help Apple test it, but it isn't very useful to me without desktop integration as I ultimately want to transfer all of my photos to my Mac. I guess I'll have to wait but thanks for confirming what I thought regarding this feature.