iCloud Photos: What You Need to Know

[1bh1]

Shutterfly is free and offers unlimited storage

 

[elietabet]

I'm still confused about one thing:

If I enable iCloud Photo on my iMac then all my photos will start uploading to iCloud.

I have iCloud photo enabled on my iPhone, does this mean now it will start downloading all the iCloud photo to be in sync?

 

[hofer]

Websites

iPhoto allows users to create websites so you can easily share photos with anyone with a web browser - a great feature! Can you do that in Photos?

 

[Fattytail]

I'm still confused about one thing:

If I enable iCloud Photo on my iMac then all my photos will start uploading to iCloud.

I have iCloud photo enabled on my iPhone, does this mean now it will start downloading all the iCloud photo to be in sync?

Only if you allow it to. I think there's a setting for this. Otherwise it'll keep a lower resolution thumbnail on your device, thus freeing up a ton of space.

 

[Carmenia83]

So when I enable iCloud Photo Library on my Mac, will EVENTS imported from iPhoto become ALBUMS in iPL? And do they retain all their original metadata? i.e. When I choose the All Photos view on my iPhone, will the former Events be integrated into this view based on original date/time/location, or will they be added to the end as if I just took a couple thousand pictures today?

 

[elietabet]

Only if you allow it to. I think there's a setting for this. Otherwise it'll keep a lower resolution thumbnail on your device, thus freeing up a ton of space.

I currently have high resolution photos on my iPhone. For any pics that I don't want to keep on my iPhone I move them onto my iMac.

If what you said is true, then I will use Photo just like iPhoto on my iMac. My pics on iMac are far more than my 64gb iPhone.

 

[autumnpatchouli]

The process is ridiculous. I think most people would like the cloud to store photos so they CAN remove them from their phones or iPads. I can upload 1TB free to Flickr, and pretty much unlimited to G+, and also OneDrive. Yes, it would be more convenient to have them in the iCloud, but it's not worth the cost. Flickr & G+ upload automatically.

 

[Icaras]

One question - if Photos works fine and I never want to see the clunky iPhoto again, is it safe to delete both the iPhoto app and also the old iPhoto Library file?

I want to know this as well. I'd love for nothing more than to get rid of iPhoto once and for all. But like the other poster mentions, I wouldn't touch it until 10.10.3 is officially out first, and I'm hoping then Apple will just have a streamlined solution in OS X that informs us it will automatically remove iPhoto and the library file from our systems with our permission. Hoping.

 

[Marvin1379]

How does it handle multiple photo libraries? I have two but would want them to feed the same Apple ID. It's merging possible yet?

 

[elietabet]

Well, since the topic says "all you need to know" I can't help but commenting on one major lack of feature in the new photos app.

Currently me and my wife share the same photos, since 90% of all photos we take are family related. But for this to work currently we have a single iPhoto library shared among us. Sadly apple doesn't let you share one iCloud plan among family. And therefor they won't support one photos library shared by a family.

I would like my family album (which is the big library) to include mine and my wife's pictures. And that would be my default library. And we could pay for a 200gb iCloud storage. Instead we both have 20gb and cannot share any data. The whole system just feels halfway complete. And it's an important feature mentioning.

I have the 200gb plan and my wife has the free 5gb. So I created some Family Sharing folders where we can share photos and she can free up some space from her iPhone.

 

[nutmac]

Dropbox isn’t that cheap, assuming we are speaking about subscriptions. They only have a 1 TB plan and it would amount to ~$0.10–0.12 per GB per year, depending on your payment plan.

OneDrive is cheaper: ~$0.24/GB per year (100 GB) or ~$0.08/GB per year (1 TB), the latter even has an Office 365 subscription included.

Apple’s pricing is not remotely competitive.

You are right. I known someone at Dropbox so I signed up to Dropbox Pro with special 2TB limit. But I just checked and it normally comes with 1TB of extra storage for $0.12 per GB per year.

 

[Icaras]

The process is ridiculous. I think most people would like the cloud to store photos so they CAN remove them from their phones or iPads.

That's pretty much what iCloud Photos do if you check mark "Optimize" in the settings. You'll just have low quality versions stored locally which has been working great for my iPhone and iPad so far.

Before Photos was released today for OS X, I had over 1000 photos/videos stored in iCloud Photo and it was barely taking up over half a gigabyte of storage on my iPhone. I'm guessing once my iPhoto library is finished uploading to iCloud Photos (4500 photos+), I will have only used about 3 GB on my iPhone and iPad. But that's just my guesstimate. I'll have to wait until tomorrow morning probably when my uploading is complete to finally see the results lol.

 

[Deelron]

Another competitor to mention is Amazon's Prime photo storage, which while not perfect allows unlimited photo storage along with the other benefits of Prime for $99 a year, compared to 1TB iCloud space for 19.99 a month.

 

[miknos]

What about Flickr? 1TB for FREE (!). Hard to beat that price. I would love to see Photos app using Flickr free space.

 

[goobot]

So does this push photos from my iPhone to Mac? And if so can I have it do that while not storing it to the cloud?

 

[paolik]

That's pretty much what iCloud Photos do if you check mark "Optimize" in the settings. You'll just have low quality versions stored locally which has been working great for my iPhone and iPad so far.

Before Photos was released today for OS X, I had over 1000 photos/videos stored in iCloud Photo and it was barely taking up over half a gigabyte of storage on my iPhone. I'm guessing once my iPhoto library is finished uploading to iCloud Photos (4500 photos+), I will have only used about 3 GB on my iPhone and iPad. But that's just my guesstimate. I'll have to wait until tomorrow morning probably when my uploading is complete to finally see the results lol.

Thanks for the info! Is there an easy to occasionally/temporarily download the full resolution version to the iPhone? E.g. in case you want to see details in it or you want to upload to some non Apple service.

 

[Icaras]

So does this push photos from my iPhone to Mac? And if so can I have it do that while not storing it to the cloud?

That's Photo Stream, which has been out since 2011.

----------

Thanks for the info! Is there an easy to occasionally/temporarily download the full resolution version to the iPhone? E.g. in case you want to see details in it or you want to upload to some non Apple service.

It's dead easy. If you want to view a photo in full quality, simply tap it to view it and it will automatically download.

 

[furam90]

Too little too late. Sticking to OneDrive for photo backup. 200GB for free.

Still have a sour taste in my mouth from the no 32gb iPhone 6.

 

[goobot]

That's Photo Stream, which has been out since 2011.

Photo stream doesn't sync anything.

 

[LERsince1991]

That's Photo Stream, which has been out since 2011.[COLOR=[/QUOTE]

Photo stream is not full quality in any way...

 

[Icaras]

Photo stream doesn't sync anything.

You said "push", not "sync", which is exactly what Photostream does (pushes photos from iDevices to the Mac for permanent storage), while not going against any of your iCloud data allotment.

 

[goobot]

You said "push", not "sync", which is exactly what Photostream does, while not going against any of your iCloud data allotment.

Pushing is syncing.

 

[Icaras]

Photo stream is not full quality in any way...

No they are not.

----------

Pushing is syncing.

You asked how you can get your photos from your iDevices to your Mac. That's what Photostream has done, and have always done, without the need for data management in the cloud.

It does not "sync" because if you delete anything in your Photostream photos on your Mac, those deletions are not reflected on your iDevices.

 

[goobot]

You asked how you can get your photos from your iDevices to your Mac. That's what Photostream has done, and have always done, without the need for data management in the cloud.

It does not "sync" because if you delete anything in your Photostream photos on your Mac, those deletions are not reflected on your iDevices.

Photo stream doesn't put anything on my mac though. It's completely internet based and is limited to 1000 photos.

Exactly towards the sync thing. If I delete an email that has push it deletes it on all my other devices as well.

 

[metfuel]

My biggest concern with the whole deal is that I have a couple of different iPhoto Libraries but I have one that is for our Family photos, which is the one that I would want to put into iCloud. I will take my wife's phone every once in awhile and import her photos to the library and I will import mine and delete them off of my phone. With iCloud Photo Library turned on doesn't it upload everything into the iCloud Library? If so I don't want that. There are screenshots I take to remind me to do things all the time, and there are pictures I save from twitter or wherever that I use to send in texts, but I don't want all of that polluting my family photo album.

There has to be a way to filter out the screenshots, and the saved jpegs from safari from Apple in future versions of iOS.