iCloud Photos: What You Need to Know

[Imory]

Great, it immediately starts uploading my existing (iPhoto) photo's to the cloud, and my iPhone starts syncing. So what is the use of the cloud if my 16GB iPhone tries to sync with the 20GB cloud that has now been filled up by the photo app?

Exactly. This essentially feels like a regression. Since you only get 5 GB of iCloud storage for your devices, won't this count towards that? My own iPhoto library is going to exceed those measly 3.5 GB of storage in no time.

 

[kristoffer4]

I really don't understand this, so photos synch with icloud and then it will take up more space on my iphone?!

What is the idea then? I thougt you would have low-res version and only dowoload when needed? Or is that icloud downloads ALL your photos in low-res quality and that ends up taking up a lot of space?

 

[profets]

Exactly. This essentially feels like a regression. Since you only get 5 GB of iCloud storage for your devices, won't this count towards that? My own iPhoto library is going to exceed those measly 3.5 GB of storage in no time.

I really don't understand this, so photos synch with icloud and then it will take up more space on my iphone?!

What is the idea then? I thougt you would have low-res version and only dowoload when needed? Or is that icloud downloads ALL your photos in low-res quality and that ends up taking up a lot of space?

If you turn this on, photos are going into iCloud, and without any limits (full res, raw, video, slo-mo, bursts, etc) it does use your iCloud storage.

When you turn it on, there's 2 simple options - keep full copies/resolution locally, or optimize device storage. All photos/videos will be available regardless. With optimize storage, it'll keep device optimized thumbnails and/or photos, depending on what kind of space is available. If editing a photo, it pulls down the full res copy on the fly. Also, it will always use a portion of free space, it'll never fill all available space on an iOS device.

The idea should be simple: 1 library, fully synced, available everywhere.

I've been using it on iOS since the fall. And recently I switched to photos on the Mac to try it out (after having full backups of everything). My iCloud photo library is ~170GB. ~27,000 photos and ~2,000 videos. On my Mac I have it set to keep originals. On my iPhone and iPad I have it set to optimize storage (obviously, since 170GB wouldn't fit on these devices anyway).

Interesting though, my 128GB iPhone shows the photo library locally using 21GB of space, and on my 64GB iPad it shows it locally using 7GB of space.

 

[BillyBobBongo]

I really don't understand this, so photos synch with icloud and then it will take up more space on my iPhone?!

I've uploaded about 7GB of Photos and Videos to iCloud, and they are taking up about 900MB on my iPhone at the moment. I had some photos on my iPhone already, so not sure whether that number could be lower. No doubt I'll reset it later to find out.

Either way, iCloud didn't eat up 7GB of storage on my phone.

 

[profets]

Not quite all I need to know:

1) After I take a photo on my iPhone, what happens when I delete that picture from my iPhone? (Right now I have to delete it from Camera Roll and my Photo Stream independently.)

When you delete a photo, it warns you that the photo will be deleted from all your devices. However, there's a built in album called "Recently Deleted", and all deleted photos stay there for 30 days until being permanently deleted. Every thumbnail within that album shows how many days remaining until deletion.

2) Do albums sync across devices? Right now, I'd love to be able to create a new album on my iPad, add pictures to it from Photo Stream or photos I upload from the SD card of my camera (via the dongle) and have that album appear on my Mac and iPhone. (Unfortunately, the sync now works only one way, from Mac to iOS. It would be nice to finish or at least get started on an album of vacation photos while I am on vacation, instead of waiting to get back home or recreate one on my Mac.)

That's exactly how it works. EVERYTHING is synced, and in near realtime too. What I love most about it, is all the built in 'albums' that are always synced - Photos, videos, Bursts, Panoramas, Slo-mos, Timelapse. It's great being able to quickly see all slo-mo videos taken for example. But yes, all Albums are fully synced. I've gotten into the habit, when at an event taking a bunch of photos, I'll grab them all, dump them into an album on my phone, delete unnecessary duplicates or bad shots, and it'll all be synced back everywhere.

3) Pretty common question on this thread: My iPhoto library is pretty large. Is there any limit to how much storage space my iPhone would allocate to the library? (I don't want to fill up my phone storage solely with pictures from years ago. If I wanted to carry them with me, I would have synced more albums to my iPhone.)

That is roughly my guess as well, but the devil is in the details. I wonder how Apple will define "storage start[ing] to dwindle". I don't have full confidence that it will not give me an error message that says I cannot download a big new app or upgrade to a iOS9 due to lack of storage space.

Apple is using some sort of formula here (when choosing optimize storage instead of download full copies). They are definitely being conservative from what it seems, and not just haphazardly filling up unused storage.

For ex, as I mentioned in my previous post. My iCloud photo library is 170GB, and on my 128GB iPhone it's using 21GB of space for photos - this is mainly because ~18-19GB of that were shots taken with my phone over the past 6 months with iCloud Photo library turned on. If storage space were to become an issue on the phone, local copies of photos would be quietly removed, leaving optimized thumbnails instead.

 

[unobtainium]

Dropbox's sole 1TB plan costs $0.12 per GB per year.

Google Drive costs $0.24 per GB per year for 100GB plan and $0.12 per GB per year for 1TB to 30TB plans.

Apple's iCloud costs whopping $0.59 per GB per year for 20GB plan and $0.24 per GB per year for 200-1TB plan.

Apple does not necessarily have to become cheapest, but I would like to see some pricing innovation, such as flat $9.99 per year for each 64GB increment ($0.16 per GB per year) consumed beyond free storage, with ability to share storage with family members.

"Pricing innovation." Is that the new term for lowering prices?

Looks like Apple's prices are about on par with the competition. Cloud storage isn't free for Apple either.

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Exactly. This essentially feels like a regression. Since you only get 5 GB of iCloud storage for your devices, won't this count towards that? My own iPhoto library is going to exceed those measly 3.5 GB of storage in no time.

You can buy extra iCloud storage for the price of a coffee per month, or less depending on your library size. If that's too much, don't turn on iCloud Photo Library I guess.

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Microsoft have started an unlimited storage option as a preview for selected users on office 365.. I have it as part of my subscription.. They gave me 10TB.. Yes you read that correctly.. 10 Terabytes and sent me an email to say that if I needed more to let them know and they would add another 10TB.. This is all for 9.99. Month with office 365 and that is for 5 users!!!! Each. They will be releasing to the public soon..

My iPhoto library is 185gb so I was disgusted to find out Photos is going to keep optimized versions on my 16gb device. If I delete a photo on my phone it's gone from my mac also. This is the worst thing apple has done in a long time.. They should have just called it MobileMe 2.0 and then apologised for it at a later date. €700 for a phone €1300 for a mac and there's this nonsense to deal with when I want to sync photos?

Why did they go for an all or nothing solution. You should be able to delete from your device without it affecting the cloud. A preference in the photos settings called 'Delete from Library' and another setting called 'Delete from this device only' would have solved the problem. Or a non synced part of the Photos app for large libraries.

There you go Tim and Jony, you can have that one for free.

OH and while I'm at it... Bring back Events please. I don't feel like scrolling through years of photos to find what I want. Photos is an unmitigated disaster compared to iPhoto.

It's never going to eat up too much space on your device. If you're running out of space it will just reduce the quality of thumbnails and store nothing locally.

 

[riverfreak]

When you delete a photo, it warns you that the photo will be deleted from all your devices. However, there's a built in album called "Recently Deleted", and all deleted photos stay there for 30 days until being permanently deleted. Every thumbnail within that album shows how many days remaining until deletion.



That's exactly how it works. EVERYTHING is synced, and in near realtime too. What I love most about it, is all the built in 'albums' that are always synced - Photos, videos, Bursts, Panoramas, Slo-mos, Timelapse. It's great being able to quickly see all slo-mo videos taken for example. But yes, all Albums are fully synced. I've gotten into the habit, when at an event taking a bunch of photos, I'll grab them all, dump them into an album on my phone, delete unnecessary duplicates or bad shots, and it'll all be synced back everywhere.





Apple is using some sort of formula here (when choosing optimize storage instead of download full copies). They are definitely being conservative from what it seems, and not just haphazardly filling up unused storage.

For ex, as I mentioned in my previous post. My iCloud photo library is 170GB, and on my 128GB iPhone it's using 21GB of space for photos - this is mainly because ~18-19GB of that were shots taken with my phone over the past 6 months with iCloud Photo library turned on. If storage space were to become an issue on the phone, local copies of photos would be quietly removed, leaving optimized thumbnails instead.

Thank you. This was an actually informative post that answered many questions that people keep reformikatingnin this thread.

Glad to hear that albums are synced across. And your tip on creating albums is a good one. That's something I always did in iPhoto when back on my Mac as I found maintaining Events cumbersome. Will be nice to be able to do this on any device in on.

 

[cardsdoc]

From what I'm reading while it appears Photos creates its own library file apparently it's mostly symbolic links (or something like that) to your original iphoto libray and doesn't take up additional space. My question is once I'm settled into Photos and it's out of beta how do you get rid of the old iphoto library and just have a Photos library. I fear if I delete the iphoto library I will actually be deleting all my original photos.

 

[iMcLovin]

Have a look at Family Sharing.

Well, I allready use family sharing, it doesnt let you share data. ANd yes, I can share my photos, but then I need to have my own albums. Id prefer if my wife got all the images to our shared laptop and sorted the albums....meaning we would share one cloud subscription. But I guess Apple want us to keep track of our own photos.

 

[BillyBobBongo]

From what I'm reading while it appears Photos creates its own library file apparently it's mostly symbolic links (or something like that) to your original iphoto libray and doesn't take up additional space. My question is once I'm settled into Photos and it's out of beta how do you get rid of the old iphoto library and just have a Photos library. I fear if I delete the iphoto library I will actually be deleting all my original photos.

Just check this box in the preferences and your originals download. You could also back up your iPhoto library to an external drive for safe keeping.

 

[cardsdoc]

Just check this box in the preferences and your originals download. You could also back up your iPhoto library to an external drive for safe keeping.

I don't quite follow. Are you saying that once all my photos are uploaded to icloud (taking a while, 100gb library) then I can delete iphoto library and photos will be re-downloaded to new photos library?

Edit:
I found the answer. So you can delete the iphoto library without loosing data. Photos library hard links (not symbolic links) to iphoto library. Here is an article explaining:
http://sixcolors.com/post/2015/02/the-hard-link-between-photos-and-iphoto/

 

[andreyirra]

What I don't get is that people always say that pictures are stored in an optimized version and the full one is pulled when you need to edit it.

As of right now, the "pulled when you need" is always applied: there are very low resolution pictures with a clock counter in a corner that shows the picture is downloading and it happens even when flicking between pictures so a quick flick between pics can consume 50 MB in a minute.

I thought the idea of optimized was the same applied when you synced pictures to your phone throught iTunes: only optimized pictures are stored, not the full resolution ones but when you see them they look ok, not a blocky mess while waiting to download.

As it is right now I always download a picture if I want to look at it as there is no such thing as an optimized version, just a blocky thumbnail.

 

[Trahearne]

What happens if the size of the library is such that it cannot fit on my iPhone even with optimized mode on?
I mean... I'm ok to pay for extra iCloud space and upload my entire photo library from the Mac. However, there are no doubts that at some point the size of the library will be larger than what can be squeezed on my iPhone. What will be the behavior at that point?
I was really hoping for the new Photo application to let the user decide which part of the library to upload and which part to keep local on the Mac. Was that really too complicated!?!?

http://www.imore.com/what-you-need-know-about-photos-os-x

The idea is that for these kind of cloud-backed, mobile-enabled services, they must be designed to work with a fixed amount of local storage.

With "Optimised Storage" enabled, photos and videos are cached by OS X and iOS just like how iCloud Drive behaves. The metadata is always synchronised to all your device, and likely also thumbnails. If you have plenty of free space, everything gonna stay with you at anytime. But if your device is running out of storage (as determined by the OS with a threshold), the OS will start to release space by making the most rarely accessed photos compressed in the background, as the original copy is already on the iCloud.

Perhaps in the most extreme case it will start to eject the rarely accessed photos from your device, leaving only the even-smaller thumbnails - this is not yet confirmed, but it seems the capability is there. That is the dear tiny cloud icon you might have seen in iTunes and iCloud Drive in the Finder.

 

[fjfjfjfj]

When you delete a photo, it warns you that the photo will be deleted from all your devices. However, there's a built in album called "Recently Deleted", and all deleted photos stay there for 30 days until being permanently deleted. Every thumbnail within that album shows how many days remaining until deletion.



That's exactly how it works. EVERYTHING is synced, and in near realtime too. What I love most about it, is all the built in 'albums' that are always synced - Photos, videos, Bursts, Panoramas, Slo-mos, Timelapse. It's great being able to quickly see all slo-mo videos taken for example. But yes, all Albums are fully synced. I've gotten into the habit, when at an event taking a bunch of photos, I'll grab them all, dump them into an album on my phone, delete unnecessary duplicates or bad shots, and it'll all be synced back everywhere.





Apple is using some sort of formula here (when choosing optimize storage instead of download full copies). They are definitely being conservative from what it seems, and not just haphazardly filling up unused storage.

For ex, as I mentioned in my previous post. My iCloud photo library is 170GB, and on my 128GB iPhone it's using 21GB of space for photos - this is mainly because ~18-19GB of that were shots taken with my phone over the past 6 months with iCloud Photo library turned on. If storage space were to become an issue on the phone, local copies of photos would be quietly removed, leaving optimized thumbnails instead.

Thank you very much for the incredibly easy to understand explanation of these questions...very helpful. Could you also use your straightforward approach to explain how to solve for the problem where iPhones for my wife and I have separate Apple IDs but we want all the pictures from the Mac on both phones, not just the Apple ID that's being used on the Mac? That seems to be the only problem in all this for me is today we sync all the pictures to both phones through iTunes because we both want all the pictures on both of our devices.

 

[profets]

Thank you very much for the incredibly easy to understand explanation of these questions...very helpful. Could you also use your straightforward approach to explain how to solve for the problem where iPhones for my wife and I have separate Apple IDs but we want all the pictures from the Mac on both phones, not just the Apple ID that's being used on the Mac? That seems to be the only problem in all this for me is today we sync all the pictures to both phones through iTunes because we both want all the pictures on both of our devices.

Sorry, I have no answer for that... I'm in a similar situation. My wife and I take a lot of photos of our kids/family/trips/etc. From years ago it's bugged me that there was no great way to share an iPhoto database - well, it was kind of possible, but quite messy and not very efficient.

As of now, we each have our own photo library. Would be great if libraries could be shared between family members. Just like iOS 8 / OS X 10.10 gained the Family Sharing for purchases, it would be nice if they extended that to iCloud storage and Photo libraries. We can hope for iOS 9 / 10.11...

 

[Frosties]

Can someone help us that like what we have now? Can someone do a screendump and tell us how we go about during the update to keep what we have and NOT upgrade to this so called feature?

I have several family members that I have to guide to not downgrade in service and sync. We all love icloud sync of Today.

Please help with a simple guide, click this, etc

 

[Imory]

If you turn this on, photos are going into iCloud, and without any limits (full res, raw, video, slo-mo, bursts, etc) it does use your iCloud storage.

When you turn it on, there's 2 simple options - keep full copies/resolution locally, or optimize device storage. All photos/videos will be available regardless. With optimize storage, it'll keep device optimized thumbnails and/or photos, depending on what kind of space is available. If editing a photo, it pulls down the full res copy on the fly. Also, it will always use a portion of free space, it'll never fill all available space on an iOS device.

The idea should be simple: 1 library, fully synced, available everywhere.

I've been using it on iOS since the fall. And recently I switched to photos on the Mac to try it out (after having full backups of everything). My iCloud photo library is ~170GB. ~27,000 photos and ~2,000 videos. On my Mac I have it set to keep originals. On my iPhone and iPad I have it set to optimize storage (obviously, since 170GB wouldn't fit on these devices anyway).

Interesting though, my 128GB iPhone shows the photo library locally using 21GB of space, and on my 64GB iPad it shows it locally using 7GB of space.

But either way, I'd have to upgrade my iCloud storage and start to pay for it? Furthermore, how trustworthy and reliable is the "pulling down" keeping the full res etc. Apple already has weird ways of how it caches apps and the notorious "other" which shows up sometimes in location storage (which can't be removed).

I don't know, I just don't trust it to work as seamlessly as they make it out to be.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

Can someone help us that like what we have now? Can someone do a screendump and tell us how we go about during the update to keep what we have and NOT upgrade to this so called feature?

I have several family members that I have to guide to not downgrade in service and sync. We all love icloud sync of Today.

Please help with a simple guide, click this, etc

All you have to do is not use it. Nothing is deleted or removed from your computer, Photos is added. You can use it, or not. Keep your copy of iPhoto or Aperture, it'll probably keep working for many years to come. (Apple has stated they'll support iPhoto and Aperture through the life of Yosemite. Some people assume that means, 'until OS X 10.11 is released,' but I believe it means, 'until Apple no longer provides tech support for Yosemite' - Apple stopped supporting Snow Leopard in 2014 - it'll be a while before they stop supporting Lion, Mountain Lion, and Mavericks, no less Yosemite.)

iCloud Photo Library is also optional, both on iOS and OS X. Photo Stream is still available. In fact, you can use both Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Library. I've been using iCloud Photo Library for my iPhone and am still using Photo Stream to get those images into Aperture (and vice versa). (I'm not planning to move my Mac's library onto iCloud Photo Library until 10.10.3 goes final - my beta testing Mac is not the Mac I keep my library on.)

 

[Graz9]

Thank you very much for the incredibly easy to understand explanation of these questions...very helpful. Could you also use your straightforward approach to explain how to solve for the problem where iPhones for my wife and I have separate Apple IDs but we want all the pictures from the Mac on both phones, not just the Apple ID that's being used on the Mac? That seems to be the only problem in all this for me is today we sync all the pictures to both phones through iTunes because we both want all the pictures on both of our devices.

I have a single system library on an external hdd. For each user I have opened the library and enabled iCloud system library. Each time I open the library for each user it syncs their photos and videos to this one library which then sync to each iCloud library when that user opens it.

 

[profets]

But either way, I'd have to upgrade my iCloud storage and start to pay for it? Furthermore, how trustworthy and reliable is the "pulling down" keeping the full res etc. Apple already has weird ways of how it caches apps and the notorious "other" which shows up sometimes in location storage (which can't be removed).

I don't know, I just don't trust it to work as seamlessly as they make it out to be.

I know too well about the "Other" in storage. My previous 16GB iPhone had reached 10GB in "Other" with iOS 7. It seems like they've been working on that. I doubt Photos will go into other. From using the new iCloud Photo library on multiple devices, and quite heavy at times, I can see the local library size grow as I view and edit more photos. All of it is kept synced, including edits, originals. In all honesty, if you don't trust them, then don't use it.

And yes, you'd have to pay for more iCloud storage. I get it. 5GB for the free amount has quickly become useless when people have device backups and will want to make use of the photo library.

I'm happy to pay for some storage though, as it's given me the ability to do what I've been hoping for a long time - my whole photo library available everywhere, and synced live across all devices. Prior to this it felt quite archaic to me. Always manually dumping photos off of my iPhone into iPhoto, creating events of everything, then all of them being stuck in a single location.

 

[ApfelKuchen]

iCloud Library size?

One thing I've been wondering about is whether the iCloud Photo Library is the same size, or smaller, than an iPhoto/Aperture Library containing the same images. Has anyone who's uploaded their library made that comparison?

My thinking is that Apple wouldn't want to keep Master, Preview, and Thumbnail versions of each image up in the cloud (they are still present on Mac). Thumbnails might be needed for the same reason they always have (faster display of images when browsing - in this case, browsing iCloud.com), but I see no real benefit to keeping previews. Considering I have 5.1 GB in my iPhone's Photo Library (Settings > General > Usage > iCloud: Manage Storage > Photos & Camera) and 4.35 GB in iCloud (iCloud.com > Settings), it suggests they're not keeping thumbnails in the cloud (or are using lossless compression of some sort).

 

[mateytate]

I just bought Dropbox Pro for $99/year. 1tb of storage and all my files and photos sync across all my devices which can be accessed anywhere I am.

But as far as I'm aware there's a big difference - Dropbox stores all files locally at full size. With Photos you can store the high quality ones in the iCloud and a low res version locally. This frees up space a lot of space which you cannot do with Dropbox (so long as you trust the iCloud with your photos).

 

[theBB]

When you delete a photo, it warns you that the photo will be deleted from all your devices.

I get a similar message that says "This photo will be deleted from Photo Stream on all your devices" now (my iCloud Photo Library is not activated), but most of the time it gets deletes from the camera roll only. There were a lot of pictures I had to delete them from both places separately. I have not yet figured out a pattern, so I cannot tell whether it is a bug or a feature, but the warning message is definitely not a reliable guide.

I hope it will start working better with iCloud Photo Library.

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That's exactly how it works. EVERYTHING is synced, and in near realtime too. What I love most about it, is all the built in 'albums' that are always synced - Photos, videos, Bursts, Panoramas, Slo-mos, Timelapse. It's great being able to quickly see all slo-mo videos taken for example. But yes, all Albums are fully synced. I've gotten into the habit, when at an event taking a bunch of photos, I'll grab them all, dump them into an album on my phone, delete unnecessary duplicates or bad shots, and it'll all be synced back everywhere.

Thanks, that's good news.

 

[newagemac]

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.

OneDrive, Google+, Flickr, and all the other solutions have one fatal flaw in particular. They don't sync your edits. iCloud Photo Library isn't just a photo backup, it's an actual photo library sync tool. So you can make nondestructive edits on any device and they all sync perfectly.

You can sync with OneDrive or Google+ but as soon as you make some changes to your photos the sync is completely out of whack with reality.

 

[Icaras]

This is crazy. I just finished uploading my entire 30GB library of 4700+ photos/videos from my Mac, combined it with the existing photos/videos I already had on iCloud for a total of 6200+ photos/videos and it only takes a measly 1.4GB on my iPhone! That's what I call efficient!
Awesome!