iCloud Shared Photo Library: Everything You Need to Know

[rick987611]

How does the Shared Library interact with your personal Photos library facial recognition? Will the facial recognition (eventually) run on (any new to you) photos in the Shared Library?

yes it does. Several photos in the shared library that I had not previously had in my library now have face data on them.

Also, a nice feature is if it detects a duplicate it can combine a higher quality photo with meta data from the lower quality photo. For example my wife had a higher quality version of a photo, but I had added location and face meta data to my copy. It combined the two and kept her photo with my meta data.

 

[Solver]

I am bagging Apple for this feature for years. However, there is one crucial question that may prevent me from using it.
I have a very large photo library (about 130K photos) which I have been maintaining for many years. I have invested many hours in tagging faces, assigning keywords, and defining smart albums.
What I would like to do is designating the whole library as the shared library. Including everything. From the guides I see around, the only option is to move just the photos. That means that I would have lost all the huge organization efforts I had put in. Can anybody shade some light on this issue?

I'm in the same boat and I don't know the answer, yet. I'll have to test this with a test shared library.

 

[mansplains]

I'm going to be sticking with shared albums for now. With nearly 70,000 photos, I'm extremely wary of any changes to iCloud Photos. The initial sync took nearly a week, after all.

Why don't you move 68000 of these photos to a hard drive or something? Not to sound condescending, I don't understand applications to have so many photos in a library for viewing at any time. If you spent 30 seconds looking at each photo, it'd take just under a month. If you bring an iPad with you everywhere you'd have a better viewing experience and could access a USBC hard drive.

 

[rick987611]

I am bagging Apple for this feature for years. However, there is one crucial question that may prevent me from using it.
I have a very large photo library (about 130K photos) which I have been maintaining for many years. I have invested many hours in tagging faces, assigning keywords, and defining smart albums.
What I would like to do is designating the whole library as the shared library. Including everything. From the guides I see around, the only option is to move just the photos. That means that I would have lost all the huge organization efforts I had put in. Can anybody shade some light on this issue?

All the photos, tagging, etc that you have done will move over. What won't is albums. Albums do not move over in any way. You will retain any albums you have made on your end, but those that join your library will not have them.

 

[Thisismattwade]

yes it does. Several photos in the shared library that I had not previously had in my library now have face data on them.

Also, a nice feature is if it detects a duplicate it can combine a higher quality photo with meta data from the lower quality photo. For example my wife had a higher quality version of a photo, but I had added location and face meta data to my copy. It combined the two and kept her photo with my meta data.

Great, thanks for your help on this. I've been reading the info you've provided throughout this thread.🍺

 

[iDento]

Can we have our family shared library on Apple TV? Using the tvOS photos app?

 

[Mike Boreham]

All the photos, tagging, etc that you have done will move over. What won't is albums. Albums do not move over in any way. You will retain any albums you have made on your end, but those that join your library will not have them.

Thanks but that is diabolical ! I have lost all interest in Apple Shared Library as a replacement for Lightroom Cloudy.

Our Adobe library has 80K photos in 600 albums. I have this duplicated in my iCloud Photos Library which I was hoping to share with my wife and dump Adobe. 80K photos with no organisation is useless on her devices.

I appreciate that if all photos are taken with EXIF dates that correspond to the date of the photo this is less of a problem, but our 80K photos have been acquired over 20 years in a variety of ways, many scanned, and photos of old photos. The EXIF date is meaningless.

EDIT An example to illustrate the problem more sharply: We have an album of about 100 photos called "Family Groups"... the earliest was in 1883 and the most recent in 2022. Many are scans or photos of old photos. In the Library shared with my wife these are dotted throughout the 80K photos, ....effectively lost.

Lightroom Cloudy synchronises all albums and folders across all devices.

 

[rick987611]

Thanks but that is diabolical ! I have lost all interest in Apple Shared Library as a replacement for Lightroom Cloudy.

Our Adobe library has 80K photos in 600 albums. I have this duplicated in my iCloud Photos Library which I was hoping to share with my wife and dump Adobe. 80K photos with no organisation is useless on her devices.

I appreciate that if all photos are taken with EXIF dates that correspond to the date of the photo this is less of a problem, but our 80K photos have been acquired over 20 years in a variety of ways, many scanned, and photos of old photos. The EXIF date is meaningless.

Lightroom Cloudy synchronises all albums and folders across all devices.

I too wish it had this ability. I appreciate it would be a tricky situation. Like my wife and I had 90% the same photos between us, each sorted how we liked. (My way is much better though if I say so myself Anyway, how does it decide whose albums to keep? Or just keep them all and let you fight it out?

 

[Mike Boreham]

I too wish it had this ability. I appreciate it would be a tricky situation. Like my wife and had 90% the same photos between us, each sorted how we liked. (My way is much better though if I say so myself Anyway, how does it decide whose albums to keep. Or just keep them all and let you fight it out?

One person is the sharer and the other people are the sharees. I would expect that initially when you share your library with another person that your organisation would be what they see. After the initial set up your question is valid, but I don't understand why the initial starting point cant include the album structure.

There is no problem like this with Lightroom Cloudy. Either of us can add albums and folders.

 

[Mike Boreham]

deleted duplicate

 

[DeepIn2U]

Even after reading the really good explanation article, your post is an example of why it still gives me a little anxiety.

If what you say is true, it’s exactly why shared iCloud library scares me. I really hope that someone else can’t accidentally delete a photo that I took and loaded to the shared.

I'm hoping I'm wrong but I've always had anxiety over how pictures are managed in library on iOS/mac and iPad.

example further to the above post of mine, which I hope I'm wrong in my thinking on that, I want a picture / screenshot taken to be saved in an album called iOS Wallpaper but not in the main library - why am I forced to have it in both locations? I cannot safely delete from the main library to think a pic will remain in the custom library I've created.

 

[DeepIn2U]

Yeah, iCloud is a complete trash can mess of software. Only a naive fool would actually trust it.

And IF we've leared of mobileme.com and its interim from Apple before iCloud ... photos being shared publicly is NOT the way to go to get it wrong first.

1. You want to share photos - WHY is the default for anyone added to DELETE existing photos YOU've published as the host?
2. Why does anyone added automatically added Read/Write permissions and not READ permissions first with the HOST of the shared library easy access to modify invitees access?!

Who's doing the thinking behind all of this at Apple?!

 

[DeepIn2U]

It’s pretty clear in the app. If you delete from the shared library it’s gone for everyone. If a picture you added is deleted it notifies you and you can opt to keep it in your personal library.

It's not clear other than someone having edit access upon invite. lets say you added someone by mistake (name similarities or whatever) Are you fully trusting deletions done on mass and at multiple various intervals by same 20 invitees are going to be readily and easily viewable for audit at a quick glance by you?

I'm welcome to see that in action.

 

[eyeseeyou]

Probably the whole point of this is to have a constant share library with people who are close to you. So between my SO and I, it's a fricking hassle to go "do you have this pic" and send the pic to each other. At the end, sure each of us has the same pic, but thats taking up double the space on our family shared iCloud space. It's definitely not a tool to use with friends. For that I would continue to use Shared Album

This kind of sounds like what google photos already does. You create an album that automatically adds pictures of specific people, and you can share it with whom you want. I'm not sure they can auto add also.

 

[rick987611]

One person is the sharer and the other people are the sharees. I would expect that initially when you share your library with another person that your organisation would be what they see. After the initial set up your question is valid, but I don't understand why the initial starting point cant include the album structure.

There is no problem like this with Lightroom Cloudy. Either of us can add albums and folders.

I get it, it would be nice. Or at least a way to view and pull in other users albums. Thing is Lightroom works so well for you because you are both working on one single library. Its more comparable to if iOS let your wife just sign into your photo library instead of hers.

 

[rick987611]

It's not clear other than someone having edit access upon invite. lets say you added someone by mistake (name similarities or whatever) Are you fully trusting deletions done on mass and at multiple various intervals by same 20 invitees are going to be readily and easily viewable for audit at a quick glance by you?

I'm welcome to see that in action.

They are easy to review. You go into the deleted folder and filter it to the shared library. Also, you are not able to, but even if you were, no one is going to have 20 people in this. I would assume the vast vast majority will be husband and wife. I can't think of anyone else I would want a large quantity of photos from. Say I were to add the grandparents to it. I don't want all their pictures from random trips and things they do. This is best served for households.

They do make group sharing easier though. You can set it to recommend sharing any photos that certain people are in or were around for.

 

[Mike Boreham]

I get it, it would be nice. Or at least a way to view and pull in other users albums. Thing is Lightroom works so well for you because you are both working on one single library. Its more comparable to if iOS let your wife just sign into your photo library instead of hers.

I think the Apple Shared Library is also supposed to behave like a single library we both work on...I don't see why it is different from Adobe.

I am hoping this is a bug not as designed, but not optimistic.

 

[rick987611]

I think the Apple Shared Library is also supposed to behave like a single library we both work on...I don't see why it is different from Adobe.

I am hoping this is a bug not as designed, but not optimistic.

It is odd that everything from edits to metadata sync, but albums do not. I don’t think you will see a change before release, maybe next year.

 

[AdamJD]

Just throwing this out there...I still have pics in Photos that I originally edited in iPhoto many years ago which I now have to "revert to original" to even be able to look at in Photos.

This talk of changing/expanding editing options now makes me wonder how things will backfire in the same way I'm seeing with iPhoto edits in the future.

 

[AdamJD]

Thanks but that is diabolical ! I have lost all interest in Apple Shared Library as a replacement for Lightroom Cloudy.

Our Adobe library has 80K photos in 600 albums. I have this duplicated in my iCloud Photos Library which I was hoping to share with my wife and dump Adobe. 80K photos with no organisation is useless on her devices.

I appreciate that if all photos are taken with EXIF dates that correspond to the date of the photo this is less of a problem, but our 80K photos have been acquired over 20 years in a variety of ways, many scanned, and photos of old photos. The EXIF date is meaningless.

EDIT An example to illustrate the problem more sharply: We have an album of about 100 photos called "Family Groups"... the earliest was in 1883 and the most recent in 2022. Many are scans or photos of old photos. In the Library shared with my wife these are dotted throughout the 80K photos, ....effectively lost.

Lightroom Cloudy synchronises all albums and folders across all devices.

Everyone has their own way to handle this stuff, so I'm just mentioning what I do with pics that I can't pinpoint an exact date on just in case of the unlikely event you haven't considered....

I drag the scanned images into SetEXIFData and give a year with January 1st and time of exactly 12:00:00. That way, the pics are chronological in Photos. I know that any pictures taken at exactly 12 on January 1st that aren't titled "New Years" are just approximate.

As far as albums not carrying over...this sounds VERY odd and like something that could easily be implemented as we near release.

 

[Mike Boreham]

Everyone has their own way to handle this stuff, so I'm just mentioning what I do with pics that I can't pinpoint an exact date on just in case of the unlikely event you haven't considered....

I drag the scanned images into SetEXIFData and give a year with January 1st and time of exactly 12:00:00. That way, the pics are chronological in Photos. I know that any pictures taken at exactly 12 on January 1st that aren't titled "New Years" are just approximate.

As far as albums not carrying over...this sounds VERY odd and like something that could easily be implemented as we near release.

Thanks. Yes, if I was starting over I could have been much more disciplined about EXIF data of scans and photos of photos etc, but that ship has sailed! Too big a task to do retrospectively.

 

[jaknudsen]

If I set up the shared library to automatically share photos of certain people, can I manually move some of these photos back to my personal library afterwards?

... no one tried this?

 

[Artemis70]

Yes. In practice of course we each still have our own Apple iCloud Photos libraries. Photos from them are automatically sync'd to the Adobe Library but I delete both of our special or temporary interest ones, so that the shared Adobe album only has the best keepers from both of us, while our Apple Libraries have our special interest ones.

Things will work the same way if/when we use the Apple Shared Library instead of the Adobe Library.

I would like to learn how you automatically sync from Apple iCloud Photos libraries to the Adobe Library. This is one piece that I haven't figured out yet, and my search skills are apparently lacking. Look forward to hear how you have managed to do this.

 

[Mike Boreham]

As far as albums not carrying over...this sounds VERY odd and like something that could easily be implemented as we near release.

The more I think about this the more likely it feels that it is a bug....not by design. I am more optimistic than I was last night!

 

[Artemis70]

Why don't you move 68000 of these photos to a hard drive or something? Not to sound condescending, I don't understand applications to have so many photos in a library for viewing at any time. If you spent 30 seconds looking at each photo, it'd take just under a month. If you bring an iPad with you everywhere you'd have a better viewing experience and could access a USBC hard drive.

If you have standardized on Apple Photos, you want all pictures to be in Apple Photos. This is not because you want access to all pictures at all times, but because you have standardized on Apple Photos. Moving things out means having multiple solutions, which is a pain. So, either it works with 70,000 pictures in Apple Photos, or I move to another solution completely.