Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Can anyone with this enabled explain how to transfer pictures from your IPL to your Mac? I have an iPhone 5s and a MacBook Pro. How would I go about transferring pictures from my iPhone to my Mac? Currently (without IPL), I can easily transfer pictures using Image Capture, iPhoto, or Aperture.

I want to know before I sign up for the beta.
 
Can anyone with this enabled explain how to transfer pictures from your IPL to your Mac? I have an iPhone 5s and a MacBook Pro. How would I go about transferring pictures from my iPhone to my Mac? Currently (without IPL), I can easily transfer pictures using Image Capture, iPhoto, or Aperture.

I want to know before I sign up for the beta.

You should still be able to use Photo Stream by enabling it in Settings/Photos & Camera on your iPhone, which will still send all photos to iPhoto, as before. Although any subsequent edits you make to that photo in IPL won't transfer over. iPhoto will get the original photo you took via Photo Stream.

Also, with IPL on, you won't be able to do the reverse: that is, send photos from iPhoto to your iPhone using Photo Stream. You would have to use a Shared Photo Stream (although that will send over a smaller sized image), or use a third party application like Dropbox, until the Photos app is released on iCloud.com, and Yosemite.
 
It really depends on your goals. Yes, it has the potential to stretch available space on smaller-capacity iOS devices (but then again, some day 64gb will be considered small). For some people, this will be the only practical benefit. A fair number of them may not realize that it's happening, since it'll be going on quietly in the background.

However, I've been waiting for some years to have a cloud-based photo library integrated with the Apple ecosystem. The iPhoto/Aperture library is not intended for concurrent-access usage across a network (LAN or internet). If you need to edit from same library on both desktop and laptop, you have some work to do to manage the process, and you don't have access to the complete library at all on iOS.

This change will allow me to work with photos the same way I work with documents in the cloud - I work on whichever of my computing devices is handy (or at iCloud.com if they're not handy), and I can pick up where I left off on any of my other devices, without having to worry about versioning.

It also will also give me automated, nearly-real-time off-site archiving/backup. If your photo library is particularly valuable to you, paying Apple (or anyone else, for that matter) for cloud storage may not seem all that expensive.

No matter how much memory you have on your computing devices, at some point it's necessary to either clean house or pay to expand storage. That reality doesn't change, whether whether you're using a hard drive, flash memory, or the cloud.
Ok, but for IPL i need more iCloud Space. My Backup takes 4,8GB from the Free Space. :(
 
I'm still confused. I always use Image Capture to transfer my pictures to my Mac, because the quality/resolution of the image is retained. I don't typically use Photostream to transfer pictures (although I leave it on to keep a 'backup' of the picture just in case).

So, if I do 'upgrade' to the iCloud Photo Library, as opposed to what I currently am doing (keeping all pictures on my iPhone locally, with Photostream enabled and iCloud backup backing my camera roll up), I won't be able to move photos to my Mac anymore using Image Capture? And if I do use Photostream, it'll be the low-res version of the photo - which is not what I want. What I want is to still be easily able to move my photos, in their original resolutions, to my Mac. How about videos?

I understand perfectly how iCloud Photo Library works. I just don't understand how it's possible to move the original resolution photos from my iPhone to my Mac right now, because the Photos app is absent from OS X (and won't even be available for 10.9 and below)... so how would that part work?

You should still be able to use Photo Stream by enabling it in Settings/Photos & Camera on your iPhone, which will still send all photos to iPhoto, as before. Although any subsequent edits you make to that photo in IPL won't transfer over. iPhoto will get the original photo you took via Photo Stream.

Also, with IPL on, you won't be able to do the reverse: that is, send photos from iPhoto to your iPhone using Photo Stream. You would have to use a Shared Photo Stream (although that will send over a smaller sized image), or use a third party application like Dropbox, until the Photos app is released on iCloud.com, and Yosemite.
 
You should still be able to use Photo Stream by enabling it in Settings/Photos & Camera on your iPhone, which will still send all photos to iPhoto, as before. Although any subsequent edits you make to that photo in IPL won't transfer over. iPhoto will get the original photo you took via Photo Stream.

Also, with IPL on, you won't be able to do the reverse: that is, send photos from iPhoto to your iPhone using Photo Stream. You would have to use a Shared Photo Stream (although that will send over a smaller sized image), or use a third party application like Dropbox, until the Photos app is released on iCloud.com, and Yosemite.

The shared photo stream doesn't work for me. So for now, I am stuck with 3,000 photos on my Mac/PC which I cannot transfer to my iPhone. IMO, Apple shouldn't release IPL when Photos on iCloud.com and Yosemite are not ready.
 
If you enable iCloud Photo Library, all of your photos will be uploaded to the cloud. Once you enable it, you have two options.

You can select "Download and keep originals", in which case a copy will be kept on your phone as well as in the cloud. This means that you won't have to worry about using any data to view your photos, but you will need to make sure that your phone has enough space to hold your photos.

Or you can select "Optimize device space" If you select this option, once your photo is saved to the cloud it will only retain a low resolution copy on your phone. That way if you go to your photos tab you can still see all of your pictures and scroll through them without using any data. It also allows you to have many more photos available than you actually have space for on your phone. However, with this option if you want to view a picture or share a picture, then it will need to retrieve the full resolution version from the cloud. By default this will use cellular data, however, you can also disable cellular data for photos and then it will only do that when you're on wifi. Obviously the downside there is that you can only see the full version of your pictures when you're on wifi, but you also don't need to worry about extra data usage.

----------



If you have seperate iCloud accounts then you will have seperate iCloud photo libraries as well. You can set up a shared photostream and manually select photos to put in there, but there is no way to merge your iCloud photo libraries (short of using one appleID for iCloud, but that gets ugly in a lot of ways)

I don't understand how "download and keep originals" is different from what already happens without enabling iCloud Photo Library. Aren't my photos backed up to icloud now? It seems like photos and videos take up lots of my 5gb of iCloud storage. And if I take a photo on my iPhone it appears on my iPad, so isn't that via iCloud?

So someone needs to explain the difference between not enabling iCloud Photo Library (but with photo library set to back up under icloud in settings), and enabling it with the "download and keep originals" option.

I don't even get the option to select it under 8.0.2.!

It's still not available on my iPad. Is there an option I'm missing. In settings > icloud > photos, there is no option there for me.

Same here. It's not showing up as an option.

...can someone please clarify this? I also, am not getting the option to enable iCloud Photo Library on my iPhone 6 - where are people seeing this option?

I have 'Enable Photo Stream' but nothing about 'iCloud Photo Library'?!:confused:

Also, if I sign into iCloud on my pc, I only get the following options:

Mail
Contacts
Calendar
iCloud Drive
Find My iPhone
Notes
Reminders
Pages
Numbers
Keynotes
Settings

There is no option for 'Photos' so have are people able to see their pics in the cloud?!
 
...those of you who can't find any settings for 'iCloud Photo Library' on their iPhones, looks like this hasn't actually been released to the general public yet!

I think the only people who can currently use this are the ones who signed up for the Betas before the GM of iOS8 was released, and they have obviously kept their settings during the actual GM release of iOS 8.

This explains it a little better:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1781314/
 
...those of you who can't find any settings for 'iCloud Photo Library' on their iPhones, looks like this hasn't actually been released to the general public yet!

I think the only people who can currently use this are the ones who signed up for the Betas before the GM of iOS8 was released, and they have obviously kept their settings during the actual GM release of iOS 8.

This explains it a little better:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1781314/

Not completely so, I have iCloud photo library enabled on my iPhone, and never had any eat or GM (nor am I a registered developer) - the option just appeared at some point.
That said I now have a problem, where my iPad won't enable IPL ("not yet available" error). Same Apple ID, and IPL was on before. Now I'm stuck with not enough space for its backup, since now it includes the whole photo library...
 
Not completely so, I have iCloud photo library enabled on my iPhone, and never had any eat or GM (nor am I a registered developer) - the option just appeared at some point.
That said I now have a problem, where my iPad won't enable IPL ("not yet available" error). Same Apple ID, and IPL was on before. Now I'm stuck with not enough space for its backup, since now it includes the whole photo library...

....where exactly are you seeing this setting on your iPhone?

If I go to Settings > Photos & Camera, the only settings I see are to switch on Photostream and to switch on iCloud Sharing (which allows users to subscribe to your streams).

I don't have any settings for iCloud Photo Library, so where are you seeing your setting exactly?!:confused:
 
It's in settings -> iCloud-> Photos

But as said here many times before, not everybody has it, it's being slowly rolled out...
 
It's in settings -> iCloud-> Photos

But as said here many times before, not everybody has it, it's being slowly rolled out...

...thanks for that.

I guess I don't yet have it then -all I have under Settings > iCloud > Photos are options for,

My Photostream
Upload BurstPhotos
iCloud Photo Sharing (which is to do with people subscribing to your streams.

:(
 
...thanks for that.



I guess I don't yet have it then -all I have under Settings > iCloud > Photos are options for,



My Photostream

Upload BurstPhotos

iCloud Photo Sharing (which is to do with people subscribing to your streams.



:(


Make sure you have upgraded to iOS 8.0.2. It definitely didn't appear for some people in 8.0, but as the title of this thread indicates, I believe 8.0.2 fixed that.
 
I'm still confused. I always use Image Capture to transfer my pictures to my Mac, because the quality/resolution of the image is retained. I don't typically use Photostream to transfer pictures (although I leave it on to keep a 'backup' of the picture just in case).

So, if I do 'upgrade' to the iCloud Photo Library, as opposed to what I currently am doing (keeping all pictures on my iPhone locally, with Photostream enabled and iCloud backup backing my camera roll up), I won't be able to move photos to my Mac anymore using Image Capture? And if I do use Photostream, it'll be the low-res version of the photo - which is not what I want. What I want is to still be easily able to move my photos, in their original resolutions, to my Mac. How about videos?

I understand perfectly how iCloud Photo Library works. I just don't understand how it's possible to move the original resolution photos from my iPhone to my Mac right now, because the Photos app is absent from OS X (and won't even be available for 10.9 and below)... so how would that part work?
Unless I've gotten things hideously wrong all these years I'm pretty sure iPhoto obtains a full size/resolution image from photostream. All my phone photos go to iPhoto via photostream and I'm pretty sure they are full sized.
 
So cannot anyone answer my question on how to directly transfer full-quality images from my iPhone to my Mac once/if I enable Photo Library (beta)?
 
Make sure you have upgraded to iOS 8.0.2. It definitely didn't appear for some people in 8.0, but as the title of this thread indicates, I believe 8.0.2 fixed that.

It's definitely not appearing for me on my iPhone 6 with iOS 8.0.2. Also just checked my wife's iPhone 5, also on iOS 8.0.2 and it ALSO does not appear for her either. We are in the UK if that makes a difference?!

Wonder why it's appearing for some but not others?
 
Well, I just swapped out my 6 for the 6+, and now iCloud Beta wouldn't let me switch it on. Keeps saying "Not Yet Available. We're adding users daily. Come back soon to start using iCloud Photo Library".

The 6+ is still on iOS 8.0, and I'll get on 8.0.2 later today when I get home and see if it'll let me.
 
Last edited:
Well, I just swapped out my 6 for the 6+, and now iCloud Beta would let me switch it on. Keeps saying "Not Yet Available. We're adding users daily. Come back soon to start using iCloud Photo Library".

The 6+ is still on iOS 8.0, and I'll get on 8.0.2 later today when I get home and see if it'll let me.

Many had the same experience. Maybe 8.0.2 wil help. And maybe it's related to the country where you are?
 
Where are iPhoto library pictures on my device?

I enabled iPhoto library a while ago and assumed that all the pictures already in my 'Shared' Photos were going to be uploaded into this new library, or would be transferred in automatically (somewhere in the region of 5gb). Certainly they are available on all my other iOS devices through the same 'shared' tab with the library feature turned on. However when I look at the usage for iCloud photos it says I have only 2 photos taking up 3.5mb of space. What gives?
 
I have the option to turn on iCloud drive on my 6 plus but can anyone tell me what the real benefit to the majority of iphone users this will be as I'm sure that like myself most people won't be on yosemite macs but on earlier versions which if I'm understanding correctly won't be supported??
 
Many had the same experience. Maybe 8.0.2 wil help. And maybe it's related to the country where you are?

I'm in the US.

Also, I edited my post for WOULDN'T let me turn it on.
(I'm not yelling, just highlighting the change).
 
I'm still confused. I always use Image Capture to transfer my pictures to my Mac, because the quality/resolution of the image is retained. I don't typically use Photostream to transfer pictures (although I leave it on to keep a 'backup' of the picture just in case).

So, if I do 'upgrade' to the iCloud Photo Library, as opposed to what I currently am doing (keeping all pictures on my iPhone locally, with Photostream enabled and iCloud backup backing my camera roll up), I won't be able to move photos to my Mac anymore using Image Capture? And if I do use Photostream, it'll be the low-res version of the photo - which is not what I want. What I want is to still be easily able to move my photos, in their original resolutions, to my Mac. How about videos?

I understand perfectly how iCloud Photo Library works. I just don't understand how it's possible to move the original resolution photos from my iPhone to my Mac right now, because the Photos app is absent from OS X (and won't even be available for 10.9 and below)... so how would that part work?

Photos imported to iPhoto via Photo Stream are actually at full resolution. However, you should still be able to import your photos and videos through Image Capture, the same way you are now.
 
The same as before, image capture or iPhoto or photo stream.

iPhoto doesn't support Photo Library. How would Image Capture be able to read and import the pictures if they're on the cloud? And, Photostream would reduce the quality of the pictures - not something I want.

If I upgraded, would I be able to step back down?
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.