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Photo syncing across iOS and OS X

B

bpletcher

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 16, 2011
30
0
Michigan
I recently got a second iOS device (iPad mini) and have taken picture across both devices. I know photo stream syncs between iOS devices and iPhoti but am not a fan of the time constraint for the photos before they are removed. Iv been making albums on my iPad mini and organizing photos from my photo stream by putting them into specific albums.

My question is how can I sync my personally made albums across all iOS devices and iPhoto on my Mac. A detailed guide on how to accomplish this would be incredibly helpful! Thanks so much for your time and let me know if you need any more information.

- bpletcher
 
Might I suggest creating Shared Photo Streams that only you can view? There are no time limits on Shared Photo Streams, only quantitative ones:

Maximum number of photos to share per hour: 1,000
Maximum number of photos to share per day: 10,000
Maximum shared streams an owner can share: 100
Maximum shared streams a user can subscribe to: 100
Maximum subscribers per shared stream: 100 (the number of subscribers on each shared stream)
Maximum number of photos per shared stream: 1,000
Maximum number of comments per shared stream photo: 200 (a comment can be either a like or a text entry)
Maximum characters per comment: 200
Maximum number of invites a shared stream owner may send per day: 200
Click to expand...

The only problem I could see would be that you end up creating more than 100 separate Shared Photo Stream albums, if you're that meticulous about organization. ;)
 
This method intrigues me. Is there a size limitation with shared photo streams that I will have to be concerned about? I still have the 5GB iCloud account and don't plan on increasing that anytime soon.
 
Well this sounds like a very good option to me. However, long term I think it could pose a problem with being 1,000 photo limit in each stream and 100 stream max. I know that it will take me quite some time to fill this criteria but are there other avenues I can take to synce photos across all iOS devices and my Mac?
 
You'd really end up syncing 100,000 photos across your devices? Well, er, far be it from me to say anything about excess. :p

Another option that comes to mind is Dropbox, though that does have space limitations.
 
It's a huge blind spot for Apple, IMO.

Take a look at Thislife.com or Everpix.com.

Apple should buy/imitate those guys. If Thislife wasn't so expensive, it would be my perfect solution. Everpix needs to improve its browsing, but otherwise it's a very transparent way to sync all your pics from all of your iOS and OSX devices
 
I would definitely use a "iPhoto in the Cloud" service. I have about 15,000 photos in my iPhoto library, and they don't all fit on my phone. I'm always finding myself wanting to look back on old photos when I'm out with friends, but as they're not on my phone, I can't do this.

It's a shame that the iPhone and iPad have such brilliant photo browsing apps, but there's no way to sync all your events/faces/places between iOS and OS X.
 
RTWG said:
I would definitely use a "iPhoto in the Cloud" service. I have about 15,000 photos in my iPhoto library, and they don't all fit on my phone. I'm always finding myself wanting to look back on old photos when I'm out with friends, but as they're not on my phone, I can't do this.
Click to expand...

I use Google Picasa for this. I spend $20 for 80gb of Google storage (bought before the new price increases).
I take all photos on my iDevices, they sync each day when I'm home with iPhoto saving the Photostream pics to my hard drive for safekeeping. Then every now and then I simply launch Picasa - it loads in all new photos and uploads them that night.
Then I can get them wherever I am. There are over 10,000 of my photos stored online in private albums!

If Apple had the equivalent, I'd probably have used that - but right now, I doubt they'd be as cheap... and I don't want to re-upload 10,000 photos!!
 
bpletcher said:
My question is how can I sync my personally made albums across all iOS devices and iPhoto on my Mac. A detailed guide on how to accomplish this would be incredibly helpful! Thanks so much for your time and let me know if you need any more information.
Click to expand...

Make your album on your iPhone > Connect your iOS device with your Mac > click on your device in the left column in iTunes > click the 'Photo' tab > there you can select which photo albums you want to sync with your Mac.

Doing this should talk to iPhoto and you'll see them there I believe.
If that works, then other iDevices should be able to see those iPhoto albums and you can sort of daisy chain the process.


But right now iCloud doesn't sync albums... only Camera Roll. And even then it's a real pain to make iPhoto OSX talk to iPhoto iOS.
 
You would think with how much time and money they put into iPhoto that there would be a better wireless syncing function.
 
As of now Im using the advice listed about multiple shared photo streams. You are right in assuming that syncing 100,000 photos is rather rediculous, for my needs that is. I would say 1,000 photos per stream isnt the issue though; it is the 100 streams max because I like to keep my photos catagorized by events but I can start grouping some of them into more vague catagories (i.e. Fall 2012).

My only hesitation right now is 'what if' iCloud's servers take a crash. Will my photos be lost indefinetly since they are stored on their server and not on my individual iDevices?
 
bpletcher said:
My only hesitation right now is 'what if' iCloud's servers take a crash. Will my photos be lost indefinetly since they are stored on their server and not on my individual iDevices?
Click to expand...

Assuming Apple is smart enough to learn from past cloud disasters (see The Great Sidekick Cloud Disaster of 2009), they'll probably have backups of all data stored on iCloud, but that shouldn't prevent you from saving your photos externally, i.e. on a computer. That's what you should be doing if you're worried about losing everything anyways.
 
You can set iPhoto to automatically import photos from your photostream. Am I missing something?
 
bpletcher said:
I recently got a second iOS device (iPad mini) and have taken picture across both devices. I know photo stream syncs between iOS devices and iPhoti but am not a fan of the time constraint for the photos before they are removed. Iv been making albums on my iPad mini and organizing photos from my photo stream by putting them into specific albums.

My question is how can I sync my personally made albums across all iOS devices and iPhoto on my Mac. A detailed guide on how to accomplish this would be incredibly helpful! Thanks so much for your time and let me know if you need any more information.

- bpletcher
Click to expand...

There is no time constraint on the Mac. It'll keep all the pictures it gets via PhotoStream. It's only iOS devices that delete older streamed pictures after so many days.

Apple said:
Master photo library. On your Mac or PC.

Keeping a complete set of your photos on your Mac is as simple as turning on Photo Stream in iPhoto or Aperture. Every new photo you take appears in a Photo Stream album just as it does on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. But since your Mac has more storage than your iOS device, it automatically imports every picture from your Photo Stream into your photo library so you can edit, delete, and share the ones you want.
Click to expand...

Link: http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/photo-stream.html
 
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