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Photos/iCloud Photo Library

noobinator

noobinator

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jun 19, 2009
7,491
7,269
Los Angeles, CA
Can someone explain how photos and icloud photo library works in simple terms and what has changed in iOS 8? I know i used to just click "photos" and it would store my photos in the cloud. Now it seems I have all sorts of options for using iCloud photos beta and downloading and saving originals and some other stuff.

I'm thinking I probably will just save them on my phone and save them manually onto my MBA.

edit to add: and what is this iPhoto for iOS option? is that to move stuff from my mac to my iPhone?

Apple really went out of their way to make this confusing.

I didn't even get into my questions about iCloud Drive!
 
noobinator said:
Can someone explain how photos and icloud photo library works in simple terms and what has changed in iOS 8? I know i used to just click "photos" and it would store my photos in the cloud. Now it seems I have all sorts of options for using iCloud photos beta and downloading and saving originals and some other stuff.

I'm thinking I probably will just save them on my phone and save them manually onto my MBA.

edit to add: and what is this iPhoto for iOS option? is that to move stuff from my mac to my iPhone?

Apple really went out of their way to make this confusing.

I didn't even get into my questions about iCloud Drive!
Click to expand...

iCloud photo libary basically uploads ALL your photos and videos to iCloud, so then you can view them on other iCloud Photo Libary enabled devices, or view the one the iCloud website on a PC or Mac.
You can chose to have these photos and videos downloaded on each device, OR you can choose to have them 'optimized' instead, which basically means that the device will just store the thumbnails, thus freeing up a lot of storage space on your devices. Optimization isn't really the correct term here though, think of it more as an online viewer to your content. Any videos you try to watch would stream like YouTube, and when you view individual photos each one would need to load from iCloud to be shown at full resolution.
 
Where online can you view the photos?

Update: NVM I found it on beta.icloud.com Still no way to upload all old photos. I know this will come with the photos app next year but would love a quick way to consolidate everything now.
 
noobinator said:
Can someone explain how photos and icloud photo library works in simple terms and what has changed in iOS 8? I know i used to just click "photos" and it would store my photos in the cloud. Now it seems I have all sorts of options for using iCloud photos beta and downloading and saving originals and some other stuff.

I'm thinking I probably will just save them on my phone and save them manually onto my MBA.

edit to add: and what is this iPhoto for iOS option? is that to move stuff from my mac to my iPhone?

Apple really went out of their way to make this confusing.

I didn't even get into my questions about iCloud Drive!
Click to expand...

Oh and iPhoto is a Mac/iOS app that is being phased out so I would worry about that.

iCloud Drive is a place you can store any type of file, and then access them from compatible apps across all your devices. This feature is basically what you get from Dropbox, Google Drive etc.

----------
BigOrangeSU said:
Where online can you view the photos?
Click to expand...

www.beta.icloud.com

Then go to the photos icon.
 
BigOrangeSU said:
Where online can you view the photos?

Update: NVM I found it on beta.icloud.com Still no way to upload all old photos. I know this will come with the photos app next year but would love a quick way to consolidate everything now.
Click to expand...

You can airdrop photos from your Mac (if you're using one) to your Phone, which in turn will upload them to your iCloud
 
To everyone saying that you can't upload your Mac photos to iCloud: you can.

All you have to do I select the photos in iPhoto and AirDrop them to your iOS device. The service will then automatically begin uploading them.

Edit: barely beaten
 
thutson0503 said:
To everyone saying that you can't upload your Mac photos to iCloud: you can.

All you have to do I select the photos in iPhoto and AirDrop them to your iOS device. The service will then automatically begin uploading them.

Edit: barely beaten
Click to expand...

You can just drag your photos to the iCloud drive folder in finder too, and that'll upload them for you.

I've noticed a problem with photo library though, all my photos and videos are in the drive,but my iPad only shows a fraction of them. Doesn't appear to be downloading anymore in the background either, no spinning wheel, no more appearing after time. Nada.

Oh well, beta's will be beta's. Back to iTunes sync we go.
 
daijholt said:
You can just drag your photos to the iCloud drive folder in finder too, and that'll upload them for you.

I've noticed a problem with photo library though, all my photos and videos are in the drive,but my iPad only shows a fraction of them. Doesn't appear to be downloading anymore in the background either, no spinning wheel, no more appearing after time. Nada.

Oh well, beta's will be beta's. Back to iTunes sync we go.
Click to expand...

I noticed this with AirDrop as well. It seems to have missed about a thousand of the photos.
 
As it turns out, you have to upload photos to photo library through iOS. You can't do it from OS X. This means that the 1000+ photos and videos I have that I'd like to upload have to go from my Mac to my phone first. Storing them to do so isn't a problem, it's the fact that Airdrop only lets you do 99 files at a time from OS X, meaning not only will it take forever to transfer 99 videos, (and it seems to fail a lot under that kind of load anyway), I have to do it more than 10 times to get them all.

This is madness!
 
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