Questions about iCloud Photo Library

[andrewhl]

I have an iPhone 6 running iOS 8.1 and a Macbook running Yosemite. I have a very large iPhoto library taking up a lot of space locally on my macbook.. If I enable iCloud Photo Library Beta on my iPhone..

1. What happens to the locally stored photos and videos on my iPhone?

2. How do I upload photos from my iPhoto library (Preferably the whole thing) to iCloud Photo Library?

3. Will it be reset again because it's still in beta? (Hence wiping all the files)

 

[MrGiblets]

1. Locally stored photos are uploaded into the cloud. You can choose to have full resolution photos on the phone or optimized photos which will download when you tap on them.

If the photos were synced from the Mac using iTunes, they will be removed.

2. iPhoto doesn't support iCloud Photo Library until early 2015, so you can't upload them directly.

3. No, public betas wouldn't have a wipe.


In your case, since you have so many photos on your computer, I would not recommend using iCloud Photo Library until the iPhoto app is updated and compatible. Keep in mind, photos are still going to take up some space on your computer and Mac even after switching over.

 

[countdrachma]

Optimize iPhone Storage

I've got the same situation. I want my photo library to appear in its entirety on my iPhone but stored in the iCloud library for which I just purchased the additional 200Gb to hold all the photos.

My photos run a touch over 20Gb worth and with the Optimise iPhone Storage, I expected this would mean it would keep low res / thumbnail type images on my iPhone instead of the full images and would run at maybe 2-3 Gb of storage for those compressed files.

Doesn't appear to be the case though. I transferred a sample 1000 photos from my MacBook Pro to the iPhone (via AirDrop as there is no actual way to do it via even the iCloud beta webpage) and those photos take up MORE room on my iPhone (3.8GB) than they do on the iCloud drive storage (3.7GB)!

So basically, unless that Optimize iPhone Storage is "missing in action", it makes a mockery of the concept and you can't use / store your photo library in its entirety on your iDevice unless you have a small library and large storage. Defeats the purpose of a cloud based storage solution though. Apple has done it again; missed the point and implemented it pathetically.

 

[T-Will]

I'm surprised Apple enabled iCloud Photo Library in 8.1. Seems like they should have kept it in beta releases only.

 

[jmmo20]

1. Locally stored photos are uploaded into the cloud. You can choose to have full resolution photos on the phone or optimized photos which will download when you tap on them.

If the photos were synced from the Mac using iTunes, they will be removed.

2. iPhoto doesn't support iCloud Photo Library until early 2015, so you can't upload them directly.

3. No, public betas wouldn't have a wipe.


In your case, since you have so many photos on your computer, I would not recommend using iCloud Photo Library until the iPhoto app is updated and compatible. Keep in mind, photos are still going to take up some space on your computer and Mac even after switching over.

I enabled iclouds photo with the "optimise storage" option enabled too and after uploading all 5.7 gb of photos my phone still shows 5.8gb as taken up by photos. I haven't recoup any space ... this is puzzling.
And what's worse, iCloud backup still has the photos from before I enabled icloud photos, so right now I have 13gb taken up by photos on icloud plus an additional 5.8 gb on my phone.

 

[PerfectCr]

Question: With ICPL enabled, I cannot simply delete a photo from the phone but NOT delete it from iCloud. Is this true? If so that's really puzzling. What if I want to save room on my phone but still allow the picture to exist on iCloud?

 

[rldunn]

I understand the confusion, and it could certainly be implemented better, but I believe the device compression only applies when photos are brought to the device from iCloud Photo Library.

For example, I turned this feature on for both my iPhone and iPad yesterday. I have roughly 3,400 photos, about 3,330 of which came from the iPhone and 100 from the iPad. For the iPhone photos, it didn't redownload compressed versions of the photos after they were uploaded; rather, it just left the native versions alone. However, on the iPad, it downloaded optimized versions for the 3,330 pics that originated on the phone.

So, currently, my iCloud Photo Library is 14.3GB, my iPhone Photo Library is 14.3GB, and my iPad Photo Library is only 73.0MB!

 

[PNutts]

I'm surprised Apple enabled iCloud Photo Library in 8.1. Seems like they should have kept it in beta releases only.

I think it is another example of not meeting a deadline. iOS 8 felt rushed and when this wasn't ready they slapped a beta label on it. Tacky.

 

[T-Will]

For the people seeing photos still taking the full-size space, I wonder if the idea is that photos are dynamically optimized based on the storage space available. So as you start to run out of space, it automatically dumps the full-size image and keeps an optimized image?

 

[esf215]

i ended up connecting my photo to my mac and deleting the photos thru iPhoto. worked for me. Still not sure how it will work when the full photo download to my again if i need to send it