Am I sharing iCloud Photos albums wrong?

[oneMadRssn]

I am trying to migrate my family to using iCloud Photos, where I am the primary account.

I have a bunch of albums organized, as people do. It's all on iCloud. I tried sharing one important album recently, that has ~4,000 photos on it. I thought it was be as simple as that album now being available to whoever I shared it with. But it took hours for the share to be made, and now there is a second album under "Shared Albums." Along the way, I got an error about exceeding the maximum number of photos uploaded per hour.

I thought I was sharing it, not uploading anything. And the photos are already in iCloud, why are they being uploaded again? Was my computer downloading each photo, and then re-uploading it? That seems wildly inefficient.

So now I have redundant albums, and given how long it took, it assume all those photos were copied instead of just shared.

Am I doing this wrong, or is that the intended use of iCloud Photos? If so, I don't think I like it.

 

[nicho]

So now I have redundant albums, and given how long it took, it assume all those photos were copied instead of just shared.

They were also likely downscaled. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202786

Am I doing this wrong, or is that the intended use of iCloud Photos?

What is your intended use of this shared album? For a one-off share with someone or an ongoing one?

If it's for someone to access and add them to their own device/library within 30 days, the way you're thinking of (sharing instead of uploading) can be found here - https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT209035

 

[oneMadRssn]

They were also likely downscaled. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202786

So they are downscaled to a 2048 horizontal resolution, which is 6MP resolution.

That's pretty bad! Compared to Google Photos where the free cutoff is 16MP, Apple's cutoff is terrible. I'm glad I tried this, but this is making me want to switch to Google Photos.

What is your intended use of this shared album? For a one-off share with someone or an ongoing one?

If it's for someone to access and add them to their own device/library within 30 days, the way you're thinking of (sharing instead of uploading) can be found here - https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT209035

The intended use is to have an ongoing share to non-tech-savvy grandparents' iPad. They like to look at photos, from big events from the past (weddings, birthdays, etc.). I also want to supply them with a feed of new photos.

I sort of assumed that if I can upload my full resolution original photos to iCloud using the Mac Photos app, then I could share those same albums and photos with others. But apparently that isn't true. Or am I missing something?

 

[bwfc0907]

So they are downscaled to a 2048 horizontal resolution, which is 6MP resolution.

That's pretty bad! Compared to Google Photos where the free cutoff is 16MP, Apple's cutoff is terrible. I'm glad I tried this, but this is making me want to switch to Google Photos.


The intended use is to have an ongoing share to non-tech-savvy grandparents' iPad. They like to look at photos, from big events from the past (weddings, birthdays, etc.). I also want to supply them with a feed of new photos.

I sort of assumed that if I can upload my full resolution original photos to iCloud using the Mac Photos app, then I could share those same albums and photos with others. But apparently that isn't true. Or am I missing something?

I’m in the same boat. I have optimise storage on iPad and want to share 2500 photos with my wife and children. It is taking forever to get them to share. Is this normal? I’m now trying to break them up and share a few hundred at a time to the album. When I initially got this to work it created 2 albums instead of just the one I asked for.

 

[Banglazed]

iCloud photos sharing has limitation and photos are downscaled to 2048 pixels based on your iCloud storage drive. For full quality photos, it’s best to use Google Photos (up to 16mp) or Amazon Photos (full resolution) with unlimited backup.