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I don't understand iCloud Photo Library

So far, Apple's forays into cloud based photo syncing have been a mess. Here's what we'll eventually end up with:

All photos sync to iCloud, where they live in their full resolution and quality. Any edits or changes to any photos will also sync into iCloud. If you decide to delete a photo, it will disappear across the board.

iOS devices will automatically remove full-size photo files once they've been uploaded to iCloud, then download an "optimized" version (more compressed, lower resolution) of the same photos that takes up very little space.

You won't need to upload and delete or pick and choose which photos are on your device. The optimized photos will be very small so you can just keep them all.

Sadly, this isn't going to work yet because iPhoto still exists on the Mac and it's still using Photostream. The entire app seems buggy as well. I'm sure it'll eventually work well, but until all the pieces are in place it seems a little strange to push it out.
 
Dino F said:
I think people are forgetting that iCloud Photo Library is still in Beta mode meaning things are not going to work as planned.

We need to give it time for these bugs to be ironed out!!
Click to expand...

More like doesn't work at all. My advice to anyone who hasn't tried it is don't bother.
 
gsmornot said:
Funny thing is, after playing with all this and seeing how it works on the wife and daughters phones, I'm not 100% sure I want to use the option. On the one hand, it saves space on the photos I don't open often but at the same time, it slows the process of looking at the photos I do want to see and share. As someone above posted, it might be nice to have an option that optimizes photos older than 30 days and leaves the recent photos full size. I may in the end go back to my old system of no iCPL, auto upload to OneDrive and store a copy on my PC which is backed up to an external drive. It was working fine.
Click to expand...

I thought of this as well, so my question is whether the old Photostream remains active when you enable iCloud Photo Library? This would be a somewhat simple work-around - you keep the most recent 30 days/1000 photos on the device in full resolution, and everything else is available through iCloud.

That said, I too will probably stick with my existing system of uploading automatically to Flickr (although all this mess with the photos app since iOS8 has made a bit of a mess of that continuity) which is free. We take so many pictures that paying monthly for iCloud would get expensive fast.
 
I actually don't think iCloud Photo Library is that confusing. I understand it quite well already.

However, I do have a question - I have almost 10,000 photos that I took with an iPhone 4 (which does not support iOS 8.1). I have since transferred to an iPhone 5 but that iPhone only has 16 GB of storage. So obviously, I couldn't store my old photos on it and I'm now trying to get access to them through Photo Library instead. But I can't upload them to the Photo Library (doesn't have iOS 8). Is it possible to upload them through a Mac or do I have to wait until January 2015 to get access to those photos again?
 
party said:
I actually don't think iCloud Photo Library is that confusing. I understand it quite well already.



However, I do have a question - I have almost 10,000 photos that I took with an iPhone 4 (which does not support iOS 8.1). I have since transferred to an iPhone 5 but that iPhone only has 16 GB of storage. So obviously, I couldn't store my old photos on it and I'm now trying to get access to them through Photo Library instead. But I can't upload them to the Photo Library (doesn't have iOS 8). Is it possible to upload them through a Mac or do I have to wait until January 2015 to get access to those photos again?
Click to expand...


Basically same problem I have. Photos are stored in iCloud but I can not view any photos unless I do a backup restore from my 4s to my 6
 
pmd said:
Not yet, no. You'll need to wait for the replacement for iPhoto and Aperture on the Mac - the new Photos app - to be available. It's due early next year. The only way you can see the photos using your Mac is by going to beta.icloud.com/#photos.
Click to expand...

This is not quite right. At the moment, with Photostream enabled Aperture (and I assume iPhoto) see the photos from your iPhone via Photostream.
 
EJ8 said:
Not sarcastic at all. I really thought this solution was going to expand a users ability to store photos. Photos that no longer fit on their phone. I thought it was going to eliminate the need to constantly offload pictures (that no longer fit on my phone) to a computer.

As it's set up now all it is is a larger duplication of what's already on my phone. I don't need my photos duplicated if I still have to move them over to my computer where they get redundantly saved anyway. What is the plus here regarding iCloud Photo Library? I don't have a purpose for this.
Click to expand...

In a way it does save you space as the previous iteration essentially saved duplicates of your last 1000 photos - 1 copy in the PhotoStream, another copy in the Camera Roll.

I actually think the new way is how it always should've been and is far more straight forward than it used to be.

What you are looking for are backup options. That's not what iCloud Photo Library is. Though in that respect, the new way works a ton better as well.

Before, when I got a new device, if I didn't restore from a backup there was no way to get my photos back without saving them all to my computer and loading them in that way.

Now, even if I reset my device, I can simply switch iCloud Photo Library to 'on' and bam. All my photos, right there. Really simple.
 
It's Simple

It's simple. If you turn off iCloud Photo Library beta, you have your typical photo stream from before. Turn on the beta and you can still have photo stream but it's not seen on the phone because you have access to all of your photos on iCloud Photo Library. If it's confusing turn it off.
 
savagewatts said:
It's simple. If you turn off iCloud Photo Library beta, you have your typical photo stream from before. Turn on the beta and you can still have photo stream but it's not seen on the phone because you have access to all of your photos on iCloud Photo Library. If it's confusing turn it off.
Click to expand...

Nicely put!
 
I can sympathize with people who are confused. It does take a bit to get your head around it and understand how it works, what things have changed, and how it's different. As long as I can make a hard back-up, I see no problem with it.

I've been reading MacRumors for about ten years, and I get a kick out of people complaining. I've had my fair share, but look; Apple seems to be moving in a good direction - we're being given choices! Just look at the extensions for Yosemite. Those haven't been around since the OS 9 days. Jobs would never have allowed that. And he'd never allow a choice between photo stream and iCloud Photo Library. It would be all or nothing.

But keep complaining, you whiny little dorks. :D
 
iCloud vs Photostream

I think a nice breakdown of the features of the new iCloud Photo Library and Photostream would have been nice. Apple should have laid out the differences so people could make an educated decision on which one to use. I have all my photos on all my devices (Mac, iPad, iPhone) via photosteam and go through them at the end of each month to determine what I want to keep/delete, so I need to understand why iCloud would be a better alternative.
 
Mak47 said:
So far, Apple's forays into cloud based photo syncing have been a mess. Here's what we'll eventually end up with:

All photos sync to iCloud, where they live in their full resolution and quality. Any edits or changes to any photos will also sync into iCloud. If you decide to delete a photo, it will disappear across the board.

iOS devices will automatically remove full-size photo files once they've been uploaded to iCloud, then download an "optimized" version (more compressed, lower resolution) of the same photos that takes up very little space.

You won't need to upload and delete or pick and choose which photos are on your device. The optimized photos will be very small so you can just keep them all.

Sadly, this isn't going to work yet because iPhoto still exists on the Mac and it's still using Photostream. The entire app seems buggy as well. I'm sure it'll eventually work well, but until all the pieces are in place it seems a little strange to push it out.
Click to expand...


in my case iOS uploaded all my photos but kept all high res photos on my phone. Even though I only want to keep the optimised lower res photos.
 
Call me a cynic, but this feels like a means of getting 16GB owners to pony up for Cloud storage.

That's the only real benefit.

When you select photos delete, you should be presented with two options. One to delete from just phone and another for both inc Cloud. (Or something to that effect)

That is what would pull people away from services like Flickr.
 
iCloud Photo Library is not for everyone... hey I like to be able to have different photos, especially private ones I save ;) on my own phone, and not have them in my iPad. I will have people just want to pick up the iPad and use it, so it's not always convenient for them to be able to just tap Photos and see all of my library lol. I do like the idea of saving all my stuff to the cloud to save space.

What I'm curious about is when I enable iCloud Photo Library, will all my locally stored photos just be erased and moved to the cloud, freeing up all that space?
 
webworks415 said:
iCloud Photo Library is not for everyone... hey I like to be able to have different photos, especially private ones I save ;) on my own phone, and not have them in my iPad. I will have people just want to pick up the iPad and use it, so it's not always convenient for them to be able to just tap Photos and see all of my library lol. I do like the idea of saving all my stuff to the cloud to save space.



What I'm curious about is when I enable iCloud Photo Library, will all my locally stored photos just be erased and moved to the cloud, freeing up all that space?
Click to expand...


Only if you want them to be removed, which would be a very foolish thing. You'd really trust a cloud service with your only copy of your photos? No way!
 
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?
 
Last edited:
webworks415 said:
iCloud Photo Library is not for everyone... hey I like to be able to have different photos, especially private ones I save ;) on my own phone, and not have them in my iPad. I will have people just want to pick up the iPad and use it, so it's not always convenient for them to be able to just tap Photos and see all of my library lol. I do like the idea of saving all my stuff to the cloud to save space.



What I'm curious about is when I enable iCloud Photo Library, will all my locally stored photos just be erased and moved to the cloud, freeing up all that space?
Click to expand...


Actually it's not for anybody since it doesn't even work.
 
I'm still not getting any photos show up in iCloud :roll eyes:

My phone is set up correctly and showing that its uploading photos as and when they're taken:

0D0EE083-1DDD-4CBB-845B-FB1437833079.png



Yet when I go to beta.cloud.com or iCloud.com and choose Photos all I see is this screen:

ScreenShot2014-10-21at224134.png


I give up :(
I'm starting to lose the faith I once had for Apple stuff...
 
Zetaprime said:
Only if you want them to be removed, which would be a very foolish thing. You'd really trust a cloud service with your only copy of your photos? No way!
Click to expand...

Well I always just plug my iPhone into my Mac and do manual backups in iPhoto. I keep them on my phone still for convenience of access, so I don't mind at all if anything is erased.
 
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