I don't understand iCloud Photo Library

[Zetaprime]

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.

Well in that case you're ok. But icloud photo looks to me to be way too unreliable for actual use.

 

[ZEEN0j]

Feeling lucky mine is working perfectly. My 13gb of photos are synced between all my devices. I even restored my iPhone and all pictures downloaded again in full quality.

 

[EJ8]

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.

That is correct. Unfortunately.

Question: What if I want to save room on my phone but still allow the picture to exist on iCloud?

You will need to set up another solution. Apple doesn't appear to want to be in this business. Which is baffling. Dropbox is getting users to pay $99 a year. Microsoft OneDrive is a more economical choice but I haven't tried their auto upload / app yet. And there is Flickr of course. But their app is terrible and unreliable.

Anyone have any other solutions?

 

[Zetaprime]

Feeling lucky mine is working perfectly. My 13gb of photos are synced between all my devices. I even restored my iPhone and all pictures downloaded again in full quality.

I wonder how they choose who they want it to work for and who they don't? You must know the right people.

 

[EJ8]

I wonder how they choose who they want it to work for and who they don't? You must know the right people.

Did you text Tim Cook yet and ask to be put on the list? That's probably where you screwed up.

 

[Zetaprime]

Did you text Tim Cook yet and ask to be put on the list? That's probably where you screwed up.

Heh. I guess not. But I was one of the Yosemite beta testers. At any rate I suppose it's just random. They probably can't handle everyone using it so they only let a certain percentage in.

 

[KneelbfZod]

That is correct. Unfortunately.



You will need to set up another solution. Apple doesn't appear to want to be in this business. Which is baffling. Dropbox is getting users to pay $99 a year. Microsoft OneDrive is a more economical choice but I haven't tried their auto upload / app yet. And there is Flickr of course. But their app is terrible and unreliable.

Anyone have any other solutions?

Well I do use Google+ to back up all my photos. Works perfectly, and has all my pics. 100GB for $1.99/mo. I just disabled iCloud Photo Library. I'd like to have the option of deleting local pics on my phone without also deleting them in the cloud. Seems like a HUGE oversight.

 

[dest]

I dont think its an oversight at all.
It is clearly a method of being able to access your photos across all of your devices, rather than being online storage for them.

I just wish the damn thing worked!

 

[KneelbfZod]

I dont think its an oversight at all.
It is clearly a method of being able to access your photos across all of your devices, rather than being online storage for them.

I just wish the damn thing worked!

You're misunderstanding. I don't deny that's the goal of the service. I am simply saying that I cannot simply delete a photo from my phone without also deleting it from iCloud. I don't want to "Optimize" my pictures on a 64GB device. I'd like the ability to backup to a cloud service but also choose what photos specifically reside on the device. ICPL does not allow this.

 

[dest]

But if it didn't delete it from the cloud when you remove it from the device, all of your other devices would go out of sync with each other

 

[Yaboze]

Ok, I didn't read every post in this thread, but I am at a loss as how this is supposed to work as well.

I went from a iPhone 5 to 6 and had Photostream enabled in iOS 7. My iPad 4, MBP (iPhoto) and iPhone 5 always had all of my pictures.

I did use iOS 8 on my 5 for a bit before I got my 6. Now, on my 6, with this enabled in 8.1, I don't have any of my photos that I know where backed up in iCloud. I know this because my MBP recently refreshed the iCloud source in iPhoto and all of my photos are there. They are not on my phone at all.

Is there any way to get your previous photo stream photos on your 8.1 device or not?

 

[EJ8]

Well I do use Google+ to back up all my photos. Works perfectly, and has all my pics. 100GB for $1.99/mo. I just disabled iCloud Photo Library. I'd like to have the option of deleting local pics on my phone without also deleting them in the cloud. Seems like a HUGE oversight.

OK that's another good one. Thanks. I just reinstalled the app. I had it years ago. It told me it was free with no limit to auto upload my pics. Except each pic has to be smaller than 2048 pixels on one side - or something like that. Are they storing full sized pics? And why are you having to pay $1.99 a month? This seems like a good option, even if I have to pay a small amount.

 

[Zetaprime]

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:

Image


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

Image

I give up
I'm starting to lose the faith I once had for Apple stuff...

Give up..It's not worth the trouble. I couldn't get the pics to upload from my phone..ended up just turning the damn thing off and going back to the way it was before iOS8.1

 

[Zetaprime]

I think this forum needs a sticky warning people to avoid using iCloud Photo Library. It doesn't work (except maybe for a few people, and who knows for how long before it bites them). A lot of folks are going to lose a LOT of photos because of this half-baked piece of crap. Anyone who enabled it should turn it off now before it's too late.

 

[ErikGrim]

Only mentioned iPhoto as that is where i have the pics on my Mac.

My question is how do i upload pics from my mac to iCloud library??

For now you have to sync them to your iOS device. You’ll be able to upload and access your iCloud photo library when the Photos app for Mac is released next year.

 

[zOne31]

For now you have to sync them to your iOS device. You’ll be able to upload and access your iCloud photo library when the Photos app for Mac is released next year.

This is the feature I am waiting for and a big reason why I would stay on the iPhone as my next phone. I activated ICPL on Monday, but ultimately found the inability to delete photos on your phone without removing it from both places to be annoying. I'll wait until it comes out of beta and/or the Photos app is released on OS X. I would suggest not using ICPL for the time being.

As my free Dropbox storage is slowly getting close to the limit, I'll be using Google+ as an alternate backup service. Can't hurt to have multiple backups.

 

[EJ8]

...NO!!!!!

For those STILL confused, read this article which explains it all!!!!

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/131...eta-explained-what-is-it-and-how-does-it-work

OK, I read it.

I would love to know who the idiot is at Apple that decided that they would dump the proven convention of saving a copy of all of your photos in the cloud / on a server and access them when you need them, and instead reinvent photo storage by keeping a degraded copy on your device and not allowing for all pictures to remain on the server. This is utterly stupid and obviously not what people want.

It is clear now what their vision is. But it is obvious from this thread and many many others that this is not what people want.

And why in the world would I need 1 TB of storage if my phone can only hold 128 GB of photos (at the most)? If they allowed me to store ALL of my pictures in iCloud regardless of what was on my phone, I probably WOULD need 1 TB of storage. And maybe and probably more one day. Which would equate to a lot of revenue when you think about everyone who uses an iPhone storing all of their pictures on Apple servers in perpetuity. Instead they are limiting users to store only the amount of pictures/space that is on their phones. This is completely moronic

It's kind of scary to think about the decision making that is going on at Apple these days. Gone are the days of "it just works". And here are the days of "how the f|_|ck does this work"? (see this thread as perfect example)

 

[KneelbfZod]

OK that's another good one. Thanks. I just reinstalled the app. I had it years ago. It told me it was free with no limit to auto upload my pics. Except each pic has to be smaller than 2048 pixels on one side - or something like that. Are they storing full sized pics? And why are you having to pay $1.99 a month? This seems like a good option, even if I have to pay a small amount.

You can store full size up to 15GB for free. See link below. After 15GB there is a cost. I've had Gmail since 2004 plus all my pics are backed up so I went beyond the 15GB. Next tier is 100GB for $1.99 which is way cheaper than Dropbox for the same amount of space ($9.99)

https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1647509?p=plus_instant_upload&hl=en&rd=2

 

[Morac]

What Apple's vision is and reality are miles apart and I'm not even sure Apple knows it. For example, Apple's iCloud Photo Library Beta FAQ states you can download the original photos from iCloud,com/photos. That's not true. The photos on iCloud.com are "optimized" and are only about 60% of the resolution of the originals.

The optimize setting doesn't work as far as I can tell. Not that I'd want to use that. Really the whole thing is a mess, hence the beta status.

 

[durangojim]

My question is how do you download the photos you've taken at any given time to your Mac for backup? I like the idea of IPL but I'd like to have a backup on a disk at home too

 

[Morac]

My question is how do you download the photos you've taken at any given time to your Mac for backup? I like the idea of IPL but I'd like to have a backup on a disk at home too

Currently, the same way you've always done so. Either through My Photo Stream or by hooking up your device to your Mac.

 

[Apple blogger]

I read all the answers but I don't anyone is satisfied..I think even Ill try..

ICloud Photo Library makes all your photos accessible from all your devices.. If u turn it on on a device , you can access photos from the device that have it activated... The all photos , that's the album that shows you the pictures.. That is actually connected to icloud.. You can also use moments and all in the photos tab...

Photo stream: Apple has still kept the my photo stream bevause iCloud Photo Library is a beta... I'm sure once it's not, they'll remove it.. Currently iCloud library , when toggled on an iPhone(don't know about the mac) , toggles my photo stream too.. No worries, toggle my photo stream off, u don't need it.. iCloud library works without it being toggled...

Deleting: well I read that ppl have a problem of the photos getting deleted from all the devices..well since sll your pics are in small your devices , each device acts as one only.. So deleting from one should delete from All.. And I think photo stream was the same.. If u delete from the my photo stream folder without downloading, you can no longer see it from all devices ... And suppose there's a picture u don't want to see, apple has given you an option to hide it..although I don't see a point since it creates an album for all the hidden pictures.. I think it's used so that suppose u have pictures to show to ur family and there are some which u don't wanna show, u hide it .. So when u start scrolling from the pics in all photos, the hidden photos arent shown...

Storage: iCloud library gives you an option to store full resolution pics on your device or just a low res pic.. I don't have multiple devices so I can't say what will happen if I choose different options from different devices but I certainly know this .... If you choose the optimize iphone storage, your pics stored on your phone will be low res.. you won't notice that unless u toggle off iCloud Photo Library... And if u choose download full red, then it'll store the full res.. Now I really have a clue how it'll work with multiple devices.. Like if I have 2 iPhones, will the photos be downloaded on both my phones or will it be like photo stream where I can see all my pictures and download which I want and the only photos that are stored in my device are the photos taken from the phone or the photos saved on the phone else.

Backup: your photos are connected to the cloud.. But your photos will still be backed up on your device as it used to be ... If uve optimized storage then the photos will be backed up accordingly, but still you will be able to see full res pics... And if u download full res then the full res will be backed up... This will be useful when u turn of iCloud library.. When u have storage optimized and u turn off iCloud library, the pics won't remain in their original res, but the low res.. And if you have downloaded full res then u don't need to worry about anything...

 

[ErikGrim]

Why is it so hard for people to understand and accept that iCloud photos is your CANONICAL library that now lives in the cloud, and not a BACKUP service for your photos. These are fundamentally two different services. If you want the latter, use any amount of third party backup services.

 

[Apple blogger]

Ok, I didn't read every post in this thread, but I am at a loss as how this is supposed to work as well.

I went from a iPhone 5 to 6 and had Photostream enabled in iOS 7. My iPad 4, MBP (iPhoto) and iPhone 5 always had all of my pictures.

I did use iOS 8 on my 5 for a bit before I got my 6. Now, on my 6, with this enabled in 8.1, I don't have any of my photos that I know where backed up in iCloud. I know this because my MBP recently refreshed the iCloud source in iPhoto and all of my photos are there. They are not on my phone at all.

Is there any way to get your previous photo stream photos on your 8.1 device or not?

If they are stored in my Photo stream turn it on on your ip6

 

[durangojim]

Currently, the same way you've always done so. Either through My Photo Stream or by hooking up your device to your Mac.

But are you backing up the full red photos and videos if they are optomized on your iPhone? And does that mean they have to download to the phone and the to the Mac?