I don't understand iCloud Photo Library

[Dino F]

Because, what Apple doesn't say clearly is, by doing this you are essentially going to have to pay for iCloud storage. Where before, you had free 5GB for back-up storage. Now, most of that 5 GB will be gobbled up with photos. So its like hey, here's this cool service. But they don't tell you how it impacts everything else.

.....its all explained clearly here:

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/1314...w-does-it-work

...and also, on Apple's own website (where it DOES indeed say that iCloud is NOT free once you go over the 5gb limit):

https://www.apple.com/uk/icloud/icloud-drive/

 

[xcrunner]

So, I am mostly getting this, but still a bit confused...

with iCPL enabled, do you have the concept of a "camera roll" at all? Like, let's say I save images from a site onto my phone. Previously those went into the Camera Roll...would they now sync with iCPL instead? I.e. there is no longer any local only storage ability and management?

 

[GBR]

The only questions I still have is with iCloud Photo Library turned on can I still use photo stream to automatically save the pictures I take to iPhoto on my Mac? I really like how every pic I take is automatically saved in iPhoto on my Mac and I never have to plug my iPhone in to save those pics.

My other question is, I have 28,000 pictures in my iPhoto library on my Mac, when the Photos app for Mac comes out will it then be syncing ALL those pics to iCloud Photo Library? There's no way I want that, I just want my iOS devices always syncing, and then saving the pics I take to my Mac, I don't need every picture I ever took thats currently in iPhoto on all my iOS devices.

 

[Badrottie]

How does that work? iCloud Photo Library is all confused. I have not install Yosemite on my rMBP just yet but I can use iCloud.com and I can see iCloud Drive with all of my pictures but I don't see them on my iPhone 5S and iPad Air. Did I miss something?

 

[JerTheGeek]

Working pretty great for me!

I have enabled iCloud PL for my iPhone 4S and iPad mini. It is working quite nicely so far. I haven't used too much storage yet, and my plan is to eventually, when I fill up my 5GB, get 20gb and simply keep my photo library under 20GB. This way I can be sure I can store it locally, as I plan to get the 64gb iPad Air 2 and eventually the iPhone 6S 64gb when it comes out. I still dont like the idea of not having all photos downloaded and having to stream videos.

 

[SnowDX]

I don't understand iCloud Photo Library

No, it doesn't. My Photo Library is 1.5GB, yet my backup is only 1GB.

Makes no sense to me as my current library is 2.5GB and if I toggle it on, it says my next back up will be 3.2GB. My current back up is around 650 MB.

This is why we turned the camera roll off from being backed up on all of our phones as it quickly took each of us over our 5GB. And instead we all just have Aperture set up to import from Photo Stream so photos are always backed up to computer (and then we have additional backups running from there).

I have no idea why you're able to have a larger library than your back up size. I have never been able to do that. And neither have the other phones in our family or my friends. They all buy extra iCloud space because of all their photos taking up room in their backup.

Are you using iCloud Photo Library? I am not. Not sure if that makes a difference. But maybe there's no need to back up the photos in the backup if they're already in the cloud?

 

[PhiLLoW]

I don't understand what all the trouble is...

iCloud Photo Library takes your ENTIRE photo library and puts it on iCloud... hence the name. If you delete a photo from one device, it deletes it from all of them. I fail to see how this is NOT an improvement over the previous implementation.

If you want to delete a photo for storage purposes, you don't have to. iCloud Photo Library can display more photos than your phone is capable of storing, since they're all on the cloud.

It's kinda confusing in my opinion.


I have actually no idea whether my fotos are accessible offline or not. I have no idea where they actually are and when I delete them from icloud they're still on my devices???

I don't want all my fotos to stay in the cloud and save them regularly to a local harddrive. But somehow I don't understand Apples concept at all.

How can i access those icloud library fotos in Yosemite?

 

[Morac]

I don't understand iCloud Photo Library

Makes no sense to me as my current library is 2.5GB and if I toggle it on, it says my next back up will be 3.2GB. My current back up is around 650 MB.

This is why we turned the camera roll off from being backed up on all of our phones as it quickly took each of us over our 5GB. And instead we all just have Aperture set up to import from Photo Stream so photos are always backed up to computer (and then we have additional backups running from there).

I have no idea why you're able to have a larger library than your back up size. I have never been able to do that. And neither have the other phones in our family or my friends. They all buy extra iCloud space because of all their photos taking up room in their backup.

Are you using iCloud Photo Library? I am not. Not sure if that makes a difference. But maybe there's no need to back up the photos in the backup if they're already in the cloud?

What happens when you turn iCloud Photo library on, is that it deleted the "Photo Library" and sets the "Photo Library" size in the iCloud backup to "no data". Effectively it disables backing up your camera roll, which makes sense since the photos are already stored in iCloud.

That's now it's supposed to work. In my case it deleted what appeared to be random backup data, but left "Photo Library" enabled and still set to the size of my camera roll. When I turned it off, it deleted more data from my iCloud backup, effectively shrinking my backup from 2 GB down to 100 MB, despite there only be 900 MB of photo data. I turned "Photo library" back on in the backup which then set it to "no data", but by that point it said it needed to back up an additional 900 MB, so I ended up just deleting my backup and recreating it.

 

[Zetaprime]

How does that work? iCloud Photo Library is all confused. I have not install Yosemite on my rMBP just yet but I can use iCloud.com and I can see iCloud Drive with all of my pictures but I don't see them on my iPhone 5S and iPad Air. Did I miss something?

After trying it and not having it work I gave up and probably won't be using it in the future even when it's done. The way photos have normally been handled is just fine. I'm not down on Apple, or even icloud itself, which works brilliantly when I need to restore my devices. And the new Apple Pay seems to work as advertised. I used it at McDonalds yesterday.

 

[aham23]

so we can no longer import pictures from an ios8 device into iPhone on an iMac with Yosemite via hardwire? i just want the pictures off the phone and on the iMac, but auto import is gone......

 

[Morac]

so we can no longer import pictures from an ios8 device into iPhone on an iMac with Yosemite via hardwire? i just want the pictures off the phone and on the iMac, but auto import is gone......

If you set the iPhone to keep originals then you should still be able to import via hardware. I can do so with a Windows machine.

 

[aham23]

If you set the iPhone to keep originals then you should still be able to import via hardware. I can do so with a Windows machine.

so i need to set up iCould Drive/Photo, which I have not yet, then set this setting and it will operate via the old auto import into iPhoto. sorta sounds like i will then have them in two spots? so simple but so hard. thanks.

 

[Morac]

so i need to set up iCould Drive/Photo, which I have not yet, then set this setting and it will operate via the old auto import into iPhoto. sorta sounds like i will then have them in two spots? so simple but so hard. thanks.

I'm not sure what you are asking exactly. If you don't turn on iCloud Photo Library, then nothing changes. If you do and set iCloud Photo Library to keep originals on the phone it should work as before.

 

[SnowDX]

so i need to set up iCould Drive/Photo, which I have not yet, then set this setting and it will operate via the old auto import into iPhoto. sorta sounds like i will then have them in two spots? so simple but so hard. thanks.

Ya I don't quite get what you're asking either. But I don't have iCloud Photo Library turned on and my import into Aperture works as before. When I open Aperture I have my iCloud link on the left and that shows me all my Photo Streams, and pics from My Photo Stream are auto-imported onto my iMac locally.

 

[aham23]

after upgrading both iOS 8.1 and to Yosemite the auto import into iPhone when my 6 is connected no longer works and i can't seem to figure out how to manually force the import. i am sure i am missing something here, but.....

i have not upgraded to iCloud Drive. much thanks.

 

[hokiepokie07]

The only questions I still have is with iCloud Photo Library turned on can I still use photo stream to automatically save the pictures I take to iPhoto on my Mac? I really like how every pic I take is automatically saved in iPhoto on my Mac and I never have to plug my iPhone in to save those pics.

My other question is, I have 28,000 pictures in my iPhoto library on my Mac, when the Photos app for Mac comes out will it then be syncing ALL those pics to iCloud Photo Library? There's no way I want that, I just want my iOS devices always syncing, and then saving the pics I take to my Mac, I don't need every picture I ever took thats currently in iPhoto on all my iOS devices.

It still syncs them to my MacBook Pro.

----------

Is it possible to share iCloud Photo Library with my wife? We have separate iCloud accounts, but would like to share our photos between our devices.

 

[aham23]

so for giggles i connected the 6 direct (not thru my USB hub) to the iMac and auto import is working now. it was charging only via the hub. interesting.

 

[Dino F]

I quite like how iCloud Photo Library works- take a pic on my iPhone 6 and it automatically appears on my iPad 2 and on icloud.com.

No use for Photo Stream now - it will probably be removed in future iOS updates......

 

[Dino F]

I will say this - you can tell that iCloud Photo Library is indeed a BETA.

On my iPhone 6, it shows I have 680 photos, in the 'All Photos' folder.
On my iPad 2, it shows I have 677 photos, in the 'All Photos' folder.
On iCloud.com, it shows I have 776 photos, in the 'All Photos' folder.

If it was working 100% correctly, all 3 of these figures should be the same!

I am gonna have to try and sync all of these - manually - by finding the 'extra' 3 pics on my my iPhone and deleting them (so it then shows the same number as my iPad) and then doing the same on iCloud.com - deleting the 'extra' pics from there so that this too, then shows 677 photos.

Not sure how this has happened - is it possible that because I updated my iPad to iOS 8.1 and turned iCloud Photo Library, ON, first (before doing the same on my iPhone), it uploaded the pics to iCoud.com, and then when I turned it on on the iPhone, it also uploaded some of the iPhone pics to iCloud.com as well, resulting in some duplicates?!

 

[InsideTJ]

Question:

What happens if I turn on iCloud photo library with optimized versions saved on my phone. This keeps the small versions on my device.

Then I periodically plug in to the mac, use image capture to pull photo roll off to an archive.

What will image capture see and get? full versions? only new photos taken since last import?

I want to keep my old workflow of manually copying off (full versions of) my new photos to an external storage place.

 

[jmmo20]

Question:

What happens if I turn on iCloud photo library with optimized versions saved on my phone. This keeps the small versions on my device.

Then I periodically plug in to the mac, use image capture to pull photo roll off to an archive.

What will image capture see and get? full versions? only new photos taken since last import?

I want to keep my old workflow of manually copying off (full versions of) my new photos to an external storage place.

I haven't checked personally but my guess is that image capture will see an empty DCIM folder..

 

[GoGas38]

I have not yet enabled ICPL a on iPhone. I use a Folder Automator Action on the Mac (Yesomite) to watch for changes and when these are detected (i.e. New photos taken on iPhone are downloaded from the Cloud to the Mac ) the new photos are copied to another folder where Lightroom will automatically import them when next opened. The watched folder (iLife deep in the users Library) I presume is the same folder that iPhoto will watch for Photostream.

From what has been said in this thread, if I switch to ICPL then photos will not longer be downloaded to the Mac and be accessible via Photostream in iPhoto, and by default my watch folder system will break.

At present it seems photos are not downloaded to Mac at all with ICPL and if enabled Photostream stops on the Mac? Is this correct or does iPhoto still work on Mac with Photostream even with ICPL enabled on iOS devices?

Thanks

 

[Mike Boreham]

I have not yet enabled ICPL a on iPhone. I use a Folder Automator Action on the Mac (Yesomite) to watch for changes and when these are detected (i.e. New photos taken on iPhone are downloaded from the Cloud to the Mac ) the new photos are copied to another folder where Lightroom will automatically import them when next opened. The watched folder (iLife deep in the users Library) I presume is the same folder that iPhoto will watch for Photostream.

From what has been said in this thread, if I switch to ICPL then photos will not longer be downloaded to the Mac and be accessible via Photostream in iPhoto, and by default my watch folder system will break.

At present it seems photos are not downloaded to Mac at all with ICPL and if enabled Photostream stops on the Mac? Is this correct or does iPhoto still work on Mac with Photostream even with ICPL enabled on iOS devices?

Thanks

Photo stream still works. I have ICPL enabled on all devices, and Photostream enabled. I can still download photos from Photostream via Aperture.

 

[GoGas38]

Mike thanks that is helpful. My guess is nobody yet knows if in future ICPL a will be cached locally on Mac and if so where? With Aperture no long being developed a number of users (especially as people switch to LR from Aperture with the switch tools form Adobe) will look to incorporate ICPL a into Lightroom workflow. LR ideally could do with plugin to allow connection to users ICPL and choose what to import) From what has been said the new Photo app is going to be somewhere between iPhoto and Aperature/LightRoom in capabilities.

 

[jmmo20]

Question:

What happens if I turn on iCloud photo library with optimized versions saved on my phone. This keeps the small versions on my device.

Then I periodically plug in to the mac, use image capture to pull photo roll off to an archive.

What will image capture see and get? full versions? only new photos taken since last import?

I want to keep my old workflow of manually copying off (full versions of) my new photos to an external storage place.

Actually, I just checked.

I have iCloud Photo Library, and I forced my iphone to keep only the optimised photos (I had to sync my library, then turn off iCPL, manually access the DCIM folder and delete all photos, then enable iCPL back and it doewnloads all mini low res photos).

Right now I have two folders in my DCIM folder.

\850YOTQM contains all the photos I have manually opened in high res. That is, when you open any photo from your library, you will see a progress pie while it downloads the full res photo. Then the full res photo file is stored in this \850YOTQM folder. This folder also contains photos taken 2 weeks ago.

\892ZLWLR contains all photos I've taken in the last week.

So, summary, the photos from last week are in a folder, the photos from 2 weeks ago are in a different folder, the photos you download from iCPL are also in this second folder. After a week has passed, the photos are deleted and you only keep the thumbnails.