Is Photo Stream just a 1-way send from iPhone to Mac?

[talkin73]

I turned on Photo Stream in Aperture prefs (attached) and I like that photos from my i6 appear there automatically. But, if I delete things from my i6 they don't get deleted from Aperture meaning I have to delete them twice. It seems like a one-way dump rather than a "sync" of photos and I'm wondering if this is just how it works right now or if I don't have preferences set correctly? Thanks for any feedback on a way to get my iPhone and Mac synchronizing if that is actually possible.

 

[Hayakuro]

The new iCloud Photo Library currently in beta is what answers your question. It keeps the master library in the cloud, and deleting a photo on one device deletes it everywhere. It has no time limit for storing photos, but it does use your iCloud storage space. Unfortunately, as far as I know, Aperture will never work with Photo Library. There is a separate app in development to replace iPhoto that sounds like it'll be your only point of access from a Mac app. As for Photo Stream, it only holds your last 30 days of photos in what is basically a transient album in the cloud. The auto-import setting you have enabled downloads each new photo that shows up in Photo Stream into your local library so that you can keep it beyond the 30 days when it gets automatically removed from the cloud. So whereas Photo Library acts like IMAP email, keeping your master list in the cloud with it syncing down to devices from there, Photo Stream is like POP email, the iPhone pushes the photo to the cloud, where it gets pushed to your other devices for 30 days and then goes away unless you saved it locally in that time. Not really a perfect analogy, but it's how I look at it.

 

[talkin73]

Thanks very much. The IMAP vs POP analogy was actually great and explains a lot of what I'm observing. I'm going to turn it off because it's not syncing any changes that I make to photos on the phone, either editing or deleting. So, I end up having to manage photos twice or not do anything with photos on the phone and only edit/delete on Aperture which I find very limiting. I'd prefer to have the only the photos I keep, along with their edits, imported manually vs the "convenience" of having them automatically download. Unless someone wants every single photo they take and never edits photos or doesn't want those edits to be reflected in their computer photo library, Photo Stream seems to simply trade one set of inconvenience (having to manually import) for another (edits and deletions on phone not reflected on computer). The latter is more of a nuisance and time-consuming for me so your feedback confirming this is how it works is helpful in making the decision to stop using Photo Stream. Thanks again!

The new iCloud Photo Library currently in beta is what answers your question. It keeps the master library in the cloud, and deleting a photo on one device deletes it everywhere. It has no time limit for storing photos, but it does use your iCloud storage space. Unfortunately, as far as I know, Aperture will never work with Photo Library. There is a separate app in development to replace iPhoto that sounds like it'll be your only point of access from a Mac app. As for Photo Stream, it only holds your last 30 days of photos in what is basically a transient album in the cloud. The auto-import setting you have enabled downloads each new photo that shows up in Photo Stream into your local library so that you can keep it beyond the 30 days when it gets automatically removed from the cloud. So whereas Photo Library acts like IMAP email, keeping your master list in the cloud with it syncing down to devices from there, Photo Stream is like POP email, the iPhone pushes the photo to the cloud, where it gets pushed to your other devices for 30 days and then goes away unless you saved it locally in that time. Not really a perfect analogy, but it's how I look at it.