Using iCloud Photo Sharing

iCloud Photo Sharing is a quick and easy way to share photos with friends. You can create a share album that others can add to, or just view. You can also make the album available on the Web where people without the Photos app or even Macs can view the photos. It is easy to add or remove photos. However, the options are limited so you may need to use another service if you want more.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. On today's episode let's talk about iCloud Photo Sharing in the new Photos app.
So the new Photos app, in conjunction with iCloud, makes it very easy for you to share photos so others can see it. They don't have to have the Photos app. They don't even have to be on the Mac. All they need is access to the web. Let's see how we can do this.
Notice that on the left sidebar here you can bring that up with View, Show or Hide Sidebar, you've got your shared Activity. I can bring that up. I haven't started sharing yet. So I'm going to hit the Start Sharing button and it is going to prompt me to share an Album.
Let's create one called Test Share. I'm not going to invite any people right now and I'm not going to add a comment. I'm just going to create it. You can see now I've got Test Share. This Activity tab here shows recent things that I've done with Sharing. So let's go right to the Test Share here and you can see that it is empty. Let's add photos and videos by clicking there.
Now I can go and view all my photos. I'm going to select a couple and I'm going to hit Add. Then it is going to add these to the Test Share album. Great. It took about 30 seconds and now these three photos are listed as Shared here on the Test Share album. 
Now look at this. I can go ahead and add more photos and videos here. I can then use some buttons here at the top. So I can click here and I can change the album name, I can invite some more people, and I can set some options. So I can set Subscribers Can Post so when I invite people they can actually post photos of their own here. So you automatically created a Shared Album 
that other people can post. A whole family can post photos of a vacation to one shared album here.
I can also have Notifications here sent to me when people post and do things. I can check this off and now it is public and it's on a website and I can actually use this link here and I can send out an email to friends and they can go ahead and view it.
So I'm going to copy that and then I'm going to open it up in Safari. So here I am in Safari and I can see that at this URL I can see the album here. Anybody can see this. They can be using any browser and can go in here to this website and view it because I have made it public. This is a great way to share photos with people like while you are on trips and things like that. You can select any photo to go directly to it and then you can flip through them all. So it it kind of all like automatic here.
You can also download individual photos to full screen. A lot of functionality in this standardized webpage here.
So it is important to keep in mind there are two types of people that will be viewing these when they are public. There are the people that are not invited and they can just view them and download and do things. But they can't change it. They can't add photos.
Then there are the people you've invited who should also have the Photos app. They will actually be able to see it listed here on the left under Shared and be able to add their own photos. Or if you turn this off here then they will just be able to see and they won't be able to modify it. You can also change the name of the album any time you want and use this button here to delete it.
So the cool thing here is that it is so easy to add to this. Let's say I'm looking through my photos collection and decide I want to add this photo right here to it. I can select it and I can hit the Share button and say I want to use iCloud Photo Sharing and there's that Test Share album I've created. I can tap on it right there and now it is added to it. So now if I go to Test Share I can see that fourth photo is there.
Also while I'm here I can select and then delete it. It is going to remove it from the Shared album. It doesn't delete it from my photos collection and I can get rid of it. So it is very easy to change this.
So iCloud Photo Sharing is very simple and very easy and quick to use. The down side to that is that there are not many options. For instance, there is no way to add captions to these or anything for anybody to read. They just see the photos. There is no way beyond these options to further customize it. For instance if you wanted to have it available on the web but only to certain people there is no option for that. They either have to be somebody invited and they view it through Photos or they can be publicly viewed by anybody that has this URL. 
So if you really want more options and more things that you can do of course there are other ways to share photos. You can select some photos and you can do all sorts of stuff. You can share on Facebook and put them up there. You can use Flicker. There is a lot of different options. Of course beyond the Photos app there are more options as well. So if you want tons of control and very specific things then iCloud Photo Sharing is not for you.
But if you want something quick and easy to be able to share with anybody or have a shared album that a group of people can add to then iCloud Photo Sharing is a great option.

Comments: 14 Responses to “Using iCloud Photo Sharing”

Richard24

9 years ago

I was watching your video on iCloud photo sharing. While uploading the photos for iCloud photo sharing does it upload the full size of the photo when using iCloud sharing. Example if I have a photo that is 4mb, does that mean it will upload the 4mb photo using iCloud photo sharing.

Gary Rosenzweig

Not sure. Naturally the web view is showing a lower resolution one, since it would be a waste to show the original on a screen like that. And if you are using iCloud Photo Library, then nothing really needs to be uploaded since the photo is already on the server in its original form. Not sure what happens if you are not using iCloud Photo Library but do use iCloud Photo Sharing. My guess would be a high resolution version, but not the original photo.

Wouter

How many MB or GB can you push to iCloud photo sharing?

You get 5GB for free, then up to 1TB depending on what you pay. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201238 if you are just using photo sharing (not iCloud Photo Library) then 5GB can be used to share thousands of photos.

Roberto

Great help. I've been stymied in trying to create and share an album to a public URL. If you select some pictures in Photos and then hit the share button to create a new shared folder there is no option to get a public URL! That's what I've been doing, and very frustrated. The trick, as you showed is to create the shared album, then add pictures, then later share the album at which point the option for a public URL appears. Brilliant!

Rob

I wish the Public Website wasn't so public - some of my family do not have Applecare and I'd like to be able to share albums just with them via their PCs. It feels just a little too exposed to do it that way though. Is there a simple way to share an album/website privately with non-Apple users (I assume using a non-Apple solution)?

There are many services that offer such a thing. Heck, you could do it with Facebook if you know how to work with its posting settings.
But the problem is that in order for a shared photo gallery to be private, it means that everyone has to have a login on that service. Otherwise, the service won't know who they are. For instance, if you use a service to share your gallery with 3 other people, then those three people need to sign up for it (IDs, passwords, etc). That's a tall order if you just want to show them a few photos.
Some sites may offer a password-protected gallery where you can then give everyone a password to view the gallery. I haven't looked into it, but I'm sure a search will turn up some you can try.

Jerry

Shutterfly allows passworded web pages with pictures, even video. Free. One password for all the people you send the link and password. The negative is they haven't supported Photos with a plug-in...yet? But uploading through the shutterfly website is pretty quick. Second comment, I use Photos on my iPad to share photos: select-share to iCloud - put in shared album of choice- post, that's it.

George

Are you able to create and share these albums on the IPad as well?

Currently, the Photos app on the iPad doesn't have this sharing feature.

Chris Guld

I can open photos on my iPad, select a picture, tap the share icon and select iCloud photo sharing. It looks to me to be the same thing you're talking about here. I see shared photo albums.

Gordon

In the photos app you can comment on a photo, this comment will then appear in the iCloud Photo sharing website for all to see

Art

How do you send an invitation from an iPad for an iMovie you send to iCloud Photo Sharing?

Same way you do it with photos. If you create the shared album from inside iMovie, then you get a prompt during that process to add people to share the new album. If not, then you simply go to the Photos app, go to Shared, then go into the shared album. Then tap on the People button at the top to add more people to the shared album.

Comments Closed.

Using iCloud Photo Sharing

Comments: 14 Responses to “Using iCloud Photo Sharing”

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