Another Photo Stream Question

[rainbowcat]

Stupid question - with the death of Photo Stream, if you don't immediately put a photo into an album, is it grabbed into iCloud? I don't have an iCloud account beyond using it for Messages and such, and I don't want one. I've read Apple's support articles, but I'm still not sure. Like I said - stupid question!

 

[MacInWin]

Ian is our expert, but as I understand it, if you take a photo on the iPhone, it goes into Photos on the iPhone. If you have Photos set to sync through iCloud, it would then be synced to your iCloud account version of Photos and then down to any other devices set to sync Photos through iCloud. Given what you said, if ALL you have set to sync is Messages, then nothing will happen to your new pictures unless you manually move them to your Mac. You can do that through Image Capture and maybe through Finder, but it won't happen automatically like it did in PhotoStream.

EDIT: BTW, just taking a picture puts it in an album. You don't need to do anything for that to happen. The album will be "All Photos" by default.

 

[rainbowcat]

Ian is our expert, but as I understand it, if you take a photo on the iPhone, it goes into Photos on the iPhone. If you have Photos set to sync through iCloud, it would then be synced to your iCloud account version of Photos and then down to any other devices set to sync Photos through iCloud. Given what you said, if ALL you have set to sync is Messages, then nothing will happen to your new pictures unless you manually move them to your Mac. You can do that through Image Capture and maybe through Finder, but it won't happen automatically like it did in PhotoStream.

EDIT: BTW, just taking a picture puts it in an album. You don't need to do anything for that to happen. The album will be "All Photos" by default.

Thank you!

 

[IWT]

I concur with everything Jake said.

Apple is encouraging people to use "iCloud Photos" instead.

"Instead" is a misnomer in this instance. With My Photo Stream, you could arrange things such that it automatically synced between iPhone and the Photos app on your Mac - in such a way that you could subsequently discard any pictures on your iPhone without losing any pictures on the Mac.

I have done that that for years.

iCloud Photos is really very different. It syncs your pictures from iPhone to Mac, BUT, add or delete a picture on the iPhone and it will add or delete that picture on the Mac - and vice versa.

I have 20K pics and videos in my Mac's Photos Library. I do NOT want 20K pics of the same on my iPhone!!
Apart from the difficulties of sorting this amount of data, many iPhones do not have enough storage space!
So, I have, as Jake said, to manually import pics & videos from my iPhone to my Mac.

You will need some form of BU for your Mac's pics/videos. You could pay for iCloud Storage by ticking iCloud Photos within the Preferences section of the Photos app - OR - use Time Machine and/or a cloned BU (I use both)

Another difference between My Photo Stream and iCloud Photos is that with iCloud Photos, they are stored in the Cloud at your expense! So if you have 20 thousand pics/videos like me, it will cost you to keep them in iCloud. Granted, the charges are not exorbitant - £$2-49/month for 200GB of iCloud storage - that is for ALL things stored in iCloud, not just your pics/videos.

So, I agree entirely with what Jake said - use Image Capture (Free app in Finder > Applications) to transfer the pics etc to your Photos Library (or to anywhere on your Mac for that matter).

Lastly: Image Capture is a fast and user-friendly way of deleting large numbers of pics/videos FROM your iPhone should that be necessary. The trick is to attach the iPhone to the Mac by cable, identify the pics/videos by clicking on the iPhone on the left. Now, Click on the top picture to highlight it.

Then - if you want to delete ALL your pics/videos - use Command A to select them all. Then RIGHT Click on any pic and choose Delete and All. This saves tons of time if you try to do it manually.

If you only want to delete SOME pics/videos, then hold down the Command key and scroll through your collection with the mouse and Left Click on each one you want to delete. When finished, Right Click on any one and, again choose Delete.

HTH - but actually Jake said most of this in his post.

Ian

 

[rainbowcat]

Exactly! Now I'll have to Air Drop everything and I'm worried about losing photos.

 

[MacInWin]

Exactly! Now I'll have to Air Drop everything and I'm worried about losing photos.

Nothing in what we have said dictates Air Drop. And even if Air Drop fails, the image is still on the sending device.

Please don't overthink this. Just use a USB cable to the phone and Finder or Image Capture to copy images from the iPhone to the Mac. No need for Air Drop, unless you want to do it that way.

 

[rainbowcat]

Nothing in what we have said dictates Air Drop. And even if Air Drop fails, the image is still on the sending device.

Please don't overthink this. Just use a USB cable to the phone and Finder or Image Capture to copy images from the iPhone to the Mac. No need for Air Drop, unless you want to do it that way.

I like Air Drop because I send things to all my Mac devices at once. Appreciate all the help and advice here!

 

[ferrarr]

I like Air Drop because I send things to all my Mac devices at once. Appreciate all the help and advice here!

That's exactly what iCloud does. You just prefer the manual method.

 

[rainbowcat]

That's exactly what iCloud does. You just prefer the manual method.

But Air Drop is free! At least until Apple kills that off too...

 

[MacInWin]

You get 5Gb of iCloud storage free. Do you need more than that? It's not terribly expensive to add more.

 

[rainbowcat]

You get 5Gb of iCloud storage free. Do you need more than that? It's not terribly expensive to add more.

I have over 20G of photos, and yes iCloud is cheap, but Photo Stream was free, so for me it's Air Drop until they kill that off too, and I'm sure that will happen!

 

[ferrarr]

and I'm sure that will happen!

It will, as we advance, so does technology.