Apple’s iCloud Photo Library

With Apple’s announcement of discontinuing Aperture and iPhoto for Mac, the iCloud Photo Library stores which was first introduced during WWDC, for photos and videos that a user takes in iCloud, will be available on iPhone, iPad, iPod touch as well as Macs through iCloud.com. iCloudPhoto Library beta is made available with iOS 8.1, a new iCloud Photos app, available to all users within iCloud.com.

This will function with the Photos app which Apple is developing for Mac and is probably expected to come in early this coming year. Till iCloud Photo Library comes out of beta with proper OS X counterpart, next year, the prevailing photo experience on iOS as well as the Mac would be confusing and users have the liberty of turning on iCloud Photo Library – Beta, though they also have the option to keep Photo Stream which is likely to disappear at some point of time somewhere next year.

Should the user opt to leave iCloud Photo Library off, the old Photo Stream paradigm would stay in place which will save the last 30 days of photos to the cloud or atleast the last 1000 pictures, whichever would be more, that may not have been counted against iCloud storage and Photo Stream may have not saved videos.

Photo Stream – Compatibility on all Devices

The advantage of Photo Stream is its compatibility on all devices which includes Mac and any new photo that may have been taken on iPhone or iPad, would show up in the Photo Stream in iPhoto, Aperture or any other IOS devices that are associated with the account.

 Its limit is 1000 photo/30 day though if one remembers to open iPhoto and enable Photo Stream syncing;all the photos tend to get saved on the Mac and not just the previous 30 days. The present form of iCloud Photo Library would save all the photos as well as the videos to the cloud and is limited only by the current available iCloud storage.

Photos would tend to sync between the iOS device such as Photo Stream though will not show up in iPhoto or Aperture on the Mac and users could access their iCloud Photo library through the web and upload photos from the web interface. To enable iCloud Photo library, users could go to the Settings app on the iOS device and opt for iCloud and then tap on the Photos section beneath the iCloud Drive in the list.

Full Quality of Photo Saved to the Cloud/Device

Before enabling iCloud Photo Library, note that it is presently a beta product. Then move the top slider, enable iCloud Photo, which will update the photo library on the device thatwill take a few minutes. When the same in enabled, users could choose to have the full quality photo saved to the cloud as well as an optimized version kept on the device for preservation of space.

Should one continue to use Photo Stream on a Mac, enable `Upload to My Photo Stream’, on the menu and the Photo Stream can be viewed on the device though it will be available in iPhoto and Aperture on Mac. Once iCloud Photo Library is enabled, the Photos app on iOS device will tend to appear in a different manner.