Things to consider when setting up the Shared iCloud Photos Library in Photo 8 on Ventura
Photos 8 has a great new feature, the iCloud Shared user Library: macOS Ventura - New Features - Apple
We can invite up to five people to share a Photos Library in iCloud.
iCloud Shared Photo Library
Share photos and videos seamlessly with up to five other people, so everyone can collaborate on the family’s collection and enjoy more complete memories. With iCloud Shared Photo Library, family memories are in one place for everyone to enjoy at any time, even if you’re not the one who snapped the shot or edited the photo.
Smart ways to share
Choose what to include based on a start date or the people in the photos. Once the Shared Photo Library is set up, you can share photos manually or get smart suggestions for adding photos to the shared library in a new For Your Shared Library sidebar item.
Edits and changes sync everywhere
Everyone has equal permissions for adding, editing, and deleting photos in the shared library. Favorites, captions, and keywords sync too, so if one person organizes the collection, everyone benefits.
The shared library will be shared from our iCloud Photos Library. When we are working with this library, we can select to view our personal library, or the shared library, or both.
The duplicate detection is working across both the personal and the shared library and only available, when we are viewing both libraries.
The person, who sets up the shared iCloud library will have to provide the storage for shared photos.
When we share a photo, it will be removed from our personal library and moved to the shared library., so sharing a photo will not create duplicates when viewing both libraries.
If we use the smart setup and share all photos at once, our personal iCloud Photos Library will be empty.
One draw-back: When we share a library, we are sharing the photos with all adjustments applied, but we are not sharing the structure. The people we invite will neither see the albums nor the folders, just a flat list of photos.
And the shared iCloud Photos Library is currently only available on devices with macOS 13 Ventura and iOS 16.1.
If you move your iCloud Photos Library completely to the Shared iCloud Photos Library, you will no longer be seeing your photos on your devices with an older system version.