HT202786: iCloud Photo Sharing

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alexhenry2006

Q: Sharing full resolution photos

I share a lot of photos with my girlfriend, friends and family. I use to use shared photo streams until I realized that photos were re-scaled to a lower resolution. I have then used a mix of dropbox, google drive and air drop to share pictures as I cannot compromise on quality. However, when iCloud Drive and then Photos and iCloud Photo Sharing were released, I thought I would finally be able to go back to an Apple solution. However, I have just realized to my complete disbelief that iCloud Photo Sharing also re-scale photos to a lower resolution (max 2048 pixels on the long end). While I understand the limitation for people getting the service for free, I am a paying iCloud Drive customers and I cannot for the life of me understand why Apple, especially with its focus on retina display, doesn't offer a way to share full resolution pictures (which would likely use my iCloud Drive storage). I know I am not the only one bothered by this so does anyone has any idea how to fix this other than going back to using (better) cloud service like Dropbox or GDrive?

iPhoto '11, OS X Mavericks (10.9.3)

Posted on May 13, 2015 12:20 PM

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Q: Sharing full resolution photos

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  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN May 13, 2015 12:22 PM in response to alexhenry2006
    Level 10 (84,140 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 13, 2015 12:22 PM in response to alexhenry2006

    Very simple - e-mail  the photos at actual size with the highest quality

     

    LN

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie May 13, 2015 12:31 PM in response to alexhenry2006
    Level 10 (105,568 points)
    iLife
    May 13, 2015 12:31 PM in response to alexhenry2006

    If you are mailing your photos using your iCloud account, Mail will send them by Mail Drop. The mail will include a download link instead of the actual photo. The file size limit for Mail drop is 5 MB,  see:

         Mail Drop limits - Apple Support

  • by alexhenry2006,

    alexhenry2006 alexhenry2006 May 13, 2015 12:31 PM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (3 points)
    May 13, 2015 12:31 PM in response to LarryHN

    I'm sorry, but this is not very simple, it's extremely cumbersome. We are talking about hundreds if not thousands of pictures here, emailing would take forever and be beyond inconvenient. Both Dropbox and Google Drive allow all your photos taken with your phone to be automatically uploaded and then sharing is pain free and can be done in seconds.

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN May 13, 2015 12:34 PM in response to alexhenry2006
    Level 10 (84,140 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 13, 2015 12:34 PM in response to alexhenry2006
    Both Dropbox and Google Drive allow all your photos taken with your phone to be automatically uploaded and then sharing is pain free and can be done in seconds.

    So you were not looking for a solution - you already had one - not clear why your posted then

     

    Enjoy

     

    LN

  • by alexhenry2006,

    alexhenry2006 alexhenry2006 May 13, 2015 12:36 PM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (3 points)
    May 13, 2015 12:36 PM in response to LarryHN

    I am looking for a solution that involves staying within Apple's ecosystem. I am only talking about Dropbox and GDrive as an exemple

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN May 13, 2015 12:37 PM in response to alexhenry2006
    Level 10 (84,140 points)
    Photos for Mac
    May 13, 2015 12:37 PM in response to alexhenry2006

    and you got two - e-mail and Mail Drop

     

    LN

  • by alexhenry2006,

    alexhenry2006 alexhenry2006 May 13, 2015 12:39 PM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (3 points)
    May 13, 2015 12:39 PM in response to LarryHN

    I am sorry, but these are not solutions. iCloud Photo Sharing does it perfectly, except it won't allow you to use your own storage and share in full resolutions.

  • by Gary of Antioch,Helpful

    Gary of Antioch Gary of Antioch Jul 28, 2015 10:02 AM in response to alexhenry2006
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jul 28, 2015 10:02 AM in response to alexhenry2006

    @alexhenry2006 explains this issue in detail perfectly. I also wish full resolution photos were easier to access directly from iCloud Photo Sharing. Even if it there was an option to "save full resolution version to my phone" I'd be psyched. Then my parents could choose what pictures of my children they wanted to save for printing out photos, for example.

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Jul 28, 2015 10:24 AM in response to Gary of Antioch
    Level 10 (105,568 points)
    iLife
    Jul 28, 2015 10:24 AM in response to Gary of Antioch

    Then send feedback to Apple with a feature request to let the developers know. You can use this form: Apple - iCloud - Feedback

     

    Without feedback nothing will change.

     

    Right now, all you have to share full resolution photos is Mail or Maildrop, or third party solutions.

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Jul 28, 2015 10:42 AM in response to alexhenry2006
    Level 10 (140,898 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jul 28, 2015 10:42 AM in response to alexhenry2006

    A solution doesn't have to be an Apple method.  It can be anything that will do the job  intended.  Have you considered burning the original files to a DVD and mailing the DVD to the recipient?

    OTsig.png

  • by alexhenry2006,

    alexhenry2006 alexhenry2006 Jul 28, 2015 10:50 AM in response to Old Toad
    Level 1 (3 points)
    Jul 28, 2015 10:50 AM in response to Old Toad

    Seriously?? It's 2015, I don't know anyone who even had a dvd drive on their computer....

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Jul 28, 2015 10:56 AM in response to alexhenry2006
    Level 10 (140,898 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Jul 28, 2015 10:56 AM in response to alexhenry2006

    Ok, then substitute Flash Drive wherever I mentioned DVD disk. 

  • by léonie,

    léonie léonie Jul 28, 2015 11:18 AM in response to alexhenry2006
    Level 10 (105,568 points)
    iLife
    Jul 28, 2015 11:18 AM in response to alexhenry2006

    Seriously?? It's 2015, I don't know anyone who even had a dvd drive on their computer....

     

    I just bought an optical drive today because people insist on sending me DVDs but my new MacBookPro came without an optical drive 

  • by Gary of Antioch,

    Gary of Antioch Gary of Antioch Jul 28, 2015 11:33 AM in response to léonie
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jul 28, 2015 11:33 AM in response to léonie

    Right, I think this is the most appropriate answer. There is no solution to address the OP's question.

     

    From my POV, my concern about printing photos is likely moot since "2048 pixels on the long end" is probably sufficient up to 8"x10" photos, perhaps even larger. I feel like Apple has always been pretty darn good at limiting the scope of their solutions where it makes sense. iCloud Photo Sharing is such a great service IMHO. Such an easy to use, somewhat private (as in not-on-Facebook private, not post-Snowden private) photo stream sharing service that avoids the cumbersome sending of pics via text/email/DVD/flash and avoids MMS messaging costs to recipients. This assumes there's enough of your circle of family & friends that use iOS. Although, the public web site link sharing option appears to use random hashes, so perhaps they're hard enough to guess that you can keep the photos within a reasonable degree of separation. One reason Apple may reduce the image size is b/c they have to think of all of the recipients' devices. It's unclear to me exactly how photos are cycled through for each stream/album on each recipient's device, but I'm guessing storage is a major factor b/c of how many photos can be kept on the device at any one time. If all pics/videos were max resolution, the service might become less practical to the majority of users. It was actually the first question my mom asked me when I told her to set up and accept my shared stream; "This will not take up [all of] my memory, will it?"

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