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Hi,
If someone adds a photo to a shared album and then deletes it from their own device, will it also be removed from a shared album? Would make sense because otherwise shared albums would be infinite free storage albums for all your photos, but when I added a photo to one and then deleted from my own library, it remained in the shared album.
Shared albums are not infinite free storage. There are limits on the number of albums and the number of items in the albums, see: My Photo Stream and Shared Albums limits - Apple Support
But worse, the photos on the shared album are just for viewing. You will lose metadata, when sharing photos this way, and you lose quality. You can only share smaller version, not larger than 2048 pixel at the longest edge. If the quality of your photos is important for you, do not use shared albums to save them or to transfer them to other devices. How to share albums in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac - Apple Support
See the paragraph "File types that you can use in Shared Albums":
" When shared, photos are reduced to 2048 pixels on the long edge, except panoramic photos, which can be up to 5400 pixels wide. You can share GIFs that are 100MB or smaller. ..... Shared Albums upload a copy of your data. Downloaded content may not contain the same information as the original."
But to answer your original question: The shared albums are holding copy of the photo. You can delete the original from your Photos library and the photo will still be in the shared album. But I would never do that, because all you will have left is a smaller version, without a location, a caption or title, and possible the wrong date.
Shared albums are not infinite free storage. There are limits on the number of albums and the number of items in the albums, see: My Photo Stream and Shared Albums limits - Apple Support
But worse, the photos on the shared album are just for viewing. You will lose metadata, when sharing photos this way, and you lose quality. You can only share smaller version, not larger than 2048 pixel at the longest edge. If the quality of your photos is important for you, do not use shared albums to save them or to transfer them to other devices. How to share albums in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac - Apple Support
See the paragraph "File types that you can use in Shared Albums":
" When shared, photos are reduced to 2048 pixels on the long edge, except panoramic photos, which can be up to 5400 pixels wide. You can share GIFs that are 100MB or smaller. ..... Shared Albums upload a copy of your data. Downloaded content may not contain the same information as the original."
But to answer your original question: The shared albums are holding copy of the photo. You can delete the original from your Photos library and the photo will still be in the shared album. But I would never do that, because all you will have left is a smaller version, without a location, a caption or title, and possible the wrong date.
Thank you for this very comprehensive reply! We’re planning on making a shared wallpapers album, and they don’t need to be bigger than 2048px on the longest side, so doesn’t the metadata matter.
In this case, I suppose it’d be fine and we might not even need to keep the original files in our own libraries, if a Shared Album is already holding a copy of it. Not gonna do with my personal photos, no, but wallpapers would be fine it seems.
Yes, for such a purpose - a shared album for a specific project - it will be fine.
Shared Albums
