Using Shared Albums for long term, no limits, archiving of photos

Apple has replaced the Shared albums by the Shared iCloud Photos Library - I second muguy's recommendation.

But the Shared library has a long way to go. Currently we cannot even share albums in the Shared iCloud Library, and still not share folders. So it will not solve your main concern. See the first paragraph: How to use iCloud Shared Photo Library - Apple Support

iCloud Shared Photo Library lets you share photos and videos seamlessly with up to five other people, so everyone can collaborate on the collection and enjoy more complete memories. Learn how to set up and use a Shared Library.

But the big improvement is, that we can share all items from our iCloud Photos Library, in the original quality and with all metadata, and we can work together on the photos and videos. When we share an item, the others can add adjustments to it or change the metadata, and these changes will sync back to our library.

But we cannot yet share the structure of our Photos Library.

When we share photos and videos, we will still be seeing them in their original albums and folders, but the others will just see a flat collection of shared items and need to recreate the structure, very daunting. I am adding the names of the albums as a keyword to the shared items to make it easier to recreate the albums.

If you want to set up the shared library, you have to discuss this with people you want to share the library with. You have to make a plan, how you will be using the library. You can only share the photos from your iCloud Photos Library. This is the most most important library we have, because it is also the System Photos Library and the library we are seeing in the Media Browser in other apps. The photos we share will be removed from our iCloud Photos Library to the shared library - we can still view them, after we shave shared them, but others are free to change them. We will want to share our best photos, but sharing them will put them at the mercy of our sharing partners. And we will certainly want to have the shared library flooded by dumping each and every photo and videos into the shared library right from the camera. Our best photos would be drowned in a flood of garbage. And the person setting g up the shared library will have to pay for the cloud storage used for the shared library. All subscribers will need to be considerate and understand what they are doing, when they change team in the shared library or add and remove items.

And if you have devices with older system versions, you will no longer be able to see the photos you have shared to the Shared iCloud Photos Library on these older devices. All subscribers will need iOS16, iPadOS 16, or macOS 13 on all devices, where they want to access the photos from the Shared library in Photos.

Shared albums do not store the full sized image files. This is from the Apple document: How to use Shared Albums in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac - Apple Support

When shared, photos are reduced to 2048 pixels on the long edge.

So if you want archival storage you'll need to get a local external drive, formatted for Macs, an store the original version of each photo on it. You can export all of the photos at one time as originals and use the subforlder format Moment Name. This will create a folder for each group by date and location in the folder name.

You may wish to use the shared library feature so that up to 5 other users can access the entire library. How to use iCloud Shared Photo Library - Apple Support It seems to be a good solution for what you want to do, especially if your other users use Macs so that the metadata and captions are easily shared using the same software.

However, a true archival digital solution is not available from Apple. You can still organize decades of pictures in Photos, burn those to disc, and maintain a digital record (provided that you have enough space in iCloud), but you may wish to investigate more robust solutions if you intend to keep a digital archive for posterity. Be aware, some solutions get very pricey, very quickly. It's also very difficult to be able to future-proof digital collections.

You may also want to look into what the Library of Congress has to say about personal digital preservation: https://blogs.loc.gov/thesignal/2013/06/what-people-are-asking-about-personal-digital-archiving/ I'm sure there have been updates as this blog post is 10 years old.

Given how often queries about archiving turn up on here, it's a lot less of an issue than you might imagine. Frankly, most folks give no consideration to it at all.

As for the longevity of any app or service: When services like these end they don't just suddenly switch off one day. There is a period when material can be retrieved from the service. More often, the service is then sold, so there can be a continuity. Flickr, for instance, was bought by Yahoo from the original founders, and is now on its third owner, when Yahoo went belly up. As for Apple being around... well probably, but can you be sure they'll have their current interest in photography? After all, they killed off Aperture 7 years ago. They killed off the printing services 4years ago... Personally I'd trust an organisation whose raison d'être is photography more than one for whole it's a "feature" to help sell hardware.

The truth is archiving, rather than being a destination - there, that's all my images safe and available for ever - is a process, and it need continuing monitoring for both opportunities (better ways to save and share) and risks (demise of services, obsolescence of technologies).

Yer_Man wrote:

Personally I'd trust an organisation whose raison d'être is photography more than one for whole it's a "feature" to help sell hardware.

But Apple does have a serious interest is photography: the iPhone. They wouldn't be selling many iPhones if they didn't have a way to manage the iPhone's output, a.k.a. photos.

Granted they nay not be as professionally orientated as they are gearing their market to the general consumer and not professional photographers.

But Apple does have a serious interest is photography: the iPhone. They wouldn't be selling many iPhones if they didn't have a way to manage the iPhone's output, a.k.a. photos.

This is very true - for now. But all things must pass and I wonder about 10/15/20 years hence and Apple have lost buckets of money of cars or VR headsets or something and one day the sell their phone division to... whoever :)

And hopefully none of that happens. But my key point is that archiving is an unfolding process rather than a one and done action.

Yer_Man wrote:

I wonder about 10/15/20 years hence and Apple have lost buckets of money of cars or VR headsets or something and one day the sell their phone division to... whoever :)

For many of us 15-20 years hence is out of the question. unfortunately.

That's a job for Photo Sharing sites like Flickr or SmugMug.

Unlikely things happen all the time... :)