Photographs from 3 different iPhones into one iPhoto library?

Thanks for this very helpful suggestion. I've been struggling to find a simple solution to having two Apple IDs (mine and my wife's) and wanting to automatically import pictures in the same photo library. Does this solution still work with Photos? Did anyone else try it?

To share your photo library, you need to move the library to a volume where ownership is ignored.

The link is clear - you need to put the library onto a separate volume where the ownership can be ignored. The volume can be an external drive or a separate partition on your Mac. Do not use the drive where you keep your Time Machine backups. The "ignore ownership" flag If you did not create a second partition when you set up your Mac, get yourself an external drive. Adding a partition to your running system is risky. And photo libraries need a lot of storage and tend to grow. Start with an external drive with several TB of storage and you will not continually have to bother with problems of running out of storage, i.e. when two persons are trying to save the photos.

A Sparse Image can be created with Disk Utility. But it is tricky to handle. You will have to ensure that it will be mounted, as soon as you log in and before you open iPhoto.

No. Best to ask on the Photos forum here:

Photos for Mac

Create thread and give a full description of the issue.

Photo Stream currently only links a single Apple ID per iPhoto Library.

The only way if for all to use the same Apple ID for iCloud

LN

The only way to do this is to share your iPhoto library across multiple users on your mac.

Read this Apple support article for instructions on how to do so:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1198?viewlocale=en_US

You, your wife and daughter will all need to user separate user account on your Mac, then each person can sync their iOS device with iPhoto through Photo Stream as normal. As long as the library is shared as detailed in the link above photos imported from each Photo Stream are accessible for every user.

My wife and I have been using iPhoto like this for years and have also been using it with Photo Stream since it launched.

It's important you follow all instructions exactly or sharing will not work: ensure the drive or partition is shared, permissions are ignored and the everybody user is set to Read and Write not just Read. Also always make sure you close iPhoto before switching users otherwise the library will be locked. All of this is explained in the link above.

The only glitch I've noticed is when using automatic importing of Photo Stream photos into the iPhoto library, if you have deleted images from Photo Stream on your iOS device they still get imported into an event in iPhoto, even though they are NOT in the Photo Stream. To get round this either don't delete anything from Photo Stream on your iOS device (as you'll just have to delete it again in iPhoto OR turn of automatic importing of Photo Stream photos in iPhoto. To manually import you click on the Photo Stream option in the left menu bar, select all photos, right click and select import.

To be honest the glitch above might not be linked to shared iPhoto libraries and may just be a Photo Stream glitch in general but as I have always used a shared iPhoto library with Photo Stream I have no way of knowing, all I know is no one else seems to have the problem and shared libraries seems to be a feature not many people know about.

Hope this helps?

Sorry, yes you will need iPhoto 11.

In iPhoto settings you can set your libraries as shared, if you keep iPhoto open and use fast user switching you may be able to see each others library's.

I've never tested that so if it doesn't work you can hold option when opening iPhoto and navigate to another users iPhoto library in their photos folder to open it. Each user might have to give the other users read only permissions first.

That way each person can sync to their own library and you can see each others without amalgamating the libraries into one.

Hi there,

Just want to double check, Photo Stream is suppose to work as per normal with the Apple ID for each individual user?

My wife and I have been using shared iPhoto library as described in the article for years without any major issue. But I seem to remember if we each enable the Photo Stream under our own account, the Photo Stream will reset itself and sync the Photo Stream each time we switch between user and launch iPhoto. It won't re-import the photos into the library again if the photos had already been imported, but its a time consuming process to re-sync.

I only tested this out when Photo Stream was first launched, and then disabled Photo Steeam for my wifes's account to avoid the syncing (she still import the photos by plugging the iPhone to the computer).

Has things been changed to allow multiple Photo Tream to work with a shared iPhoto Library?

Thanks

Hello,

there is something I'm doing wrong I guess. Can you see the pictures imported by the rests of the user's photostream? I see the pictures in the preview window, but when I click on them I just see a big "!" instead.

I would love to know what I am doing wrong.

thanks

OMG, I've seen something here (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1198) that has stricken me... If I want to put my iPhoto Library on /users/shared, do I really have to create a disk image??? this can't be true!!! Right now I have my iPhoto Library in my /user/shared but not inside a disk image... Seriously, do I have to create a disk image? Man, is this what apple calls "it just works"? Am I supposed to have my wife mount a disk image before she uses iPhoto?? come on!!!

... and, do I have to foresee how big my library may get?? Apple, you've got to be kidding me!

No you don't have to move your Library to a Disk Image. But it should be on a volume that can be set to ignore permissions. We have no idea what your wife is capable of so probably best not to comment. Not heard of a Sparse Disk Image?

Thanks a lot Terence, I really appreciate your response... but that's what the article I indicated seems to suggest. As a matter of fact, I can't seem to be able to set the field "ignore ownership on this volume" on my current iPhoto Library which is, and has been for several months already, stored in /users/Shared. And I have this issue with my wife's photostream pictures not being displayed when I open iPhoto (same for her with my photostream pictures).

How do I go about this then?