limits of iCloud photo stream

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Bao Lei Author

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limits of iCloud photo stream

I'm just wondering about how many photos can be stored in shared photo streams and for how long.

I'm looking at this page:

http://www.apple.com/icloud/features/photo-stream.html

For photo stream it says a maximum of 1000 photos can be saved and each new photo is stored for 30 days.

But when it comes to shared photo stream, it only says "Share as much as you like: Shared Photo Streams don’t count against your iCloud storage", which sounds like limitless.

So the question is: does photos in shared streams must also be in photo streams? What if a photo is in both personal stream and a shared stream, and it has stayed for 31 days, does it disappear in both streams?

If shared photostream follows the same rotation rule as personal photo stream, is there a way to permanently store a smaller selections of important photos with iCloud?

iPhone 4S, iOS 6, MacBook 1

Posted on Sep 23, 2012 1:41 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 23, 2012 1:47 PM in response to Bao Lei

As far as I know, there is no timely restriction for shared photo streams (My own shared photo stream, which I created during the beta phase in july is still available). I guess that they will stay until you manually delete them. (To play it safe I would recommend to safe the pictures additionally on your Mac/PC).

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Answer 2

Bao Lei Author

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Sep 23, 2012 2:01 PM in response to david.menzel

Yeah I also did some experiements. I added a photo to a shared photo stream, and deleted it from my person photo stream and the device, and then I go to the shared stream and the photo is still there.

This is just too good to be true: if there's no timely restriction and doesn't count against the 1000 limit of photo stream, it is just a free unlimited storage+publishing solution (with beautiful web interface, comments/like features).. So I guess I'll just follow your suggestion and save all pictures additionally on a computer.

But I really hope Apple can come up with some offical/clear/unambiguous documentation on the deleting rules.

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Answer 3

Raffster

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Sep 29, 2012 9:35 PM in response to Bao Lei

Be aware that as far as I can tell, even if uploaded to the shared photo stream from a Mac in Aperture or iPhoto, pictures in Shared Photo Streams are all "optimized for mobile device" resolution. This means that your 8mp photos from your iPhone 4S or 5 will be less than half the quality at 3.1mp in the shared Photo Stream. This is currently NOT an ideal way to back up these photos.

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