Multiple iCloud Users, Single Aperture Library - Photostream Question

Aperture is designed as a single user app, Photostreams likewise are designed for a single user to sync their images across multiple devices (Note I am talking about the regular stream not any shared streams).

So what will happen if your wife enables the photostream when she has the shared library open? That's a real good question. 😁

Given how the programs are designed it might totally mess things up or it just might work. The best thing you can do is set up a test library (or even better if you have the room duplicate the current library), and then have both yourself and your wife use it as you would like. If it works in the test library fine. If not you saved your actual library.

Sorry I can;t give you a definite answer but this stuff is all so new and constantly changing it really hasn;t been written up yet. Post back the results I'm sure this question will come up more as time goes by.

regards

Note with the release of IOS 7 it is now possible for shared streams to be written to not just by the owner of the stream but also by anyone subscribed to it. At this point however Aperture and iPhoto both are unaware of this and will not allow you to write to a subscribed shared stream or see images added to the shared stream by other then the owner.

However it is safe to assume that if Apple added this capability to shared streams then eventually Aperture and iPhoto will be able to make use of it. What that happens it might give you and your wife an alternate way to accomplish this.

I access it locally and she accesses it via a hard-wired Ethernet connection in our home network. Only one of us accesses the library at any one time, and so far this setup has worked well to combine photos taken from each of our cameras via our own respective iMacs.

I am a bit concerned about this. You may have been lucky sofar. Apple advises against network access to Aperture libraries. See: Aperture: Use locally mounted Mac OS X Extended volumes for your Aperture library

In addition to Frank's recommendation to try this on a shared test library - have a look at the Photo Stream FAQ: iCloud: Photo Stream FAQ

There is no documentation at all about what will happen, when you access one Aperture library alternately from two different Apple IDs.

The only things I am certain of, based on the few things that have been published about how Photo Stream works:

• On each mac only one Aperture/iPhoto Library can be enabled for the Photo Stream.
• Using Photo Stream in a different photo library will disable the stream in the other library.
• But using one library with two different Apple IDs is not documented.

If one user were to switch between two AppleIDs on the same library, it would reset the Photo Stream each time the AppleID was changed, but if two users with different IDs open the library, probably no reset will happen. it is totally unclear, how the autoimport projects will be handled. My bet is, tat aperture will happily mix the autoimports from your photo stream and your wifes.

But try it on a sample library, as Frank recommended and let us know 😝

It might be safer, to import your wife's Photo Stream into a separate Aperture library in her account, move her Photo Stream imports to a separate folder in her library and to merge her Aperture library occasionally into the main Aperture library.

Regards

Léonie

Just stumbled across this because I had the same question. By chance I ended up with the solution. I have my Aperture library on an external hard drive connected via Thunderbolt to my iMac. That turns out to be the easiest way to have two user accounts access the same Aperture library (albeit not at the same time). It also happens to allow you to have iCloud Photostream setup in each instance of Aperture and they will both import pictures into the library when the app is opened in the respective user accounts. I've been using it this way for a week and it seems to be working just as expected.

Hope that helps.