Q: new Photos app sharing library across users

True... but at this point I am more worried about accessing the family Photo Library than the the Fotostream, etc.

What I still have not worked out how to access that Photo Library in iTunes, I only get the  foggy Library icon (see below)

I can't help you with the iTunes problem, but with regard to SparseBundles, you need to make absolutely sure you back that thing up regularly.  Otherwise...

Fixing corrupt sparsebundle

Again, Apple needs to come up with a better solution for us (which doesn't require paying for cloud space).  All the workarounds we are talking about are merely "hacks."

I have made some progress: The following did the trick in iTunes:

Designate a System Photo Library in Photos - Apple Support

I seem to be fine now (i.e. share the Photos Library across users on one Mac and also use it in different iTunesaccounts).

I'm making some progress with my new test environment. My issue is not just sharing libraries between users on the same mac but building a server that share photos/audio and movies with multiple macs, users and ATVs. The approach for each application is going to be different as iTunes libraries are not structured in the same way as Photo libraries.

My current test environment involves a dedicated iTunes server (an old mac mini) that acts as a homeshare source for audio/video/photos. This implies that the server has a reliable access to the photo library for homesharing. For the purpose of this message, consider the iTunes and photo libraries are locally stored on the server.

To make that photo library visible on other macs/users iCloud looks OK but expensive. Remote access to a shared disk is easy to set up but there are issues with simultaneous access to the same files and interference with iTunes homesharing. So to imitate iCloud, I've set up my own personal cloud using my NAS. This allows three things: synchonization of photo library content across multiple macs, a pseudo-backup on the nas in case of mac failure, automatic backups to another external disk.

In practice, to avoid any path issues I've a created a folder on each Mac called //Users/shared/cloudstation in which the photo library will be saved as the system library. I've been able to edit a picture on one Mac, the cloud updates the library on the server and homesharing is updated  for the ATVs.

Caveat 1 is when two people EDIT the phto library at the same time as the 'cloud' version will be saved with the latest saved version. In most cases the photos app is opened for viewing/editing and then closed. I'll perform a few tests to be convinced of the solution before I start trialing with large libraries.

Caveat 2 is that the photos app needs to be the same on all macs or there may be library structure issues.

A decent apple server for home management of my media would be a lot easier. Even if icloud prices drop, I don't like the idea of storing of my private media on the web.

No real success with the new photos app compared to iphoto libraries. I'm hitting permission issues. I'll keep testing and come back.

All this seems to be blocked by the itunes itself once homesharing is active. Once homesharing is active on my itunes server, a process called com.apple.MediaLibraryService is launched. This appears to have the same effect as "launching" the Photo.app as the library can't be opened remotely. It probably blocks access critical files for any mac-to-mac sync (except iCloud sync). So in my case, running a headless mac mini as a round the clock homeshare (music+videos+photos) blocks access to the library doesn't look good. This looks like regular library duplication!

I got it to work once by moving the Photos Library into the "Shared" folder in the Users folder.  I also had to change permissions to ensure my wife and I both had Read & Write capability.  I logged back into her User account, reassigned her Photos app to source the content from the library I moved to the Shared folder...and what do you know, it worked!

Then...the next time I logged into my User account, pulled up Photos, it told me it needed to repair my library. "Sure, why not?" I thought...so it repaired it.  Now, when I log back into my wife's User account, pull up Photos...NOTHING!!!   I also can't seem to recreate the elusive "shared" library that I thought I had figured out. 

JDW1 - you're exactly right - there seems to be no good solution (or at least not one Apple or others are willing to share) for accessing the same Photos library, between two users, on the same Mac...without using iCloud or an external hard drive.  Seriously...why is this so hard to do?

I have the same issue. The iPhoto way of sharing 1 photo's library among different users on the same Mac does not work with the new Photo app. With this post I hope to add to the weight of this question so that an update becomes of the Photo app comes available to enable this.

Apple has a name to make things simple, but sharing photo's among different users was a challenge for less OS X skilled users and has now turned into a nightmare except when you want to put down $s to do so via iCloud. Please Apple, set this straight for your loyal customer base ... this should be a simple setting or at least enable the old iPhoto method.

Hi everyone,

I was also extremely frustrated by this and fully agree with Rufulo and JDW1!

Maybe I found a way to do it: just completed the process and it looks ok, if you do the same maybe we can have some testing over a few days.

Here's how:

1) go to disk utilities and create a new partition big enough to store your photo library (of course you need to have enough space, and the process could take more than one hour)

2) when done, follow the same hatred steps described by Apple for external drives to be used for photos: I'm referring to the read/write permissions and the "ignore ownership" flag

3) place in this new partition the photo library

4) for all users, start photo with alt button to choose the library to open and select the one from the new partition

5) from photo app preferences, be sure you define this library as the system one

I have done the sequence above and it is now working like charm, no permissions to be rebuilt and 100% control by each users (of course, not concurrent). Basically this is the behavior I was expecting by the "shared" folder but I always got permissions issue.

The difficulty you could have is copying the library, since it will duplicate the needed space until you can delete the original one, but it is just a matter of disk space. Then of course you'll need to keep an eye on the partition's size since your photo library will grow and reach its limit, but if you create it with some margin it should not be a problem very soon (and, anyway, increasing the size of the partition is very easy, luckily it's not like on Windows).

Let me know if this works also for you!

Regards,

Francesco

Francesco,

Thank you for the information.  Unfortunately this doesn't work for me.  I realize now in re-reading my original post that I said I'd put my library on an external drive.  This is not true.  Long ago I partitioned off a portion of our main drive to do this very thing you've suggest with my original iPhoto library so that it could be shared.

When attempting to choose the new Photos library on the partition with "ignored permissions" I still get this error

As a result I am unable to get to the step where I set this as the system library.

-Jeff

Hi Jeff,

this is weird but assuming we are on the same Yosemite and Photo version, it should just be a matter of config so we are going to solve it!

Below you can find my resulting permissions on the partition (left) and the library in its root (right); are yours the same?

(everything is in Italian but placeholders are the same, "Lettura e scrittura" means "Read and write" while "Ignora proprietari..." is the good old "Ignore ownership")

Regards,

Francesco

Alright - SUCCESS!

Francesco's post helped me revisit this setup to see if I could fix something.  I *think* the root of the problem is how OS X is handling permissions - even on volumes that are marked "ignore ownership on this volume".  Here are screenshots of my partition and Photo library before:

You'll notice that not only are the permissions for the Photo's Library duplicated, in contrast with Francesco's permissions, "everyone" on my disk has Read only permissions.

Again - you'd think it shouldn't matter if it's set to ignore permissions, but I recalled another post here from years gone by that talked about a similar problem.

Ignore ownership does not seem to work on local volume

I'd tried that solution in terminal, and no improvement (and it's likely the cause of the duplicate staff permission entry).  So here's what *DID* work:

1) UNLOCK the drive by clicking on the lock in the lower right hand corner and entering my admin password

2) UNCHECK the "Ignore ownership on this volume" - I confirmed that Permissions via Terminal "sudo vsdbutil -c /Volumes/Repository/" are enabled

3) CLICK on "everyone" and set permissions to "Read & Write"

4) CLICK on the wheel/gear icon and "Apply to enclosed items"

5) CHECK "Ignore ownership on this volume"

Here's the result:

6) Make sure Photos app is closed on my user and ...

7) Switch to my wife's User (we use fast user switching)

This next part differs from Francesco's instructions because I (like others) need a solution to the following scenario:

- We have 4 members in the household right now who have separate Apple IDs

- I'm the "Organizer" under iCloud Family Share

- I've upgraded my iCloud to give me room enough to enable the "iCloud Photo Library"

- I'd like my wife and our kids iPhones/iPads to still upload photos via My Photo Stream under their user to the [shared] Photo Library on our Mac

- I want to then have all this sync via my account to the cloud

So before continuing as per Francesco's instructions I did the following (it may not be necessary - but I wasn't taking a chance):

8) Open the Photos app under my wife's User (it defaulted to open /User/mywife/Pictures/Photo Library

9) Open Photos Preferences

10) Click on iCloud Photo Library

11) Make sure iCloud Photo Library is NOT checked

12) Make sure My Photo Stream IS checked

13) Close Photo app

The remainder as per Francesco:

14) Hold down "alt" while opening Photos app

15) Choose our [shared] Photos library on the separate partition

16) Open Photos Preferences

17) Under Library Location click on button "Use as System Photo Library"

16) Happily watch my wife's photo's download from her "My Photo Stream" account into the shared library !

After watching her recent photos make their way into the library, I shut down the app and repeated the process under my sons' user accounts.  Went back to my user account and could happily see their photos in the Library AND... then watch Photos app prepare the library to upload to iCloud.

Of course your mileage may vary, but thanks to Francesco for sleuthing the permissions issue (despite the fact that it *shouldn't* matter).  I'm still backing up the Photo library to my Time Machine external drive and run a cron job once weekly to dump it onto my Drobo, but it 's nice to know I've now got the Photo Library into the cloud - which makes my $3.99 to Apple each month for increased iCloud storage finally feel worthwhile.

One important note:

After testing this most of the day I have to report that there are some problems with my solution above and Fast User switching.  If my User account is active and the Photos app has been opened then in the background a couple of processes are launched presumably as a part of the iCloud Photo Library.  Looking in the console, it appears that when another user has "cloudphotosd, com.apple.CloudPhotosConfiguration, (and iTunes)" etc., running then I get the permission error when trying to open the Photo Library in another user.  The solution is to completely log out the User who last had Photos app open to kill all these processes or quit them one by one with Activity Monitor...

Pretty clunky, but I'm still glad that other users *can* open the library.

Good Luck!

Jeff, I'm happy we sorted things out!

Sorry for not including the iCloud part, I'm not using it but now that you showed the solution I know how I should (including full logout )

We should find a way to ask Apple to extend their official solution with our suggestions, it would help a lot of people!

Greetings from Italy,

Francesco

Francesco's post helped me to solve to a level that I am OK.

I have a new iMac with 1TB HDD, on which I have added 1 partition of roughly 140 GB. I have set to this "ignore ownership" and have given all 4 users on this Mac read&write permissions to this partition. Copied my 44GB Photo library to it, and all users can use the Photo library individually from their account. There is for sure a limitation regarding fast user switching, but I can live with it as it does not impact our usage very muchl.

So thank you for all the hints posted on this ... I have at least a workaround with which I am satisfied.