Sharing full resolution photos

There is no issue to resolve - iCloud Photos sharing is not advertised to nor is it designed to share large resolution photos - it is designed to share max 2048 pixel on the on dimension photos and that is exactly what it does - iCloud Photo Sharing - Apple Support

LN

No- it is a free service and the maximums are set by Apple -- My Photo Stream and iCloud Photo Sharing limits - Apple Support -- iCloud Photo Sharing - Apple Support

Shared album storage limits

A shared album can hold up to 5000 photos and videos. If you reach your iCloud Photo Sharing limit, you need to delete some photos or videos before adding new ones. The photos and videos you share (and the comments or likes associated with those photos) stay in iCloud until you or the contributor delete them manually, or until you delete the shared album completely.

The photos and videos in your shared albums are kept in iCloud, but they don't count against your iCloud storage limit.

File types that you can use in iCloud Photo Sharing

iCloud Photo Sharing supports JPEG, RAW, PNG, GIF, TIFF, and MP4, as well as special formats you capture with your iPhone, like slo-mo, time-lapse, 4K videos, and Live Photos. You can even share your Memory videos. When shared, photos taken with standard point-and-shoot cameras, SLR cameras, or iOS devices have up to 2048 pixels on the long edge. Panoramic photos can be up to 5400 pixels wide.

iCloud Photo Sharing supports both MP4 and QuickTime video file types, and H.264 and MPEG-4 Video file formats. Videos can be up to five minutes in length and are delivered at up to 720p resolution.

You can't upload RAW photos to iCloud Photo Sharing on your Windows PC

THere are many ways to share full resolution photos including email, dropbox, maildrop, both using iCloud Photo Library with the same Apple ID and on and on and on - iCloud Photos sharing is not one of them and it is well documented how it works and why it works that way

LN

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Was this issue ever resolved? If I understand correctly, I too have the same question.

How can you share full resolution photos and videos from iPhone to iPhone remotely? From what I've seen, sending it via iMessage and sharing it via iCloud reduces the resolution and sending via Maildrop requires an Apple email address and still restricts you to 5GB. The only other Apple solution that I know of is Airdrop but we live in different areas so that won't do.

Am I missing anything?

What a shame!

I have a shared album of my newborn that I have shared with roughly 50 family members across the globe.

Tonight, for the first time, I tried taking a look at them on my new 10.5 iPad Pro.

Oh my!!!!! They looked horrible!!! As an avid photographer (Canon 80D), I do take pride in my photos. I cannot believe how horrendous they look on an iPad. Is Apple kidding?

I feel I need to find a better sharing service. What a shame. Apple always makes some weird decisions.

That is an excellent question.

I just bought another iPad Pro, and sure enough, those pics look pretty bad.

If I pinch-reduce the size of the photo to iPhone dimensions... of course, it looks fine.

But on the larger retina screen? Terrible!

Hey again!

This is very interesting, but I just checked the shared iCloud photo folder on my partner's ipad mini.

Photo Sharing was turned off, and I just turned it on.

The photos are a much better resolution!

Not perfect. But clearer.

I am going to try to turn off sharing on my new 10.5 ipad Pro and put it back. Very weird.

I also just checked my 12" MacBook and the photos are better as well.

They were all originally uploaded through my iphone 7 Plus.

I will try turning off Photo Sharing and putting it back. Maybe clearer photos will download!

Thanks for helping out with this!

LOL!...Definitely not expanded thumbnails.

And the problem was SOLVED, by disabling and re-enbabling photo sharing!

A thumbnail image expanded to the iPad's 2,224x1,886 screen would probably look like a jpeg compressed to 10%, or like a jagged, pixelated, pile of bricks.

This was more subtle, but still very noticeable.

I have a third 10.5 iPad to install today, and I am sure I could replicate the exact behaviour.

I may even take a screen shot to illustrate.

Very bizarre.

At least it's solved now!

I am noticing that a few apps are also not working well on the 10.5" IPad.

Ebay and Amazon, off the top of my head, seem to think that I am using an iPhone. I can't split the keyboard; it has a big iPhone-style keyboard; and the app looks like an enlarged iPhone app.

It's almost as if there is something in the new 10.5 iPad Pro that is "tricking" some software into thinking it's a low-res screen.

Could be totally unrelated, of course, but low-res photos... old school iPhone keyboard appearing... two world-class apps that behave as if they are iPhone apps (and yes, I downloaded the iPad versions).

I wonder if the 2224x1886 display is messing up some apps.

But "blurry photos" coupled with "Huge iPhone keyboards" in apps like Amazon and ebay lead me to believe that there may be something related going on here.

We shall see! I will write to Apple about the other issues, and I will also point out the iCloud resolution issues!

Thanks again!

One problem that still remains and is totally incomprehensible is the decrease of resolution when sharing photos via Airdrop. Why on earth has Apple decided Airdrop to work like this? It makes is unusable if you prefer good picture quality.

I have the same questions... Spoke with a 'Genius' a few weeks ago, but didn't resolve. And both my wife and I have macs and iPhones, so we're simply looking for a way to safely and easily backup the full resolution images of a selected number of photos to a shared place. I've even noticed the Shared Album scales down resolution on iPhone photos (iPhone 7 and 7 Plus) by about 30%! Ridiculous.

Be careful of what you wish for.

Remember, shared photo streams (they're not albums) are pushed to everyone's devices that subscribe. Not only that, but if the subscriber has Photos set to use mobile data (default), this will eat into a data plan.

What would be really nice is if the subscriber could long/force press on the photo and have an option to download the high resolution version to the device. This would require no additional data storage on Apple's part as it's a download from the original iCloud photo.

It would be even nicer if these were true shared albums. Where the administrator could sort, reorder and decide whether subscribers had access to the optimised, edited or unedited originals.

But, that would be a lot to ask of the world's biggest company by market capitalisation.

Edit : A macOS device could be set to automatically download the maximum resolution available. This would allow backup of shared family albums (for example).

Very simple - e-mail the photos at actual size with the highest quality

LN

If you are mailing your photos using your iCloud account, Mail will send them by Mail Drop. The mail will include a download link instead of the actual photo. The file size limit for Mail drop is 5 MB, see:

Mail Drop limits - Apple Support

Both Dropbox and Google Drive allow all your photos taken with your phone to be automatically uploaded and then sharing is pain free and can be done in seconds.

So you were not looking for a solution - you already had one - not clear why your posted then

Enjoy

LN