"Family" photo library using photos/iCloud? Shared albums?

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Level 1

24 points

"Family" photo library using photos/iCloud? Shared albums?

My wife and I have our own phones and iPads and Apple iD's. On each of our computers we have our own user accounts.

Is there any way of having a shared, "family" photo library that we can both add photos to? We now have a shared iCloud storage sub with 200GB of data and our individual photo librarys are both using iCloud photo storage.

How can we have a shared photo library so that we can see all of our 'family' photos on any of our devices?

I can see that I can create new Shared Albums and put photos in them but I can't see any way to move/make existing albums shared or to share the core 'photos' library.

iMac/Macbook/iPhone 3GS, Mac OS X (10.6)

Posted on Jan 29, 2018 9:40 AM

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Answer 1

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Jan 29, 2018 10:25 AM in response to SStill

again

Nope - there is no lbrary sharing except using iCloud Photo Library with the same Apple ID

You can use iCloud Photo Sharing (shared albums) to share lower resolution photos among a group but you have to add photos to the shared album - nothing is automatic

If using the same Apple ID doe not fit your needs (it does work and does give you what you request) then as far as Photos and iCloud are concerned the answer is iCloud Photo Sharing

There also are third party solution like DropBox, Flickr, etc

LN

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Answer 2

swandy

Level 4

2,581 points

Jan 29, 2018 9:44 AM in response to SStill

As far as I know, you can only share the "core" Photos library if you both share the same Apple ID (like I do with my wife and all our devices). I believe the only other way is to make a Shared album, and then invite your wife to participate with it. You can then add whatever photos to that Shared album that you want viewable on each of your devices.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Jan 29, 2018 1:12 PM in response to SStill

You could keep the Photos Library stored locally on a mac in your home network. Keep it in a separate user account, different from the accounts of all family members, and all family members will know the password. Use the library in this account as an archive of all family photos. Everyone can log in remotely with screen sharing and run Photos on that account to add photos or browse photos and copy the ones they want to their own library.

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Answer 4

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Jan 29, 2018 10:42 AM in response to SStill

There is not a problem - Photos (and iPhoto) work as designed and they are not designed to be shared or multi user programs - they are designed to be single user programs with their data (for speed and integrity purposes) being on a local drive connected with a fast wired connection

iCloud Photo Library is the solution that allows a group of devices using the same Apple ID to share a library and it works great - just because you personally reject the available solution does not mean it does not exist

And because you "assume" something does not mean it exists or is going to ever exist

So far as I know no program available offers the capability you want (which should give you a clue) but certainly if you can find one you are free to use it - Photos is not the solution you want

LN

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Answer 5

SStill Author

Level 1

24 points

Jan 29, 2018 10:21 AM in response to swandy

Shared Apple ID doesn't work - we need our own contacts, email, etc etc.

We’ve got digital photos going back to 2000 from the looks of things. We started with a single computer and account which was fine back then. Number of pictures starts going up massively as cameraphones got good. Some stuff is sorted into Albums - there must be a couple of hundred albums from various holidays, events and the like.

I can create a shared album in iPhoto, give her access, then select photos to put into it but that’s a massive amount of manual work – it doesn't seem possible to select from existing albums in the ‘select’ window either.

There doesn’t seem to be any way to “share” existing albums by changing properties or dragging them to shared. It appears I'd have to create an empty album for each event manually, then drag the contents of my own album to it. That's so much work

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Answer 6

SStill Author

Level 1

24 points

Jan 29, 2018 10:29 AM in response to LarryHN

I get what you're saying but I'm really surprised that this is still so poor. Every few years I try to solve this problem again - using a NAS, putting the iPhoto library in a shared mac drives and none work. Photos is such a core part of Apple's offer I thought they might have solved this by now (in fact I naively assumed 'family' iCloud gave you shared space rather than just a single payment and assignable storage).

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Answer 7

SStill Author

Level 1

24 points

Jan 29, 2018 10:25 AM in response to SStill

You can't even rename a shared library once you've shared it. So if you mistype the name you have to delete and create over.

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Answer 8

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Jan 29, 2018 9:44 AM in response to SStill

Nope - there is no lbrary sharing except using iCloud Photo Library with the same Apple ID

You can use iCloud Photo Sharing (shared albums) to share lower resolution photos among a group but you have to add photos to the shared album - nothing is automatic

LN

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Answer 9

SStill Author

Level 1

24 points

Jan 29, 2018 10:22 AM in response to LarryHN

Shared albums are lower resolution? So this doesn't even solve the problem is we start now - ie create a shared album for each new 'event' and both add our photos to it as they're not full res

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"Family" photo library using photos/iCloud? Shared albums?

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