Photostream, HEIF and duplicates

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Photostream, HEIF and duplicates

For years, I have been using photo stream as a convenient syncing method from my ios devices to my mac with the only downside that edits from the phone would not sync. Well, it's better to make the edits on a mac anyway. But for the most part it worked and made wired connections to the mac a rare occasion.

But now, with a new OS and phone everything seems to be broken. Why on earth does photo stream convert HEIF into much bigger jpegs? Portrait pictures are "edits", so the stream only contains the plain images. No live photos either. So I'll have to connect my phone to the mac physically to get the originals, but then, since photo stream contains the jpegs, every picture is duplicated and I have to go over it and clean up every time after syncing.

How is this supposed to work? Am I doing anything wrong here or is this just a subtle hint to finally go on board with iCloud photos?

Posted on May 24, 2018 3:12 AM

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Answer 1

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LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

May 24, 2018 3:51 PM in response to Ralf Bohde

1 - That is documented by Apple - HEIF is not included as photo formats and videos and live photos are specifically excluded

Photo formats that you can use with My Photo Stream

My Photo Stream supports JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and most RAW photo formats. My Photo Stream doesn't support video or Live Photos.

2 - yes if you import what yo consider a duplicate (in fact an HEIF image is not a duplicate of a JPEG image, it is a similar image but is not a similar - you need to adjust your work flow and either switch to iCloud Photo library which eliminates all of your issues (including syncing Portrait photos and edits) or when you manually import you have to select the ones you want and import selected or you will be crating user created duplicates - nothing to do with MyPhotoStream, just your work flow

LN

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Answer 2

Ralf Bohde Author

Level 1

15 points

May 24, 2018 9:29 PM in response to LarryHN

1. I know that, I just do not understand why. It is obvious why photostream does not support video - the files are too big. But HEIF is actually smaller than JPEG.

2. Technically you are right. These are not duplicates. But the only way to get editable portrait photos, live photos and HEIF in general on my Mac is by importing them via USB. Not even manually, just „Import all new photos“. I end up with every photo being existent in 2 versions — and I can‘t imagine anyone who is happy with that.

The only change in my workflow I can imagine is switching to compatibility mode on the iPhone and ditching HEIF. The portrait problem would remain, I guess, but at least it’s not every image.

And, of course, iCloud photos. But the reason I never switched to iCloud is that I don‘t want my mobile devices cluttered with all photos that I ever made (low-res, I know, but still).

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Photostream, HEIF and duplicates

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