Photo Stream with iCloud

iCloud, the companion to iOS 5 is designed to keep all your files and data in sync with all of your iDevices, but what does it bring to the table for us iPhoneographers? Well if you decide to use iCloud, then when you take a photo on one iPhone (or iPod Touch or iPad 2), it automatically appear on all your other iCloud linked devices.

Below is a full rundown on what you can expect as a photographer to get out of iCloud.

Your Photos Everywhere
Take a photo on an iOS device, or import a photo from your digital camera to your computer, and iCloud will automatically push a copy of that photo over any available Wi-Fi or Ethernet connection to the Photos app on your iOS devices, iPhoto or Aperture on your Mac, and the Pictures Library on your PC. You can even view your Photo Stream album on your Apple TV, so you can show off your shots to friends and family from whichever device you’re using at the time.

iCloud manages your Photo Stream efficiently so you don’t run out of storage space on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. If you have Photo Stream enabled on your iOS device, every single photo you take appears in a special Photo Stream album that holds your last 1000 photos. You can’t edit or delete photos from your Photo Stream, so if you want to touch up a photo or keep a favourite shot permanently, then simply save it to your Camera Roll. iCloud stores new photos for 30 days, so you'll have plenty of time to connect your iOS device to Wi-Fi and make sure you always have your most recent shots handy.

Keeping your Photos up to date on your Mac or PC
Keeping a complete set of your photos on your Mac is as simple as turning on Photo Stream in iPhoto or Aperture. Every new photo you take appears in a Photo Stream album just as it does on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. But since your Mac has more storage than your iOS device, it automatically imports every picture from your Photo Stream into your photo library so you can edit, delete, and share the ones you want. Want to get the photos you’ve taken on your point-and-shoot or DSLR camera into your Photo Stream to view on all your other devices? The photos you import to your library from a camera or SD card are automatically uploaded to your Photo Stream. If you have a PC, you can auto-import and upload pictures, too. Just turn on Photo Stream, grab a camera, and start shooting.

Please note: The above information has been extracted from the iCloud page on Apple's website.

Comments

[Butow Maler]

I'm using it already with the IOS5 Goldmaster edition... It's amazing. You shoot some pics while you're on the road and they're already available on the iPad when you come home, waiting there for you to get apped. :-)

I love the photostream and the possibility to create your own folders. The only problem with the new folders function is, that there are only references to the files in the created folder. So you can't really move the pics into there and the "originals" stay in the roll.

But all in all these are great improvements for photographers in IOS5.

[robinh]

Any ideas how it will work for multiple users? e.g. my wife has an iPhone too - can it be set to combine two people's photos into a single stream or can a single iMac pick up multiple streams?

[Rob]

Any idea how this will work for those of us using Aperture 3 on a Mac?

[Butow Maler]

Robin, if you and your wife will use the same account (@me.com-address) the pictures of both phones should combine on one stream. But there's always only one stream. You can't put some pics in your own stream and others in a family stream.

[Emily]

I updated my iDevices today and got the new iCloud software, but it's not automatically sending the pictures I took today to the photostream. Is there anyway to manually put pictures in the photostream.