Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com.
On today's episode let's talk about iCloud Photo Sharing in the new Photos app.
So the new Photos app, in conjunction with iCloud, makes it very easy for you to share
photos so others can see it.
They don't have to have the Photos app.
They don't even have to be on the Mac.
All they need is access to the web.
Let's see how we can do this.
Notice that on the left sidebar here you can bring that up with View, Show or Hide Sidebar,
you've got your shared Activity.
I can bring that up.
I haven't started sharing yet.
So I'm going to hit the Start Sharing button and it is going to prompt me to share an Album.
Let's create one called Test Share.
I'm not going to invite any people right now and I'm not going to add a comment.
I'm just going to create it.
You can see now I've got Test Share.
This Activity tab here shows recent things that I've done with Sharing.
So let's go right to the Test Share here and you can see that it is empty.
Let's add photos and videos by clicking there.
Now I can go and view all my photos.
I'm going to select a couple and I'm going to hit Add.
Then it is going to add these to the Test Share album.
Great.
It took about 30 seconds and now these three photos are listed as Shared here on the Test
Share album.
Now look at this.
I can go ahead and add more photos and videos here.
I can then use some buttons here at the top.
So I can click here and I can change the album name, I can invite some more people, and I
can set some options.
So I can set Subscribers Can Post so when I invite people they can actually post photos
of their own here.
So you automatically created a Shared Album that other people can post.
A whole family can post photos of a vacation to one shared album here.
I can also have Notifications here sent to me when people post and do things.
I can check this off and now it is public and it's on a website and I can actually use
this link here and I can send out an email to friends and they can go ahead and view
it.
So I'm going to copy that and then I'm going to open it up in Safari.
So here I am in Safari and I can see that at this URL I can see the album here.
Anybody can see this.
They can be using any browser and can go in here to this website and view it because I
have made it public.
This is a great way to share photos with people like while you are on trips and things like
that.
You can select any photo to go directly to it and then you can flip through them all.
So it it kind of all like automatic here.
You can also download individual photos to full screen.
A lot of functionality in this standardized webpage here.
So it is important to keep in mind there are two types of people that will be viewing these
when they are public.
There are the people that are not invited and they can just view them and download and
do things.
But they can't change it.
They can't add photos.
Then there are the people you've invited who should also have the Photos app.
They will actually be able to see it listed here on the left under Shared and be able
to add their own photos.
Or if you turn this off here then they will just be able to see and they won't be able
to modify it.
You can also change the name of the album any time you want and use this button here
to delete it.
So the cool thing here is that it is so easy to add to this.
Let's say I'm looking through my photos collection and decide I want to add this photo right
here to it.
I can select it and I can hit the Share button and say I want to use iCloud Photo Sharing
and there's that Test Share album I've created.
I can tap on it right there and now it is added to it.
So now if I go to Test Share I can see that fourth photo is there.
Also while I'm here I can select and then delete it.
It is going to remove it from the Shared album.
It doesn't delete it from my photos collection and I can get rid of it.
So it is very easy to change this.
So iCloud Photo Sharing is very simple and very easy and quick to use.
The down side to that is that there are not many options.
For instance, there is no way to add captions to these or anything for anybody to read.
They just see the photos.
There is no way beyond these options to further customize it.
For instance if you wanted to have it available on the web but only to certain people there
is no option for that.
They either have to be somebody invited and they view it through Photos or they can be
publicly viewed by anybody that has this URL.
So if you really want more options and more things that you can do of course there are
other ways to share photos.
You can select some photos and you can do all sorts of stuff.
You can share on Facebook and put them up there.
You can use Flicker.
There is a lot of different options.
Of course beyond the Photos app there are more options as well.
So if you want tons of control and very specific things then iCloud Photo Sharing is not for
you.
But if you want something quick and easy to be able to share with anybody or have a shared
album that a group of people can add to then iCloud Photo Sharing is a great option.