MacFormat UK – September 2019

24 | MACFORMAT | SEPTEMBER 2019 macformat.com @macformat

Your Photos, everywhere!

It’s like an album that follows you around, but less creepy than that probably sounds

T

aking photos is easy; finding

them later is hard. iCloud

solves it by keeping all the

photos you take on any of your

Apple devices and syncing them to the

others. So you can show off the pictures

you’ve taken with your iPhone on your

iPad, Mac or Apple TV. Albums you create

appear everywhere with the same photos

in them. You can share photos around

your family, too (see page 26).

When iCloud Photos (previously

iCloud Photo Library) is activated on a

device, every item added to All Photos –

primarily by shooting stills or video in the

Camera app – is copied to iCloud. This

happens immediately if the device is

online, or next time it connects. The

copies sync to all your other devices

with iCloud Photos on. Equally, when

you delete an item in Photos, it’s deleted

from iCloud and all your other devices.

Read that part twice! You can’t delete

pics to save space while keeping them in

iCloud – that’s not how it works. Instead,

FEATURE iCloud superguide

in Settings > User > iCloud > Photos,

choose Optimise iPhone Storage (not

Download and Keep Originals) to keep

only previews of photos and videos on

your device. The versions in iCloud stay

at the full original quality, and download

when you open them, if the device is

online. Raw photos (which you can shoot

with recent iPhones using some third-

party apps, or import from a digital

camera) are also preserved in iCloud, and

available to edit on iPad or Mac, but

otherwise display as JPEG previews.

Original sync

Keep the Photos app on your Mac

set to Download Originals, in Photos >

Preferences > iCloud, and you’ll always

have full-quality copies on your Mac

storage as well as in iCloud. (Your Photos

Library is also backed up by Time

Machine.) The same iCloud rules apply,

so if you delete a photo elsewhere it’ll

disappear from your Mac, and vice versa.

Photos stored on your Mac, but not in

Photos, are ignored by iCloud; if you want

some photos to appear in Photos, but not

iCloud, use the workaround in steps 5 and

6 on the opposite page.

When you edit a photo in the Photos

app, and iCloud Photos is on, you’ll see

the edited version everywhere. Edits are

non-destructive, though, so you can open

the item in Photos on any device and tap

Edit, then simply Revert to remove the

changes everywhere.

To share photos, create a Shared Album, enter the

recipients’ email addresses, then add your pics.