iCloud Photo Sharing overview

Sharing a photo stream is an easy way to keep the important people in your life up to date with your latest photos and video clips. Invitees, who must have an iCloud account to join the shared photo stream, can view, “like,” and comment on your photos and video clips from any device set up with iCloud Photo Sharing. You can also set up shared photo streams so that others can contribute their own photos and video clips. Those invitees without an iCloud account are sent a link to a webpage to view the shared photos; however, they cannot comment on the photos.

Here’s how shared photo streams work:

  • First, set up iCloud Photo Sharing on any Apple device that you want to use to create or view shared photo streams.

  • Then, select a photo or video on your iOS device or select an item in your Aperture or iPhoto library.

  • Create a shared photo stream to share your item with your friends.

    Your friends initially receive an email inviting them to subscribe to your shared photo stream. When they accept, the stream appears on their iOS devices or within Aperture and iPhoto. All subsequent items shared in that photo stream automatically appear on the subscribers’ Apple devices.

  • You and your friends can comment on and like shared items, as well as reply to the comments. Your friends can even share their own photos and video clips if you’ve set up your shared photo stream to allow others to share items.

You and your friends are alerted to new photos, video clips, and comments by notifications on your iOS devices and in OS X.

Note: iCloud Photo Sharing requires OS X Mountain Lion v10.8.2 or later. iCloud Photo Sharing can be associated with only one library at a time. When you switch libraries, Aperture prompts you to set shared photo streams to share photos with the new library exclusively. Photos from your shared photo streams are pushed to the new library from that point on.