After a nice family vacation or special event such as a birthday or wedding, people usually have a common end result. Pictures. Lots of pictures!!!
A usual question that arises is how do we share them effectively?
Besides posting photos on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter many people share them by email but this comes with some limitations, such as in the quantity, quality, and size of the images. A better approach could be to use the iCloud Photo Stream on your iPad (or iPhone).
Provided iCloud is properly configured on your iPad, you can create new Photo Streams and invite friends and family to view those Streams. Videos can be shared as well.
Curious about this cool feature? Keep reading below.
Connecting your iPad to iCloud
Before creating new Photo Streams, you have to connect your iPad to iCloud. Login to iCloud requires an Apple ID which is associated to an email address and a password.
If you do not have an Apple ID, take a look at this post to create a new one.
Assuming you have an Apple ID, from your iPad Home Screen, tap on Settings > iCloud
Enter your Apple ID and Password and tap Sign In.
A Terms and Conditions popup will appear.
You may then get another popup screen asking you whether you want to allow iCloud to use the location of your iPad. This is not necessary to share pictures but it can help you find your iPad in the future if you lose it.
iCloud Storage Plans
By default each iCloud account starts with 5 GB of Free storage. If you need more space you can upgrade to a paid plan. Currently, paid plans range from $20 per year for 10 GB, $40 per year for 20 GB and $100 per year for 50 GB.
iCloud Configuration for Photos
Your iCloud account is now associated with your iPad and shows a screen similar to this one.
Tapping on Photos will reveal the iCloud Photos Configuration:
On this screen you have 2 options. “My Photo Stream” and “Photo Sharing”.
When My Photo Stream is on, all new pictures taken on your iPad will be uploaded to the Cloud and sent to all your other Apple devices such as the Mac, iPhone, etc that are connected to iCloud using the same Apple ID.
When Photo Sharing is on, you can create Photo Streams and share them with other people. At the same time you can also subscribe to other people’s photo streams.
In this case, we will leave Photo Sharing on so that we can create a new Photo Stream.
Creating a new Photo Stream
It is now time to open the Camera App and share your pictures. If you need some guidance with the Camera App, check this post.
Open your Camera roll and select one of your existing pictures.
Tap on the sharing icon
Tap on the iCloud icon
And enter a name for the new stream
If you want to share this stream with other people. Enter their email addresses or just tap on Create without an email address.
Finally, add a comment for your stream (optional) and tap “Post”.
If you added email addresses in the previous step, those people will receive an email inviting them to see your shared stream.
Viewing a Photo Stream
You can see your newly created Photo Stream on your Photos App.
Open the Photos App and tap on “Shared” on the menu below. This will display the Stream Activity. Tapping on “Streams” on the top left corner will show the shared streams.
Thoughts? Questions?
Sharing and exchanging Photo Streams with other people that traveled with you or were part of the same event is a cool way to share memories and see things from a different point of view.
As usual I welcome your questions and comments.