Thoughts on Sharing Vacation Photos

Article Comments
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You have to enter the comment first and then click the destination album, since there’s no OK button.

Yes, the comments feature when posting is weird. I post to a shared album via my iPhone when traveling and I always ignore that initial “add comment” dialog as it only adds a comment to the first photo. It’s better to post all the photos you’ve selected, then go to the shared album and add a comment to each to caption it. You have to do it right away so it’s the first comment — otherwise someone else might add a comment and then your “caption” ends up several comments down.

But I really like icloud shared albums for travel photos. I try to be selective and only add unique pictures, but it’s a great way to share because I only have to upload the picture once on limited travel bandwidth and I don’t worry about forgetting to email or text photos a particular friend or relative.

In my case just about everyone I know has an iPhone so it works well. I’m not on Facebook or any social network, so I prefer manual sharing like this. In the off case someone doesn’t have an iPhone, I can share with them the web URL of the album.

BTW, someone did mention printed books and that really is a great way to share photos. I did a lot of traveling one year and put together printed books via Lulu which I gave to people at Christmas and it was a big hit (kids of distant relatives call me the “travel guy” now). Funny to think there’s tech that doesn’t require a particular operating system version or batteries or any equipment to view!

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I am a stay at home parent, and most of my kids photos are taken by me by phone. The photos go to iCloud Photos and are synced to my 12" iPad Pro. At the end of the day (usually in bed) I unlock my iPad and my spouse views the photos on it. That’s the extent of the sharing with each other.

For extended family, some photos go on a Messages or WhatsApp (depending how extended the family is) thread.

I really like the Memories feature of Apple Photos, and I look forward to more computer-generated photo collections. It is precious. It is a counterpart to my difficulty with deleting any but the absolute worst photos. But I don’t use the Sharing Suggestions and Effect Suggestions features. Not yet anyway.

Question: is the Live Photos feature supported by many services mentioned? i.e. SmugMug/Google Photos

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Then there is that ancient (32 bit!) Apple software iWeb that allowed me to create web-friendly photo albums with captions. I just send friends/family a link to the page (which used to be MobileMe until Apple dropped it). It was very easy to use iWeb with iPhotos but, of course it won’t work with Photos - I have to export photos to a folder and drag them into iWeb.

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All photos in a Shared Album have a little :speech_balloon: on the bottom left with a number inside indicating the number of comments + likes (or a + if there are no comments/likes yet). This is when viewing them in full size (not thumbnail view):

image

Click on the :speech_balloon: and it will show you the comments and allow you to add your own.

I use the sharing feature a lot on both Mac OS and iOS, it’s one of my favourite enhancements of recent(ish) years. Great for adding bits and pieces to notes, or beaming something to my phone. I really like it as an interface. But can understand that if you’re not in the habit of using it, it’s not the most obvious way to go. Of note, though, Aperture supported adding to Shared Albums in the same way (and I’ve been using it to do so until the last couple of months), so this is not new to Photos – I think iPhoto probably also used this method, but I never used it much.

A bit of a diversion for you, because I can see that for you where conversation is more important, it’s not the best way to share. But you might find it useful in other situations in the future.

I quite like this, as often I want to post a series of 2–4 photos that come under the same general caption, and it’s neater. If I want different captions on different photos, I share them individually, adding a caption as I do. But of course this is a bit cumbersome if you have 10+ photos you want to share, each with their own caption. One potential solution is to go into aeroplane mode, share the photos (without captions), then go and add your comments. I’ve not tried it, so not sure if it will allow you to add comments without a network connection, but if it does this will ensure you don’t risk someone else having the first comment.

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Man, learn something every day. The fact that that icon shows only when you’re looking at just the photo, not in the thumbnail view, meant that I never saw it. It’s also nearly impossible to make out on many photos, depending on the lightness of the picture in that lower-left corner. Thanks!

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Live Photo is not supported over the web. Photos shared via iCloud Photo sharing can use Live Photo effects if viewed in Apple Photos; however, only the still images appear if accessed via a web browser.

For import to photo websites, I export my photos to full-sized JPEG files incorporating whatever edits I have made. If I wish to also export the Live Photo video, I need to use the “Export Unmodified Original” option, which will export a HEIC still, a MOV video, and, optional an XMP sidecar. I can then import the .MOV file into Smugmug for the video portion of the Live Photo. For example, here is a photo, and here is the video derived from the Live Photo.

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Get Lively from the App Store.

Converts live photos to animated gifs that anyone can see

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Thanks to Adam for the excellent article about photo sharing. And for creating/maintaining this TidTALK forum so the TidBITS community can share their BITS.

Here’s mine. When we travel, I take along my iPad along with an XR. (Prior to departure, we load up the iPad with travel books and guides, maps, movies to watch on the plane, etc.). I’m an avid photographer, and take a collection of add-on lenses (a tele, a wide, a superfish & a macro) from Moment. So I find myself taking lots of photos. And I mean lots! While on a trip, I find it useful to be able to view the images on the bigger iPad screen, and to share with my wife and our traveling companions. I don’t want them to see the masses of poorly composed, out-of-focus, over-exposed shots I took; just selected highlights.

This may be well-known to iCloud photo-sharing aficionados, but I discovered that one can create a Shared Album on the iPhone with no ‘sharees’. I don’t invite anyone to the shared album - it’s just being shared with myself. Through the magic of Photo Sharing, it then appears on my iPad. Then every day or three, I scan through recent photos on the iPhone, and add selected shots to the shared album – highlights of the day, notable sights/sights, fun group shots, etc. As soon as I return to the land of WiFi (hotel room, cruise ship cabin, campground with internet coverage), they get synced to iCloud, and thence to the iPad. Assuming the local WiFi is decent, the syncing happens pretty quickly. I can then share the curated shots with wife and friends on the ‘big screen’ at leisure: over breakfast the next morning, drinks at the pub, on the bus/train to the next destination, around the campfire, etc.

When I get home and power up my MacBook, the curated shared album then gets synced to macOS Photos, and is a starting point for broader sharing to family and others.

A related tip is to disable My Photo Stream on the iPhone prior to heading off on vacation. Otherwise, iOS will attempt to sync all of one’s daily photos whenever it gets on WiFi. This is really important if the internet connection is less than speedy, as is generally the case on cruise ships and riverboats where the backhaul uses either satellite or cellular data links to reach the internet.

A final tip, not so much about sharing, is to maintain good backup practices when on vacation. iPhones can up and die, be dropped in the surf, lost, and/or stolen. If that should happen on a trip, the many hundreds of photographs taken so far are gone. I travel with a 64GB USB/Lightning flash drive, and plug it into my iPhone every evening to backup the contents of the Camera Roll. I like the SanDisk iXpand drive, but there are lots of similar products on the market.

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