Is it somehow possible to use Shared Albums without compression or any loss of quality?
I know this can be done using Shared Library, but in a Shared Library albums are not supported.
Thanks for your feedback.
Kind regards,
Steven
[Edited by Moderator]
iPhone 15 Pro Max, iOS 18
That is exactly the fix we are all in, when we try to share photos, either nice albums with downsized photos as Shared albums, or the complete Shared iCloud Photos Library as a flat collection of shared items in full quality, with the added risk, all subscribers can delete or edit the shared photos, so we have to share only copies in our shared iCloud Photos library to keep our photos safe.
You could also try to share an iCloud Link for each album you want to share: Share photos and videos with an iCloud Link on iCloud.com
With an iCloud link the selected photos will be shared in the full quality and can be downloaded for a limited time on www.icloud.com. The link will point to an albumwww.icloud.com. Photos Library and not need extra cloud storage.
Added: It is a reasonable precaution that the items in Shared Albums are downsized and optimized for sharing. The size is large enough to view the photos properly on a computer. And it limits the size of the shared albums to a reasonable amount. The Shared albums are taking up storage on the devices of all subscribers. If a subscriber dumps 2000 high resolution photos or videos into a shared album, it might cause problems on an iPhone with not much storage.
That is exactly the fix we are all in, when we try to share photos, either nice albums with downsized photos as Shared albums, or the complete Shared iCloud Photos Library as a flat collection of shared items in full quality, with the added risk, all subscribers can delete or edit the shared photos, so we have to share only copies in our shared iCloud Photos library to keep our photos safe.
You could also try to share an iCloud Link for each album you want to share: Share photos and videos with an iCloud Link on iCloud.com
With an iCloud link the selected photos will be shared in the full quality and can be downloaded for a limited time on www.icloud.com. The link will point to an albumwww.icloud.com. Photos Library and not need extra cloud storage.
Added: It is a reasonable precaution that the items in Shared Albums are downsized and optimized for sharing. The size is large enough to view the photos properly on a computer. And it limits the size of the shared albums to a reasonable amount. The Shared albums are taking up storage on the devices of all subscribers. If a subscriber dumps 2000 high resolution photos or videos into a shared album, it might cause problems on an iPhone with not much storage.
Sorry, that would be possible only if you keep your original photos within the pixel counts allowed in Shared Albums. ("When shared, photos are reduced to 2048 pixels on the long edge, except panoramic photos, which can be up to 5400 pixels wide." from Shared Album limits - Apple Support)
Thanks for your reply.
Let me rephrase what I'm trying to achieve with this real world example.
We are traveling in group (family and non-family/friends), each taking their photos and videos. Afterwards, it's quite a hassle to combine and distribute all media to each other, often a combination of WeTransfer and WhatsApp.
That's why we use Shared Albums. It works perfectly, apart from the loss of quality which is really a shame that there is no option to define Shared Albums als lossless.
A Shared Library could be a viable option too, however then you are sharing everything in that shared filmrol, and there is no option to share only subsets (albums).
Or am I making things over complicated?
Kind regards,
Steven Lecluyse
slecluyse wrote:
We are traveling in group (family and non-family/friends), each taking their photos and videos. Afterwards, it's quite a hassle to combine and distribute all media to each other, often a combination of WeTransfer and WhatsApp.
WhatsApp strips metadata (dates, locations) and by default it also downscales images and movies so I try to ask an AirDrop or other means of transport for images I plan to archive.
Google Photos might be an alternative. But it has its own bugs and limitations (for example, as a recurring bug Takeout does not currently allow to select albums to download. And there is no support for Keywords or to edit a location. And dealing with somewhat buggy .json sidecars is clumsy). And I guess it would be a hassle for all participants to have enough technical knowledge to maintain that shared travel album and its metadata Captions.
Shared Album without quality loss
