iPhone, iPad, iCloud, and my photos

[edd]

So I bought a 4s when they came out and arranged for photos to store in the cloud and to a PC. About 8 months ago my girlfriend got an iPhone and claimed the PC as her own (it is hers, after all) for storing photos from her phone. Sadly ( and wrongly) only one iCloud account can be used per PC as far as I know.

I'd always had this notion that my free 5 GB iCloud account stores photos forever and that the photo stream is this 30 day stop in between my iPhone and the cloud. Now I'm under the impression that the stream is the cloud. Is that correct?

If so, then all photos taken on my phone between the time my GF took the PC and 30 days ago are gone if they aren't in my phone. Right?

My iPad is a 64GB. More space than I'll need. Is there a way that the iPad can sort of become my PC for the purpose of storing photos?

Thanks for any help. Really digging the iPad. Is is going to be my PC in every other way that's possible.

 

[Dryland]

If users have different login profiles on the pc then that solves the issue. I know this because I had teenagers sharing a computer at one point.

But using your iPad to store everything is a bad option. You should sync it somewhere if you truly care about those photos. Backups are never necessary until you need them.

 

[John Yester]

No. Photos uploaded to My Photo Stream or Shared Photo Streams do not count against your iCloud storage.


The photos you upload to My Photo Stream are stored in iCloud for 30 days to give your devices plenty of time to connect and download them.

Cloud pushes all your photos to the My Photo Stream album on your devices and computers, and manages them efficiently, so you don’t run out of storage space. Your iOS devices keep a rolling collection of your last 1000 photos in the My Photo Stream album. From there, you can browse your recent photos or move the ones you like to your Camera Roll or another album to keep them on your device forever.



Since your Mac and PC have more storage than your iOS devices, you can choose to have all of your My Photo Stream photos automatically downloaded. In iPhoto or Aperture preferences on your Mac, be sure to select Photo Stream > My Photo Stream > Automatic Import. All of your photo stream photos will be imported into your Events, Projects, Photos, Faces, and Places folders in iPhoto or Aperture. On your PC with Photo Stream enabled in the Control Panel, all of your photos will be imported into C:\Users\<user name>\Pictures\Photo Stream\My Photo Stream.

3 ways of using 2 iCloud accounts on a PC

1) Sign in and out of iCloud whenever you want to change users (not recommended, since it could get VERY messy)

2) set up a second user account on the pc and set up your iCloud account on there....this is what I did. Now you can grab her pics and yours, but nothing else gets messed up.

3) set up another iCloud account strictly for photo stream. Set up your primary iCloud account as a secondary and have it sync everything else....set up the photo stream account as the primary and turn on only photo stream. Now you will have your cal and mail and all the other stuff on your main account, and just photo stream on the photo stream account. Now all of your pics will go to your iPhoto.

 

[edd]

If users have different login profiles on the pc then that solves the issue. I know this because I had teenagers sharing a computer at one point.

But using your iPad to store everything is a bad option. You should sync it somewhere if you truly care about those photos. Backups are never necessary until you need them.

We do both have our own accounts. Under the scenario you describe we would both have to log on every 30 day period or else we would lose the photos? Is that correct?

 

[edd]

2) set up a second user account on the pc and set up your iCloud account on there....this is what I did. Now you can grab her pics and yours, but nothing else gets messed up.]

So it's possible to have both iCloud accounts download to the PC at the same time without signing in back and forth?

 

[John Yester]

Run 2 (two) Photostream/iCloud accounts on 1 (one) computer for your iPhones or iPads - YouTube

This should help.

 

[edd]

I appreciate the help guys.

 

[Susan Hamel]

Just one question.... With the Nokia Lumia will all my photo automatically upload to my icoud account on my Mac and iPad? With out any new sit-ups or software ?

 

[Alli]

Just one question.... With the Nokia Lumia will all my photo automatically upload to my icoud account on my Mac and iPad? With out any new sit-ups or software ?

Your Nokia Lumia can't access iCloud, so no.