Sharing photos from MacOS with select people
March 14, 2023 4:30 PM Subscribe
I am Mac and iOS based, completely. There are photos that I'd like to share with a select group of people, so of whom are are not Mac or iOS based. How can this be done?
I made a Shared Album on my Mac, figuring that would do it. Then I invited people to it. The people on Android evidently can't open the photostream, which is bad.
Everything seems pretty straight forward on my end, but it also doesn't seem possible. Is it possible to share photos from a Mac based system with people who who do not have Mac or iOS devices.
Criteria:
1. I don't want to be make a public website, link, or album. I need to be able to invite only certain people, who will only be able to view this one album.
2. Ideally, those people would be able to upload their own photos to this shared album, but this is not a deal breaker.
3. This needs to be seamless and easy as possible. Some of the people are in their 80s and don't do technology well.
I made a Shared Album on my Mac, figuring that would do it. Then I invited people to it. The people on Android evidently can't open the photostream, which is bad.
Everything seems pretty straight forward on my end, but it also doesn't seem possible. Is it possible to share photos from a Mac based system with people who who do not have Mac or iOS devices.
Criteria:
1. I don't want to be make a public website, link, or album. I need to be able to invite only certain people, who will only be able to view this one album.
2. Ideally, those people would be able to upload their own photos to this shared album, but this is not a deal breaker.
3. This needs to be seamless and easy as possible. Some of the people are in their 80s and don't do technology well.
Yes, a Shared Album actually has a static web site (at iCloud.com, I think) created automatically, from which you can run a slideshow. I did this recently, and will try to find the directions.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:39 PM on March 14, 2023
posted by wenestvedt at 6:39 PM on March 14, 2023
To share an album with friends or family who don't use iCloud, open a shared album that you created, go to the People tab, and turn on Public Website. Your photos publish to a website that anyone can see in an up-to-date web browser.From https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202786
posted by wenestvedt at 7:50 PM on March 14, 2023
iCloud can fulfill all your criteria only if the non-Apple users are on Windows, since there's an iCloud for Windows app. Anyone on Android or other platforms would have kind of a clunky time accessing the album in their browser and I don't think they'd be able to upload pics.
There are third-party solution such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Facebook, etc. where you can set it so that only authorized people can view and upload to a shared album. There are also lots of photo-specific apps that do this, many of which are listed here.
The easiest way might be a shared album on Facebook, since it's more likely people would already have some familiarity with it. Here's how you can control who can see a shared album on Facebook. The big downside with Facebook (aside from it being Facebook) is that it doesn't keep photos at full resolution. This might be a dealbreaker, but maybe it isn't so important for your purposes.
The other cross-platform option that could be fairly straightforward for everyone is to create a shared album in Google Photos. It's been a while since I've used it, but I'm fairly certain you can create a shared album that a select group of people can upload to, while preventing those people from sharing links with outsiders (as the creator of the album you'd disable link-sharing). I'm pretty sure Google also compresses photos, although as with Facebook I don't think it's noticeable in most circumstances.
posted by theory at 9:14 PM on March 14, 2023
There are third-party solution such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Facebook, etc. where you can set it so that only authorized people can view and upload to a shared album. There are also lots of photo-specific apps that do this, many of which are listed here.
The easiest way might be a shared album on Facebook, since it's more likely people would already have some familiarity with it. Here's how you can control who can see a shared album on Facebook. The big downside with Facebook (aside from it being Facebook) is that it doesn't keep photos at full resolution. This might be a dealbreaker, but maybe it isn't so important for your purposes.
The other cross-platform option that could be fairly straightforward for everyone is to create a shared album in Google Photos. It's been a while since I've used it, but I'm fairly certain you can create a shared album that a select group of people can upload to, while preventing those people from sharing links with outsiders (as the creator of the album you'd disable link-sharing). I'm pretty sure Google also compresses photos, although as with Facebook I don't think it's noticeable in most circumstances.
posted by theory at 9:14 PM on March 14, 2023
Yeah, I’m in your Mac situation with elderly folks and use Google Photos for this. They’re pretty baffled by iCloud so this makes it a lot easier. Even if they forget how to get back to Google Photos it’s easy to just send them links from time to time.
posted by johngoren at 11:23 PM on March 14, 2023
posted by johngoren at 11:23 PM on March 14, 2023
You can use Google Drive for this, create a folder and then in the sharing settings make sure it is not public. Put the items in there. Get the link for it and send it to those you want to be able to see the files.
posted by TimHare at 3:00 PM on March 15, 2023
posted by TimHare at 3:00 PM on March 15, 2023
This thread is closed to new comments.
It seems like it can be done with iCloud too, though I haven't tried it.
posted by mewsic at 5:52 PM on March 14, 2023