Apple made it easy to create shareable photo albums on an iPhone and that means friends, family, and coworkers can keep track of what is happening in each other’s lives and without the need to text or message them. Of course, the last several iPhone updates have had a focus on the camera, making photos and videos more fun to share. A beautiful Portrait blur capture, Live Photo video bounce, or Night Mode photo that turned out particularly well inspires some discussion.
Apple’s Photos app has improved greatly over the years adding more photo and video editing controls. For the iPhone 12 Pro, ProRAW has brought professional quality and refinement to the iPhone. Photo Stream is a fairly new arrival that uploads the last 30 days of new photos between any iPhone, iPad, and Mac that is signed in with the same Apple ID. With iOS 15, Live Text allows text within photos to be selected, copied, and translated. For private photos, Apple added a hidden album allowing photos to be removed from view and this folder can, in turn, be hidden from the album list.
Apple’s shareable photo albums allow iPhone owners to create folders for photos and videos that can be seen by anyone that is invited. iPhone, iPad, and Mac owners can view the album name and its contents in the shared album section of their Photos app. Naturally, the ‘Shared Albums’ option must be enabled for anyone that is participating in this way, and that control is found under the Photos section of the Settings app. When first setting up a shared album, people can be invited by email or text if they appear as contacts. If not, a shareable link can be created to allow anyone to view the shared album on iCloud.com. Web links allow Windows and Android users to view photos and videos as well, as long as the link is sent to them. A shared album is can be created by tapping the plus sign that is found on the Albums tab in the Photos app, then selecting Shared Album. A name for the album is requested and the option to send invitations appears next.
iPhone Shared Albums Comments & Additions
Anyone that is viewing a shared album via the Photos app can add comments to each photo and video within. Every participant of the shared album group will receive notifications about new comments, making it like a private social group. The iPhone owner that created the album can send new invitations to bring more people into the group. In the event something changes or goes wrong, the owner can switch off comments, remove the iCloud.com link, and even delete the shared album at any time.
The interesting thing shared albums is that they don’t count toward iCloud storage even though it stores photos and videos in iCloud. There is a limit but it is a quite generous amount, 5,000 photos or videos can be uploaded to shared albums for free. Also, quality is reduced so this shouldn’t be considered a way to bypass an iCloud subscription. Photos are stored with a maximum width and length of 2048, making 4 megapixels the highest resolution possible. Panoramas are reduced to 5400 pixels wide and videos are transcoded to 720p resolution, and are limited to fifteen minutes in length. Overall, Apple Photos’ shared albums provide a free and convenient way for iPhone owners to invite a group of friends to view and comment on their photos and videos.
