Learn iCloud Week: How to set up Photo Stream on your Mac

Photo Stream is an excellent concept, letting users share and back up their latest and greatest photographs with little to no effort. The system is based on iCloud, so you will need to have OS X Lion 10.7.2 and iOS 5 set up and running on your Mac and iOS device respectively. With the updates added and iCloud already set up, all you need to do is enable Photo Stream and the system will begin to collect your most recently taken shots on your iPhone. They then become instantly visible on your iPad and Mac (as long as you are connected to Wi-Fi). There are a couple of conditions attached to Photo Stream, which is to be expected in a free service. The limits imposed on storage are up to 1,000 pictures or 30 days’ worth of images. If you reach either of these limits then any photos taken or stored afterwards will replace the earlier ones added. So, as a backup, you have a limit but as a sharing service you always have the most recent pictures. Photo Stream is wonderful because you will never need to connect your iPhone to iPhoto again, as they are automatically saved in a new event. Similarly, you need never load pictures onto your iPad again.

Step 1: System Preferences

If you have already set up iCloud, you’ll come straight to this screen after clicking the iCloud icon from your System Preferences. All you need to do is enable the service by clicking the tick box in the options provided.

Step 2: iPhoto

You will need to make sure iPhoto is up to date. If it is, you will see this page when you click Photo Stream on the left-hand side of the interface. Click Turn On Photo Stream and it will begin to populate.

Step 3: Pictures galore

All of the pictures you have taken in the last 30 days will begin to fill the interface in iPhoto. You can view these as you would any other photos. Drag them into Pictures to save and keep them locally.

Step 4: Add pictures

If you want to add pictures to Photo Stream from your iPhoto library, just click on the image, hit the Share button (in the bottom-right) then click on the Photo Stream option. It’s as simple as that.

This is the latest installment in our Learn iCloud Week series; for more articles just like this, visit the Learn iCloudWeek tag. At the end of the week, we’ll be giving away a prize to one lucky person who gets in touch with a question or problem related to iCloud. To get involved, simply tweet your question, plus the hashtag #LearniCloudWeek, to @iCreateMagazine or post on our Facebook wall.