Apple's Photos beta for iCloud.com gets new image viewing and sharing options

Posted:
in iCloud edited February 2015
Apple added a few new features to Photos beta in a recent update to its iCloud.com hub, bringing manual image zoom controls and email sharing capabilities to the iOS-connected Web app.




With the latest Photos beta for iCloud.com, users will see a new slider element for controlling image zoom levels appear in the top left-hand corner of their browser window. The same zooming functions can be performed by pressing the Option key and scrolling up or down on a trackpad or Magic Mouse.

In addition, Photos beta now allows sharing through email, a feature previously restricted to iOS and Mac devices. When viewing single images, the option appears as an envelope icon in the upper right-hand corner, next to the favorite, download and trash buttons. Multiple pictures can be shared through the Select Photos feature while in Moments or Album views.

Clicking the email sharing icon opens a new iCloud Mail browser window with the selected photo or photos already attached. The usual attachment size information is also displayed, noting how much overhead is left of iCloud's 20MB sending limit.




The new image zoom and email sharing options come as part of Apple's continual effort to build out a more comprehensive Photos platform. For example, a feature that lets users upload pictures directly to their iCloud account from a Web browser debuted in November.

iCloud Photos and its iCloud Photo Library counterpart on iOS 8 still carry beta designations. The iCloud.com version is limited to JPEG image uploads and does not yet support other formats or video, though those functions may become available when Apple launches the upcoming Photos app for OS X Yosemite.

Promised some time in early 2015, "Photos for OS X" will supposedly merge the best features of Apple's iPhoto and Aperture apps. The company halted further development of its consumer and professional image editing programs last summer, noting the upcoming Photos app will bake in unique features from both including image search, editing, effects, and plugins.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 20
    wdowellwdowell Posts: 226member
    It is utterly lamentable how appalling the state of photo saving / sharing is. How did they launch iOS 8 with this not all properly sorted and a Mac App for heaven's sake? I know i know it's due but his isn't hard. Flickr , google and even Microsoft have been churning this stuff for years - smarter web apps, more generous storage (basically unlimited). Hell even Amazon seems tk be racing ahead with photos.

    And to just take the piss they're still happy to promote the option to buy an EOL aperture when you buy one of their macs!
  • Reply 2 of 20
    Wake me when iCloud Pages.beta gets Table of Contents for in-document and out of document link supports, back citations options and more.
  • Reply 3 of 20
    dacloodacloo Posts: 890member
    While you're discussing other software in this thread, could you perhaps tell more about your hobby's and favorite food as well?
    [quote]Wake me when iCloud Pages.beta gets Table of Contents for in-document and out of document link supports, back citations options and more.[/quote]
  • Reply 4 of 20

    I hope the new app fixes the utter fail that is slow-motion video. tired of having them revert after resyncing back to the phone through iTunes.

  • Reply 5 of 20
    dacloo wrote: »
    While you're discussing other software in this thread, could you perhaps tell more about your hobby's and favorite food as well?

    iCloud services include iCloud Pages. You have a hard time connecting the dots. This site has been obsessed with iCloud Photo web service in an almost obsessive manner, as if another Narcissus service is something valuable. Meanwhile, my former colleagues at Apple Engineering have been sitting on their collective asses and not getting Pages, Keynote, Numbers and more with more parity to their client full apps; simple features that should have been part of the Inspector since it was first released in a continuous Google'esque Beta mode continue to make them embarrassingly useless.

    For a company that has the engineering staff (I know having been part of it) available to get these basic publishing features included [had these features being served in the '90s in-house at NeXT via WebObjects/EOF 2.x and Openstep] it is truly embarrassing that the enterprise group [assuming it still exists at Apple after I left] could manage to push this and other `simple' text features on the server arrays be added to the JSON objects.
  • Reply 6 of 20
    pmzpmz Posts: 3,433member
    Let's get Photos.app already.
  • Reply 7 of 20
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer View Post





    iCloud services include iCloud Pages. You have a hard time connecting the dots. This site has been obsessed with iCloud Photo web service in an almost obsessive manner, as if another Narcissus service is something valuable. Meanwhile, my former colleagues at Apple Engineering have been sitting on their collective asses and not getting Pages, Keynote, Numbers and more with more parity to their client full apps; simple features that should have been part of the Inspector since it was first released in a continuous Google'esque Beta mode continue to make them embarrassingly useless.



    For a company that has the engineering staff (I know having been part of it) available to get these basic publishing features included [had these features being served in the '90s in-house at NeXT via WebObjects/EOF 2.x and Openstep] it is truly embarrassing that the enterprise group [assuming it still exists at Apple after I left] could manage to push this and other `simple' text features on the server arrays be added to the JSON objects.

    Interesting post. 

     

    People can tell me I'm wrong, but I "feel" that Apple is tinkering, experimenting, and toying around with these services. About 10 years ago a friend said that Apple had its loyal users as guinea pigs because they will put up with anything. Well, now the mass market is buying Apple and they really can't be confusing people.

     

    I gave up on iCloud because of the history of Mobile Me and all of the other stuff in between. You get numb after awhile. Currently, at home we use Picassa and Google backup (which has its own minor confusion: Google Plus vs paid full uploads of Google Drive). And MS OneDrive, which is as simple as simple can ever be. 

     

    Yes, as for Office software, MS has moved very fast to Office 365 and Apple is in the dust with their basic office suite.

     

    Maybe it is because 365 is a revenue generator and Apple iCloud not so much? I don't know.

  • Reply 8 of 20
    bigpicsbigpics Posts: 1,397member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mdriftmeyer View Post





    iCloud services include iCloud Pages. You have a hard time connecting the dots. This site has been obsessed with iCloud Photo web service in an almost obsessive manner, as if another Narcissus service is something valuable. Meanwhile, my former colleagues at Apple Engineering have been sitting on their collective asses and not getting Pages, Keynote, Numbers and more with more parity to their client full apps; simple features that should have been part of the Inspector since it was first released in a continuous Google'esque Beta mode continue to make them embarrassingly useless.



    For a company that has the engineering staff (I know having been part of it) available to get these basic publishing features included [had these features being served in the '90s in-house at NeXT via WebObjects/EOF 2.x and Openstep] it is truly embarrassing that the enterprise group [assuming it still exists at Apple after I left] could manage to push this and other `simple' text features on the server arrays be added to the JSON objects.

     

    Quote:
    Originally Posted by pfisher View Post

     

    Interesting post. 

     

    People can tell me I'm wrong, but I "feel" that Apple is tinkering, experimenting, and toying around with these services. About 10 years ago a friend said that Apple had its loyal users as guinea pigs because they will put up with anything. Well, now the mass market is buying Apple and they really can't be confusing people.

     

    I gave up on iCloud because of the history of Mobile Me and all of the other stuff in between. You get numb after awhile. Currently, at home we use Picassa and Google backup (which has its own minor confusion: Google Plus vs paid full uploads of Google Drive). And MS OneDrive, which is as simple as simple can ever be. 

     

    Yes, as for Office software, MS has moved very fast to Office 365 and Apple is in the dust with their basic office suite.

     

    Maybe it is because 365 is a revenue generator and Apple iCloud not so much? I don't know.


    This is gonna sound a bit incoherent (and it is mostly venting and semi-off-topic), but my head is spinning.... ...and I'll go out on a limb and say I'm not the only long-time user who can sound like a hopeless noob.



    As a "re-switcher" mostly away from Mac (tho' still using my Tiger machine for a few dedicated tasks), and with 25 years plus of considering myself a "power user" I'm totally confused by where Apple's going with iCloud services - and what are any users to make of sorting out all the options like having a free DropBox (morphing into something else beneath my feet, but wonderfully simply in initial conception), OneDrive (a terabyte - tho' barely ever used), Google Drive (I dunno - hate the interface), my paid SugarSync account (also with an interface I don't like and feeling overpriced in this new landscape), and iCloud which only saves Apple created files (outside of photos I think - there's just too many options that have grown up in "just works" land since I last happily lived here to be sure yet)....



    ...and many of Apple's web services have a history of not working out well and constantly turning into other things (plus I never liked iPhoto - managing my photos manually via Photoshop and Tiger's finder, but haven't given in and bought a PS sub on the new Mac yet since I'm mostly snapshooting these days)...

     

    ...so unless this time iCloud's the one for Apple that's compelling and successful, for now I'm still loathe to discard all my previous piecemeal, cross-platformish work in saving and organizing....



    ...My Mac skills also predate Time Machine - and then there's the backup program that manages my Win 7 machine - with a drive holding all the files I've brought to my Mac - which I'd like to keep synced up as a full file set (I have about a TB over the decades) - but don't want to spawn four or five more copies (especially of photos which many services "want to" be my backup for) of in archives that will all be different over time. 

     

    ...and Photos live in a parallel iWorld from iCloud, right?  (None that I imported went into the cloud and I dunno how to get 'em there.) (But I also have thousands automatically uploaded at full res into a Google+ account.... ...which is not part of Google Drive... ...and which have to managed separately from the ones on the phone I copied over to the Mac). 

     

    So between G+, Mac, SugarSync, and I guess future imports into Photo, somewhere in Apple's Cloud realm, a crazy quilt of partial duplication makes me want to tear my hair out.



    Oh, and iCloud is not what iCloud.com is exactly...? Or at all...??



    Too many simples = a complex and bewildering landscape of choices.  Not that'd I go back to the schizophrenic mess that MS is dealing us at the moment. 



    Just in terms of my current info gathering, I'm finding Evernote to be both wonderfully cross-platform, happy in mobile and different desktop OSs, and glad that it has right-click and other kinds of integration into my Mac both in apps and in my browsers. In some ways it's replacing having a file system and storage scheme at all. While both staying out of and never getting in my way.  Unlike Apple's proprietary and limited Notes and the confusing hot mess that is OneNote. 



    I think I'll be happier once I a) buy a copy of something that sounds like it still works as well as ever - i.e., my old Tiger pal, Super-Duper to simply keep cloning an up-to-date-full-and-bootable backup of everything, b) learn how to use Time Machine to keep a versioned backup of all my files, c) get all my data in the two complementary backups they'll give me....



    ...and d) then re-evaluate whether SugarSync, an Apple solution or one of the others is how I wanna go cloud-backup wise... ...taking my mobile devices into account as well (continuing my re-switch by moving to iPhone this fall should help with this)....

     

    ...with the proviso I need multiple PC's at multiple locales (serially, not simultaneously), and have to be able to run a few legacy Windows programs (in Bootcamp or on Parallels on my next Mac when I ditch the Win machine).... ...so know I'll eventually have to figure out how to keep a master set of data simultaneously in sync on both physical and cloud media with the added parameter of multiple computers on different local nets.....



    Just works, my ass.



    Ooog.  I'm getting too old for this.

  • Reply 9 of 20
    xixoxixo Posts: 450member
    Pfisher, mdriftmeyer, agree 100%

    not to mention finding the naked pic of your wife you (thought you) deleted months ago in a cache inside your iPhoto library. Or was that my GF...?
  • Reply 10 of 20
    dacloodacloo Posts: 890member

    Ow I connect the dots, it's just that this thread is about Photos.

    But I completely agree the web versions of Pages and Numbers are lagging behind (and I personally think both the web and the client versions have serious UX issues not present in the previous version + lacking features present in the old versions).

  • Reply 11 of 20
    nolamacguynolamacguy Posts: 4,758member
    iCloud services include iCloud Pages. You have a hard time connecting the dots. This site has been obsessed with iCloud Photo web service in an almost obsessive manner, as if another Narcissus service is something valuable. Meanwhile, my former colleagues at Apple Engineering have been sitting on their collective asses and not getting Pages, Keynote, Numbers and more with more parity to their client full apps; simple features that should have been part of the Inspector since it was first released in a continuous Google'esque Beta mode continue to make them embarrassingly useless.

    For a company that has the engineering staff (I know having been part of it) available to get these basic publishing features included [had these features being served in the '90s in-house at NeXT via WebObjects/EOF 2.x and Openstep] it is truly embarrassing that the enterprise group [assuming it still exists at Apple after I left] could manage to push this and other `simple' text features on the server arrays be added to the JSON objects.

    Ah yes, your former engineers are sitting on their asses all yes. Yes, of course that's it. And golly, I hope your team still exists since your departure as well. How did they cope? Hint: there may be a reason you're "former".
  • Reply 12 of 20
    nolamacguynolamacguy Posts: 4,758member
    wdowell wrote: »
    It is utterly lamentable how appalling the state of photo saving / sharing is. How did they launch iOS 8 with this not all properly sorted and a Mac App for heaven's sake? I know i know it's due but his isn't hard. Flickr , google and even Microsoft have been churning this stuff for years - smarter web apps, more generous storage (basically unlimited). Hell even Amazon seems tk be racing ahead with photos.

    Appalling, huh? Weird I haven't had a problem sharing photos. Not via text, not via email, and even not via the newer shared albums. Somehow I'm able to share them.
  • Reply 13 of 20
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    bigpics wrote: »
    This is gonna sound a bit incoherent (and it is mostly venting and semi-off-topic), but my head is spinning.... ...and I'll go out on a limb and say I'm not the only long-time user who can sound like a hopeless noob.


    As a "re-switcher" mostly away from Mac (tho' still using my Tiger machine for a few dedicated tasks), and with 25 years plus of considering myself a "power user" I'm totally confused by where Apple's going with iCloud services - and what are any users to make of sorting out all the options like having a free DropBox (morphing into something else beneath my feet, but wonderfully simply in initial conception), OneDrive (a terabyte - tho' barely ever used), Google Drive (I dunno - hate the interface), my paid SugarSync account (also with an interface I don't like and feeling overpriced in this new landscape), and iCloud which only saves Apple created files (outside of photos I think - there's just too many options that have grown up in "just works" land since I last happily lived here to be sure yet)....


    ...and many of Apple's web services have a history of not working out well and constantly turning into other things (plus I never liked iPhoto - managing my photos manually via Photoshop and Tiger's finder, but haven't given in and bought a PS sub on the new Mac yet since I'm mostly snapshooting these days)...

    ...so unless this time iCloud's the one for Apple that's compelling and successful, for now I'm still loathe to discard all my previous piecemeal, cross-platformish work in saving and organizing....


    ...My Mac skills also predate Time Machine - and then there's the backup program that manages my Win 7 machine - with a drive holding all the files I've brought to my Mac - which I'd like to keep synced up as a full file set (I have about a TB over the decades) - but don't want to spawn four or five more copies (especially of photos which many services "want to" be my backup for) of in archives that will all be different over time. 

    ...and Photos live in a parallel iWorld from iCloud, right?  (None that I imported went into the cloud and I dunno how to get 'em there.) (But I also have thousands automatically uploaded at full res into a Google+ account.... ...which is not part of Google Drive... ...and which have to managed separately from the ones on the phone I copied over to the Mac). 

    So between G+, Mac, SugarSync, and I guess future imports into Photo, somewhere in Apple's Cloud realm, a crazy quilt of partial duplication makes me want to tear my hair out.


    Oh, and iCloud is not what iCloud.com is exactly...? Or at all...??


    Too many simples = a complex and bewildering landscape of choices.  Not that'd I go back to the schizophrenic mess that MS is dealing us at the moment. 

    Just in terms of my current info gathering, I'm finding Evernote to be both wonderfully cross-platform, happy in mobile and different desktop OSs, and glad that it has right-click and other kinds of integration into my Mac both in apps and in my browsers. In some ways it's replacing having a file system and storage scheme at all. While both staying out of and never getting in my way.  Unlike Apple's proprietary and limited Notes and the confusing hot mess that is OneNote. 


    I think I'll be happier once I a) buy a copy of something that sounds like it still works as well as ever - i.e., my old Tiger pal, Super-Duper to simply keep cloning an up-to-date-full-and-bootable backup of everything, b) learn how to use Time Machine to keep a versioned backup of all my files, c) get all my data in the two complementary backups they'll give me....


    ...and d) then re-evaluate whether SugarSync, an Apple solution or one of the others is how I wanna go cloud-backup wise... ...taking my mobile devices into account as well (continuing my re-switch by moving to iPhone this fall should help with this)....

    ...with the proviso I need multiple PC's at multiple locales (serially, not simultaneously), and have to be able to run a few legacy Windows programs (in Bootcamp or on Parallels on my next Mac when I ditch the Win machine).... ...so know I'll eventually have to figure out how to keep a master set of data simultaneously in sync on both physical and cloud media with the added parameter of multiple computers on different local nets.....


    Just works, my ass.


    Ooog.  I'm getting too old for this.

    Check out Carbon Copy Cloner as well as Time Machine.
  • Reply 14 of 20
    I think Apple is lost on some things. This is one of those things. Very frustrating.
  • Reply 15 of 20
    Does this mean that instead of creating look-alike and function-alike Photo apps for both iOS and MacOS that Apple is moving to an iCloud web app that both platforms access?
  • Reply 16 of 20
    bigpics wrote: »
    Just works, my ass.

    +1

    nolamacguy wrote: »
    iCloud services include iCloud Pages. You have a hard time connecting the dots. This site has been obsessed with iCloud Photo web service in an almost obsessive manner, as if another Narcissus service is something valuable. Meanwhile, my former colleagues at Apple Engineering have been sitting on their collective asses and not getting Pages, Keynote, Numbers and more with more parity to their client full apps; simple features that should have been part of the Inspector since it was first released in a continuous Google'esque Beta mode continue to make them embarrassingly useless.

    For a company that has the engineering staff (I know having been part of it) available to get these basic publishing features included [had these features being served in the '90s in-house at NeXT via WebObjects/EOF 2.x and Openstep] it is truly embarrassing that the enterprise group [assuming it still exists at Apple after I left] could manage to push this and other `simple' text features on the server arrays be added to the JSON objects.

    Ah yes, your former engineers are sitting on their asses all yes. Yes, of course that's it. And golly, I hope your team still exists since your departure as well. How did they cope? Hint: there may be a reason you're "former".

    -1

    Does this mean that instead of creating look-alike and function-alike Photo apps for both iOS and MacOS that Apple is moving to an iCloud web app that both platforms access?

    I think Apple wants to have Photos 'behave' the same on any device you use, bit like iWork apps. All photos are accessible on all Apple devices, and any modification you make gets pushed to all devices. Plus, all modifications can be made on any device, including iCloud.com. Somehow that bothers me, as I don't think a webbrowser can do the same things as a dedicated OSX or iOS app. But I'd love to be surprised by Apple. The often do, just not always in a pleasant way.
  • Reply 17 of 20
    Can someone who is using the beta please explain what features from Aperture are available in Photos? Does it enable non-destructive raw processing? Or is it merely photo organizing/storing?
  • Reply 18 of 20
    bigpicsbigpics Posts: 1,397member
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post





    Check out Carbon Copy Cloner as well as Time Machine.



    Thanks!  CCC at first glance (or re-glance, since I remember the name from years ago as a Mac stand by) looks more full-featured than Super Duper (which always did the simple task of backing up my iBook's internal drive painlessly).  And with a partition (I already have Paragon's NTFS for OS X), looks like I can make stuff available to my Win PC as well as have a bootable system backup.

     

    But this time in I'm trying to dogfood all the included Apple services I eschewed on my first Mac go-round (many new to me) before going to non-Apple solutions, so want to give Time Machine a chance to show what its years of development offer in the way of possibly useful-to-me unique features.... ...despite a few tales of woe from friends. And I'm finding some of the apps and applets more useful than I expected... ...once I discovered a) "Help" (as limited as it is for many apps) functions as a kind of substitute for the lack of manuals and b) that I can get old menu features I've relied on for decades like "Save as..." back by holding down the Option key at least.



    iCloud, though, still seems inherently limited as a data backup solution that would ever mirror all the my files the way I organize 'em.  Still, the proof - for photos at least - will be in the new Photos app when it's released...



    Finally, though, for those who've gone through the evolution of OS X, as each new "simple, intuitive" layer's been added, you've only had to learn one or two new things per iteration.  For me, jumping from a static, part-time use of 10.4 to being full-time on 10.10, there's a whole lot to master.

     

    I remember reading long ago that it's actually easier for many new to computing to learn to use Macs than it is for many switchers to change over, and it's now been true twice for me... ...there's really a different mind set that requires a lot of "unlearning" of Win methods to get fully acclimatized.  It's not quite a one is left brain/one is right brain thing, but kind of in that league....

  • Reply 19 of 20

    Hi everyone,

     

    I hope the new app fixes the utter fail that is slow-motion video. tired of having them revert after resyncing back to the phone through iTunes.

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