Sharing Photo Streams

The Photo Stream feature is a generally terrific and hassle-free way for you to make sure the pictures you shoot end up on your devices without you fretting about how they land there. But Apple in its infinite wisdom recognizes that you also might want to share your best images with friends and family and have those pictures automatically show up on their devices. An impressive and aptly named solution called Shared Photo Streams arrived on the iPhone with iOS 6 (and a bit earlier on Macs running OS X Mountain Lion). The feature lets you share pictures with other folks and also subscribe to the shared photo streams that they make available to you.

Here’s how to create a shared photo stream for the first time:

1. On the Home screen, tap Settings.

2. Scroll down and tap Photos & Camera.

3. Tap the Shared Photo Streams option so that On is showing.

4. Display your photos by opening the Photos app or the Camera app. Then do one of the following:

• From the view showing thumbnails of all your pictures in the camera roll or another album, tap the Photo Stream icon at the bottom of the screen.

• Tap an individual photo to select it. In the picture controls, tap the action icon (shown in the margin) and then tap the Photo Stream option. (If you don’t see the picture controls, tap the image.)

5. Because this is the first time you’ll be creating a photo stream, type a name for it in the name field that appears (see Figure 9-6, left).

If you’ve already created one or more shared photo streams, you’ll have the option to add the picture or pictures you’ve selected to an existing photo stream. To create a new photo stream, tap the New Photo Stream option.

6. Type the e-mail addresses of each person to whom you want to send your photo stream or tap the + button and add names from your contacts. Then tap Next.

Your friends will get an e-mail inviting them to view the shared photo stream, as shown in Figure 9-6, right.

You can share your photo stream with everyone through a public gallery on iCloud.com. To do that, flip the Public Website switch to On (refer to Figure 9-6, left).

7. If you want, enter a comment. Then tap Post.

Figure 9-6: Stream pictures to chosen friends.