Must shared photo streams take up space on our Macs?

I understand we get these nice Albums that can be synced across all our devices, that live in iCloud, and whose space is somehow magically managed so they don't hog our iPhones and iPads (right?).
But they do get downloaded to iPhoto and Aperture. So if we have a small MacBook Air or even a newest 15" Retina MBP with 256 GB SSD, space is going to matter.
Any thoughts of enlightenment? Ideas how this is best managed?
Thanks!

Welcome to the Apple Community.
When someone shares a photo stream with me and I join it, does it take up memory on my iPhone?
Yes.
Also, if I have a photo stream that I have shared are those photos taking double the amount of space since they are in my camera roll and shared photo stream?
Not double exactly, photo stream photos synced to mobile devices are synced at lower resolution than the original, but yes the photo is stored twice.

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Does photo stream take up space on my iPod?

does photo stream take up space on my iPod?

They may if you delete the photos from your Camera Roll album but leave them in your PhotosStream album.
Otherwise not. There is only one copy of the photos on the iPod but you can access it either from your Camera Roll or PhotoStream albums.

Why is my shared photo stream taking up space on my iPhone when I have turned off photo sharing?

I have an iPhone 5c with iOS 8.3. It's only an 8GB iPhone, so I only have about 5.2GB of space to use. So I have to be very picky about what stays and what goes on my iPhone. Photos is one of those things that don't stay on my phone long. I have deleted all of my pictures out of my albums (both camera roll and recently deleted) and there can be no photos found in my library. In settings, I turned off all photo sharing capabilities, so I shouldn't be getting shared photos from family members on my phone and stuff. So why does my storage say that shared photo stream is taking up 54.6MB? I would like it to say 0MB. Am I missing something? I've included a couple screenshots to help clarify things. Thanks for your help!

This is what I mean. I'm seeing the 3.9 KB usage for Photo Stream under General>UIsage>Photos and Camera, nothing to do with the storage on iCloud and I have Photo Stream and everything to do with iCloud and photo sharing off. However, I may have had Photo Stream on before for a few weeks before I turned it off long ago. Could that data/used space just be a few photos that were once in Photo Stream before I turned it off if I've had it on before?

Shared photo stream uncontrollably eats space?

With shared photo streams, the consumer (or person shrared too) does not have the ability that I can find to ignore or delete certain photos. Nor can I find a way to set a timelimit for them to disappear/be removed from your iOS devices.
Since you can't just subscribe on one device (if you subscribe, and have photo stream on any device, all devices get the shared streams) how is one supposed to limit/manage the amount of space that shared streams consume?
Looking at my iOS devices, I have a huge amount of "Other" space being consumed when looking using iPhone Explorer, seems to be photo related. My guess is photo streams. Is this a correct assumption? or does photo stream do something intelligent like if they photo hasn't been accessed on X days, delete the local copy?
Is they only way to ask the publisher of the stream to clean up their stuff?
Seems a bit braindead if this is as it appears. Hope to see imporvements with space management in iOS7.
Karl

apple.com/feedback

Shared photo streams don't sync videos on mac.

I have a shared photo stream from a friend.
Videos sync on my phone but not into my iphoto on my mac.
Any ideas why?

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts4379
You need 9.5

Will photos in Photo Stream take up space in the device?

This is somewhat of an awkward comment but I have been hearing complaints about not being able to delete photos in Photo Stream, and althoguh I am aware photos in Photo Stream are in the Cloud, would they take any space in the device's hard drive? Just to confirm, thanks.

Yes, images in Photo Stream do use device storage. You might wish to consider downloading them on a computer (assuming that is an option) or using a cloud service such as Box or DropBox to back them up. In any event, if these images are important to you, you do need to move them to a permanent storage option.
this may also provide some useful information: iCloud: My Photo Stream FAQ

Can IPTC metadata be included in Shared Photo Streams?

I was surprised that my version name and all IPTC data such as my ratings, key words, etc. are not appearing in my Shared Photo Streams. Is there any way to include this metadata?

Since you are seeing the Shared Photo Stream Albums in Aperture, but empty, you have all preferences set up correctly.
Aperture or iPhoto should be filling the albums from the folder I mentioned, but they cannot, because this folder is empty.
There may be two reasons for this folder being empty. Either the Photostreamagent is not running or you may be having a permissions problem with your home folder.
Have you tried to toggle the Photo Sharing off and on again in the System Preferences, as described here in this link? iCloud: Troubleshooting iCloud Photo Sharing and Shared Photo Stream
You could also try if removing the empty folder ~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub-shared and restarting the Mac will help.
As a test you could try, if the Shared Photo Stream will work in Safe Mode: Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode
If all fails, launch the Console from the Applications folder and check, if there are any error messages relating to "photostreamagent".

Can't see pics in Shared Photo Streams

On my iMac, I see "My Photo Stream," which is populated with pictures and working correctly. I also see grey cloud icons for numerous shared Photo Streams that were either shared by me or by others. However, no photos are loading for any of those shared Photo Streams.
Notably, on my devices (2 iPads and 1 iPhone), I can see all of the photos with no trouble. And when I recently upgraded to iPhone 6, the Photo Streams immediately worked, which suggests to me that the photos do exist in iCloud.
Does anyone have thoughts as to why this is not working on my iMac?

Since you are seeing the Shared Photo Stream Albums in Aperture, but empty, you have all preferences set up correctly.
Aperture or iPhoto should be filling the albums from the folder I mentioned, but they cannot, because this folder is empty.
There may be two reasons for this folder being empty. Either the Photostreamagent is not running or you may be having a permissions problem with your home folder.
Have you tried to toggle the Photo Sharing off and on again in the System Preferences, as described here in this link? iCloud: Troubleshooting iCloud Photo Sharing and Shared Photo Stream
You could also try if removing the empty folder ~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/assets/sub-shared and restarting the Mac will help.
As a test you could try, if the Shared Photo Stream will work in Safe Mode: Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode
If all fails, launch the Console from the Applications folder and check, if there are any error messages relating to "photostreamagent".

Is there a way to not have photo stream photos save to my iphone? i have many shared photo streams hoping to not bog down my iphone space. but alas the photos are are being saved on my iphone.

Is there a way to not have photo stream photos save to my iphone? i have many shared photo streams hoping to not bog down my iphone space. but alas the photos are are being saved on my iphone.
For example. When I share a photo stream with my dad and brother and mother all the photos they are putting in the shared photo stream are taking up space on my iphone! I'll be out of space in no time at this rate.

hi, this thread already deals with the issue:
How can I prevent getting calls from number that are not in my address book?

I have a shared photo stream, are those shared photos taking up space on the i devices of the people I am sharing with?

I am getting conflicting answers about this question, which to me it seems like a simple no since these photos sit on another server. Now if the person I am sharing with decides to download some photos then yeah it's taking up space on their i device. But if they dont and are simply viewing my shared photo stream my though is that those photos do no eat up space on their i device.

How much space depends on the size of the photos and how many there are.
Settings > general > usage > photos & camera. The shared albums will be included along with other photos.

HT201077 Shared Photo Streams do not upload full sized photos!

Oh boy, so it seems that Apple's "optimized for your device" policy with photos has reared its ugly head again (PLEASE, just give us an option for optimizing the size or leaving it the original size like you do for compressing songs to 128kps on our devices!!!!)! The addition of Shared Photo Streams seemed a godsend to me, as prior to iOS 6, my wife's iPhone was stuck in this iCloud ID ghetto, where her device's main account was mine so that we shared the same Photo Stream. This way, when I went into Aperture on the Mac to process and import photos to our home library, all of our mobile pictures were in one place. This came with the consequence that the other "main" iCloud features, such as (inexplicably) Safari syncing, were unusable to her as they were from my personal settings. So once shared Photo Streams came about, I thought "Perfect! Now I can just share all of my photos to her iCloud ID, and then all of our combined pictures will show up in Aperture!" The problem is that, when I looked at the pictures on the Mac from the shared photo stream, they only were available at the "optimized" 3 megapixel resolution for iPhone, not the original 8 megapixel pictures are the photos from the main iCloud ID ones are. This is a huge deal for two reasons, 1. I can't import and process these pictures for saving permanently they're more than HALF the original resolution, 2. Anyone that I share photos to, friends, family, who want to maybe save those to their computer for printing and whatnot, are ALSO stuck with a halfbaked low resolution file!
I did have the a-ha idea, that perhaps if I shared photos from Aperture on my mac to my wife's Photo Stream, perhaps it would then share the full resolution photo as that's what Aperture gets from iCloud's servers. Alas, no, still the shared photo stream only gets the compromised file. There has GOT to be a way for the full resolution pics to be shared, otherwise the service is nearly useless to me! As far as I knew, shared photostreams just link to the original files, so it's not like this will take up any more space on Apple's servers. If someone has a solution, let me know!
The only other solution is to allow the use of more than one Photostream account on a Mac with Aperture. I feel that this is a no-brainer, and a little silly. Either you provide family style iCloud accounts for uses like Photo Stream, or you accept that every iOS user in a family will have their own Photo Stream. This means that they need to be able to be accessed on the same family computer.

I have this same issue except with iPhoto. We each have our own computers and I thought the shared photostream would allow us to each have all the photos, but they aren't full sized.

Shared photo streams no longer updating in iPhoto since Yosemite upgrade

I just noticed that new photos are not being downloaded to the shared photo streams in iPhoto on my iMac. I am getting all new photos in my iPhone and iPad... just not on the iMac.
Anyone encountered this or have any solutions?

Disable Photo Stream in the System/iCloud preference pane
and in iPhoto's Photo Stream preference pane.
Reboot and reenable both respectively. That should jump start Photo Streams.
If the above doesn't work this method posted by user Willis I Am might do the job for you:
Willis I Am
Re: photostream not working on my mac
Sep 9, 2013 2:05 PM (in response to gtbissell)
I do not know if anyone ever runs into this issue anymore, but the Apple Engineers helped me fix this recently.
They had me do the following:
Turn off Photo Stream in your user account: (second screenshot above)
Quit iPhoto
Goto System Preferences > iCloud > Uncheck Photo Stream.l (first screenshot above)
Close System Preferences
Then deleting the entire ~/Library/Application Support/iLifeAssetManagement/ directory.
Open Terminal and type in cd Library
then type open . (open space period)
navigate to Application Support and delete the iLifeAssetManagement folder.
quit terminal
Then turn photo stream back on in their photo library.
open iPhoto and click on Photo stream in the left column.
enable photo stream.
It will take some time to download the cached photos but this resolved my problem of having 0 display and no photos in the "My Photo Stream" area when any of my other devices showed new photo stream photos without any problems.

Shared photo stream quality issue

Shared photo stream FAQ states that:
"Shared Photo Streams supports JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and most RAW photo formats. On your Mac or PC, your photos are downloaded and stored in full resolution. On your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Apple TV, your Photo Stream photos are delivered in a device-optimized resolution that speeds downloads and saves storage space. While actual dimensions will vary, an optimized version of a photo taken by a standard point-and-shoot camera will have a 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution when pushed to your devices. Panoramic photos can be up to 5400 pixels wide."
Since I'm a little OCD about photo organization, I collect and organize all the photos my girlfriend and I take. She shares all of her picture from her iPhone 5s on a shared photo stream and I import them to iPhoto on my MBP. However, I have just realized to my great surprise that all her picture were downgraded in 2048 x 1536, even though I have downloaded them to my Mac. Anyone has the same issue or has any idea what is going on? The FAQ clearly said that they would be downloaded in full definition, but they aren't, which is really annoying as we often do large books for which the higher resolution is necessary, not to mention my retina display screen and 4K monitor.
the FAQ

You should double check your and your daughter's icloud ID as currently set, because what you describe happens when two people share the same icloud account (and I assume you are talking about a "photo stream" and not a "shared photo stream").
Settings>icloud, be sure the accounts are different.

Max # of pictures in a shared photo stream - Data usage?

Is there a limited number of pictures you can put into a shared photo stream. I know with the regular its 1k, is that the limit for the shared ones as well. Or can I create a photo stream with my entire photo library and have it all backed up on icloud.
Seperately how much data does shared photo streams use. Is it essentially downloading/uploading every photo to each device even over cellular connections. Its not a huge deal, but I'd rather not use up my data because a friend dropped 500 pictures of their dog into a shared stream. (But I do like dogs) Also does it take up space on your phone or is it all just held at the cloud level and you are essentially downloading it each time you look at it?

According to Apple's documentation, there's no limit (I still find that hard to accept, but they have said so). You mention using is as a backup - NEVER rely on icloud for backing up photos, ALWAYS sync then to a computer for safekeeping and storage, as you would save photos from a camera. Too many users have lost photos performing restores from an icloud backup.
Apple's docs indicate that shared photo streams do not count towards your icloud storage limit (also hard to believe, but there you go). Friends cannot add photos to your stream, they can only make comments.
icloud stores the photos and downloads them individually when you tap on a thumbnail pic. Note that you have no control over the sorted appearance of the photos.
http://www.tuaw.com/2012/09/20/ios-6-shared-photo-streams/
http://www.apple.com/ios/whats-new/#photostream

Shared Photo Stream Phone Storage

Hi,
If I or a family member share a photo or video to a shared photo stream, is that going to take away storage space on my phone?

I think the iCloud Photo Sharing Photos and Videos are only downloaded and kept on the device until it is near full. Then the shared photos and videos get marked for deletion until the shared photo stream is looked at again.
If the user wants to permanently keep the photos or videos on their device, they will have to save them to their camera roll.

Must shared photo streams take up space on our Macs?

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