ICloud Photo Streams is a handy service for sharing photos and videos with friends, and for protecting your photos from accidental deletion.
A photo stream is a collection of your photos and videos residing on Apple servers. With Photo Streams, you can share your photos with friends and family from anywhere in the world.
For example, you can create a Venice Vacations photo stream, share it with your spouse and work colleagues, and gradually add photos there. No more flash drives and other inconveniences - your friends will be able to view photos on their computer, iPhone or iPad, as well as comment on them or add your own photos, if, of course, you allow them.
You can also enable a special photostream called My Photostream. It stores all the photos you took in the last 30 days. You cannot add anything to it on your own - it is only needed so that you can restore photos in case of loss of your phone.
To use Photo Streams on iOS go to Settings - iCloud - Photos (Photo Stream for iOS 6) and turn on Photo Streams.
To use Photo Streams on a Windows computer, install the iCloud Control Panel.
To share your photos, create a new photo stream (via the standard Photos application), then click the Users button at the bottom right and add your friends here. Here you can also turn on the "Public website" menu and get a link by clicking on which anyone can view your photos from any device, for example, from a computer running Windows.
Adding photos from a PC is no different than copying files to a folder. For iOS devices, too, nothing is difficult - similar to sending photos via iMessage, select a photo and send it, but not to Messages, but to iCloud.
IOS 7 users have another photo stream in the Photos app called Activity. All new events from all photo streams (photos, videos, comments) are automatically added to it.
And, of course, photo streams have their own limitations:
1. You can create no more than 100 Photo Streams.
2. Each photo stream can store no more than 5000 photos.
3. Limitations on the number of added photos per hour / day / month (see “Limitations of photo streams” at the end of the article).
4. Photos are not added to photo streams immediately, but only (which is quite logical) when connected to 3G, Wi-Fi or syncing with iTunes. Therefore, while on vacation or business trip, order unlimited internet in your room or visit a cafe with free Wi-Fi more often, so that your precious photos are always safe.
You can only add videos to photo streams from devices with iOS 7.
