I have a real hot tip for you today about sharing photos (and videos!) to your heart’s content without bombarding everyone’s feeds and annoying all your friends.

Note: This particular tip is for iPhone only. I’ve never had an android phone or free access to one so I can’t provide any tips for my android peeps. Sorry!

So. If you have an iPhone then you’re all set to do this. I’m talking about the magic of iCloud Photo Sharing.

It’s magic ’cause…

• It’s easy. No need to transfer photos, no creating new accounts on yet another platform, none of that.
• You only share with select people. And you can allow them to share their photos in your album too. This is great for documenting trips and events.

Here’s how you get started with iCloud Photo Sharing

• Open your Photos app.
• Select the Shared tab at the bottom center.
  There’s Photos, Shared and Albums tabs in the main view. You wanna select the middle one.
• Select + in the top left corner. Now you can create your own shared album.
• Name your shared album, fx. Road Trip Fall 2015, and proceed to add participants. Then select Create.
• Boom! Done! You have a fresh new photo album.

Now the participants you invited need to accept the invitation before they can access the album and interact. But you don’t need to wait for that. You can get sharing right away!

Here’s how you share photos on iCloud Photo Sharing

• Simply open the Photos app and go to your Camera Roll.
  If you can’t find it it’s in the Albums tab at the bottom right of the main view.
• Find a photo or video you want to share and select the sharing icon (the little box with the arrow going up) in the bottom left of the screen.
• Now select iCloud Photo Sharing from the list.
• Add a comment* to the photo or video if you want and be sure you have the right iCloud album selected to share in in case you have multiple albums. It will usually remember to post to the album you posted in previously.
• Select Post. That’s it!

*Note: Comments (or captions) can only be like 250 characters long. The app will not tell you if you surpassed that number of characters, it will simply not include the caption at all. Not cool, Photos app, but I will forgive you because you RULE at everything else. So keep those captions short, folks.

Bonus Tip! Use photos from iCloud Photo Sharing in your Collect app for easy Project Life-ing

Yes, you can totally access the photos from the iCloud albums and add them to your Collect albums too. This is so awesome because now you can include other people’s photos in your Project Life without having to bother them to send you photos or try to grab badly over-compressed images off Facebook or Instagram.

You can get Collect in the app store for very little $$ if that’s your jam. It sure is my jam!

Here’s what you do:

• Open the Collect app.
• Select a date to start adding a photo. In the ‘Add photo from‘ pop up menu select Photo Library.
• It will take you to your Camera Roll per default. Instead you wanna select Albums in the very top left corner.
• Now select you iCloud Photo Sharing album from the list. It will appear with the name you gave it. Mine is called Familien i Nyborg, as you can tell in the photo above.
• Now you can browse and select the photos from your shared album just like you would with your normal Camera Roll. Enjoy!

Bonus Bonus Tip: Notice the blue triangle in the corner of the photos when you’re browsing via Collect? All photos with the blue triangle are taken on the date you selected in the Collect calendar view. This makes it super easy to make sure you select a photo from a particular day and don’t get it all mixed up for your Project Life. Fancy, huh!

I love Collect. Can’t say that enough. And I LOVE iCloud Photo Sharing. It’s been a game changer since having my son and wanting to flood the grandparents with photos – without annoying all my friends on Facebook and Instagram.

Hope this was helpful to you. I sure wish I’d have known about this built-in feature a long time ago.

Happy sharing!

xo Nina