iCloud & Photos

It’s important to know about the differences between options found in the iCloud tab of Photos’ prefs. My Photo Stream is for accessing recent photos on devices not using iCloud Photo Library; it contains images from the last 30 days, and it costs nothing. iCloud Photo Sharing is also free, and is for sharing select images with other people.

iCloud Photo Library stores full-quality originals of all your photos online. This can quickly use up the storage in your iCloud account, though; to get more, click Manage in System Preferences > iCloud. Your devices can be set to download either the originals or versions optimized for their screen.