OS X Mountain Lion: What is Photo Stream?

Photo Stream is the iCloud service that uploads and stores the last 30 days of your photos and automatically pushes them to your iOS devices and computers. You can view your recent photos on all your devices without having to sync—all you have to do is turn on Photo Stream.

Here’s how Photo Stream works:

• First, set up Photo Stream on any device that you want to be part of your Photo Stream.

• Then, take a photo with your iOS device, or import photos from your digital camera to your Mac, iPad, or Windows computer.

• The photos you take or import are automatically uploaded to your photo stream.

• The photos appear in your photo stream on each device: in the Photos app on your iOS devices; in iPhoto or Aperture on a Mac; in the Pictures folder on a Windows computer; or in the Photo Stream view on your Apple TV.

iCloud stores your new photos for 30 days so your devices have plenty of time to connect and download the photos. Your iOS devices keep a rolling collection of your last 1000 photos. You can save your favorite shots to your Camera Roll or any other album to keep them on your device permanently. Because your computers have more storage, they can keep all your photo stream photos.