Even if you don’t use iCloud Photos, you can still benefit from iCloud Photo Sharing via shared albums. When you share an album with Apple device users, they can access the album directly in their Photos app and share as well.

For others, you can still share pictures via a website from which they can easily download the ones they want.

Select & Share

First, make sure Shared Albums is enabled on your Mac in Photos Preferences > iCloud or on your iOS device in Settings > Apple ID > iCloud > Photos. Then, select one or more photos you want to share, or go to an existing album you want to share entirely. Tap Share and choose Shared Albums.

You might not know that Photos is really good at recognizing images in your pictures that fall into specific categories. In this example, I searched for Food and Photos located 168 pictures, most of which it correctly identified contain food. I selected four photos for my new shared album of Breakfast Beauty.

Name Album

If you’re creating a new shared album, all you need to do is name it. You have the option of inviting people to the album, enabling folks with Apple devices to easily pull pictures they want into their library and even add their own photos to your album. You can also do this later.

Settings & Sharing

Once you’ve created a shared album, it will appear in the Shared Albums area of the Photos sidebar on macOS and in the Shared Albums area of Albums in Photos on iOS. Open a shared album and you’ll see a People option on the toolbar.

You can once again choose whether you want to invite Apple users to the album. You can also publish the album on a “public website” and iCloud will provide a link you can share.

This is only as public as you make it. That is, a random person won’t be able to find it but anyone with the link will see the pictures you published.

If you are planning to take photos that you will want to share, you can also create a shared album in advance and add pictures to it later. Just as well, you can subsequently add pictures to a shared album you started previously.

On both macOS and iOS, the Add ⊕ option is available in the Shared Albums area; on iOS, it’s hidden in Edit mode. When sharing, just select an existing shared album as the destination.

Have more questions about sharing photos? Just ask.