Photo Stream makes for a great way to access your freshest snapshots from any of your devices, all without having to dig up a sync cable.

But Photo Stream has its quirks, too—particularly when it comes to how long Photo Stream images are stored in iCloud and on your various iPhones and iPads.

Here’s five things you need to know before wading into Photo Stream, starting with…

1. You’ll need an iCloud account to use it

No iCloud, no Photo Stream. To sign up for a free iCloud account, just visit icloud.com, or you can sign up on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch by tapping Settings, iCloud.
You’ll also need Photo Stream (and iCloud itself) enabled on your various devices.

For iOS devices (assuming they’ve been updated to iOS 5), tap Settings, iCloud, the make sure Photo Stream is switched “on.” On a Mac, launch the latest version of iPhoto, click the iPhoto menu, select Preferences, click the Photo Stream tab, then click the “Enable Photo Stream” checkbox. Windows users, meanwhile, will need to download and install the free iCloud Control Panel.

2. Photo Stream is free

Yes, you’ll need to pony up if you want more than 5 GB of storage in iCloud, but the pictures in your Photo Stream won’t count against your initial allowance. That said…

3. Photos in Photo Stream don’t last forever

By design, your iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch will only store up to 1,000 Photo Stream images at a time, while iCloud will keep only 30 days worth of Photo Stream snapshots on its servers.

Just click the “Save” or “Add To” buttons to save a Photo Stream image permanently.

To save images from your Photo Stream permanently, you’ll need to save them to an album in the Photos app on your iOS device.

Just open the Photo Stream directory, tap the square sharing icon in the top-right corner of the display, select the photos you want to keep, and tap “Add to” (to save pictures to a particular photo album) or the “Save” button (to put them directly into the Camera Roll).

Also, if you have Photo Stream active in iPhoto on your Mac (click the iPhoto menu at the top of the screen, select the Photo Stream tab, then check the Enable Photo Stream box) you can save your Photo Stream images on your desktop—and indeed, iPhoto will import all Photo Stream images automatically, and permanently.

You can also save Photo Stream images to your PC by installing the (aforementioned) iCloud Control Panel for Windows.

Last but not least, remember that the photos you take on a given iPhone or iPad will be saved—permanently—in that device’s Camera Roll.

4. Yes, you can (now, anyway) delete photos from Photo Stream

Photo Stream was saddled with an unusual little quirk when it first went live in the fall of 2011: once an image was uploaded to Photo Stream, it couldn’t be deleted—or at least, not without jumping through several hoops first.

You can now delete any image from Photo Stream in just a few taps.

Well, all that changed thanks to an iOS software update back in March. Now, you can delete a specific image off of Photo Stream—and when you do, it’ll be automatically erased from the Photo Stream of any other iPhones, iPads, or Macs connected to your iCloud account.

To delete a Photo Stream image, just open the Photo Stream album on your device, select the image you want to nix, tap the trash can icon in the corner of the screen, and tap the red “Delete Photo” button. Zap!

5. You can always turn off Photo Stream, at least temporarily

Just go to Settings, iCloud on your iOS device, then switch Photo Stream off. You’ll lose access to the Photo Stream on the device, but it will also stop uploading new snapshots to the Photo Stream.

Turn it back on, and you’ll start uploading pictures to Photo Stream again, but any photos you took while Photo Stream was deactivated will stay on your device instead of floating into iCloud.

Note: This updated and revised article was first published in October 2011.

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First, a little background. Photo Stream, a key feature of Apple’s (relatively) new iCloud service, automatically syncs your latest snapshots between all your various iCloud-connected devices. Snap a picture on your iPhone, for example, and it’ll pop up in the Photo Stream album on your iPad, your Mac, or any other device that you’ve connected to your iCloud account.

Pretty handy, right? But Photo Stream also could be a source of embarrassment for careless shutterbugs—especially those who happen to be sharing Photo Stream with family members. (Not that you have anything to hide, of course.)

Tap the button with the arrow in the top corner of the screen to start deleting photos from Photo Stream.

Until now, anyway, there’s been no easy way to delete a photo from Photo Stream, shy of resetting Photo Stream altogether and then running around and completely deactivating Photo Stream on all your iCloud-connected computers and handsets. (To do so, tap Settings, iCloud, Photo Stream, then hit the “off” switch; you can also temporarily turn off Photo Stream, if you’re so inclined.)

That’s changed—sort of, at least—thanks to iOS 5.1, the new version of the mobile software that powers the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

Updating your device(s) is a fairly straightforward process that shouldn’t take you more than a half-hour or so; check out this related article for a brief how-to. You can also update the desktop version of iPhone for Mac by firing up the Mac App Store.

Once you’ve updated your iPhone, iPad or iPod, you can test-drive the tweaked Photo Stream feature by tapping the Photos icon from your iDevice’s home screen; then, tap Photo Stream to see all your synced photos.

Now, see the small button in the top-right corner of the screen; the one with the arrow? Tap it, then select a photo. At the bottom of the screen, you’ll see a new option: “delete.” Tap the button, tap a secondary “Delete Photo” button to confirm, and poof—the photo’s gone.

Well, almost. Any photos you take after updating your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to iOS 5.1 can indeed be deleted from all your iCloud-connected devices in one fell swoop. But pictures you took prior to the update will only be deleted from the device you’re holding in your hand; the offending photo will still be sitting in the Photo Stream album of all your other iCloud-connected devices.

Update [3/14/12]: In the original version of this article, I wrote that the new “delete” feature in Photo Stream would only let you delete Photo Stream images on a specific device, not your other iCloud-connected devices. As it turns out, that’s only the case for photos taken before updating your handset to iOS 5.1. I’ve corrected the article; my apologies or the goof. (Thanks, mr_lizard13!)

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Greetings, Lost! Yep, you can indeed pick and choose the contacts, calendars, email, and photos you want to share with your better half in iCloud, but the setup can be a bit tricky.

For starters, there’s no such thing as, say, a family or group account in iCloud—that is, you can’t add your wife as a user under your own iCloud ID. Everyone who wants to use iCloud needs their own, individual iCloud account, with their own separate buckets of calendars, contacts, photos, and so on.

And since you mentioned that both you and your wife want to share photos with iCloud’s Photo Stream feature, here’s another thing to consider: you can’t share your Photo Stream with another iCloud user—or at least, not unless you’re both signed in to the same iCloud account.

But while you and your wife can’t share the same Photo Stream between your separate iCloud accounts, you can sign in to two (or more, actually) iCloud accounts at once on your iPhones.

You can sign in two or more iCloud accounts at once on an iPhone, with one acting as the “main” account and the others as sub-accounts.

Confusing, I know, but hang tight. Here we go!

1. First, let your wife sign in to your iCloud account on her iPhone; tap Settings, iCloud, Account, and then enter your iCloud ID and password.
2. Once she’s signed in, go back to the iCloud settings screen and start checking off the items that both you and your wife want to share. In your case, switch Contacts, Calendars, and Photo Stream to “On.” I’d also suggest switching on “Documents & Data” if your wife is using apps such as Keynote and Pages, as well as iCloud Backup. And since she wants her own mail, reminders, booksmarks, and notes, switch all those items of “Off.”
3. Next, your wife will need to sign into iCloud again—except this time, she’ll be signing into her own iCloud account, which will essentially act as a sub-account under your “main” iCloud account on her iPhone. Go back to the main Settings menu, select “Mail, Contacts, Calendars,” “Add Account,” tap the iCloud button, and sign in to your wife’s iCloud account. (If she doesn’t have one yet, tap the “Get a Free Apple ID” button at the bottom of the screen.)
4. All signed in? Now let’s pick the items in your wife’s iCloud account that she wants all to herself. Switch Mail, Reminders, Bookmarks, and Notes to “On.” (I also recommend you turn on Find My iPhone, as well.) You can then switch Calendars and Contacts to “Off.”
5. Now, I’m assuming you and your wife want to share apps, music, and videos from the iTunes store—and if that’s the case, you should both sign in to the same iTunes store account. On your wife’s iPhone, tap Settings, Store, then make sure that the Apple ID listed at the bottom of the page matches the one listed on your iPhone.

That’s it! You and your wife should now be sharing calendars, contacts and photos in iCloud, while keeping separate bookmarks, reminders and notes—and remember, you can always go back to mix and match what you’re sharing in the settings menus for iCloud (for your “main” iCloud account) and Mail, Contacts, and Calendars (for your wife’s sub-account).

Still have more questions? Let me know!

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And if you try to edit or share a photo, you get a curt warning from iPhoto that “you must use the version that has already been imported into your library.”

Ugh.

The problem, it seems, is that Apple considers Photo Stream to be the originals of your latest photos—and you’re not supposed to mess with your originals, right? But while iPhoto automatically makes copies of your Photo Stream pictures and puts them in your photo library, getting to those copies is an annoying, multi-step process.

You can create your own, custom Photo Stream album using iPhoto's "Smart Album" feature.

But here’s the the thing: you can create a “Smart Album” in iPhoto with copies of all your Photo Stream images, which you can edit, share, drag, and delete to your heart’s content. Here’s how to do it.

1. Open iPhoto, click the File menu in the top-left corner of the screen, and select “New Smart Album.”
2. In the window that slides down from the top of the iPhoto interface, type “Photo Stream” (or whatever you’d like to call your new album) in the “Smart Album name” field.
3. Next, in the “Match the following condition” section, click the drop down menu that reads “Album” and select “Any Text.”
4. The second drop-down menu should read “contains”; if it does, just leave it—that’s what we want.
5. In the last, blank field, type “Photo Stream,” then click the OK button. Done!

Now, look in the left-hand column of iPhoto, under the Albums section; you should see a new “smart” album called Photo Stream. Click it, and you’ll see all the images in your Photo Stream, past and present, and you can edit or share them in just a few clicks.

Have more Photo Stream questions? Let me know!

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Liz writes: So I turned on Photo Stream on my iPhone and it’s filling up with pictures, but I read that the photos in my Photo Stream get deleted after 30 days. What’s the best way to save them before they get deleted?

Hi Liz! Yes, you’re right: the pictures in your Photo Stream will be deleted from your iCloud account after 30 days, while your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch will only keep the latest 1,000 Photo Stream snapshots.

The good news, though, is that saving your Photo Stream images forever is easy—and in some cases, it even happens automatically.

Related: 5 things you need to know about Photo Stream

So, here’s the first thing to keep in mind: whenever you take a photo with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, your snapshot is saved not only to your Photo Stream but also to the Camera Roll—and the pictures in your Camera Roll never get delated, or at least not until you tap the “Delete” button. In other words, if you take a picture on your iPhone, it’ll stay on your iPhone until you manually delete it.

OK, but what if you’re sharing Photo Stream with your significant other and you want to save the snapshots that he took on his iPhone? Here’s how:

1. Open the Photos app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, then tap Photo Stream.
2. See the little square with the arrow in the top-right corner of the screen? Tap it, then start tapping the photos you’d like to save on your device.
3. When you’re finished selecting photos, tap the Save button to save them to your Camera Roll, or tap Add To to save them to a new or existing photo album.

Just enable Photo Stream in iPhoto to automatically save all your Photo Stream images to your Mac.

And one more thing: if you’re using Photo Stream with iPhoto on your Mac or the iCloud control panel for Windows, all your Photo Stream pictures will be saved automatically—and permanently—to your system’s hard drive.

For iPhoto, you’ll need to turn on Photo Stream sharing by clicking the iPhone menu at the top of the screen; then, select Preferences, click the Photo Stream tab, and check the boxes next to “Enable Photo Stream” and “Automatic Import.”

(Note: I don’t recommend checking the “Automatic Upload” box, since that entails uploading to Photo Stream each and every new photo you import into iPhoto—meaning you could tie up your broadband connection for hours the next time you import, say, a couple hundred high-resolution pictures from your digital camera.)

For Windows users, just download, install, and launch the free iCloud control panel, check the box next to Photo Stream, then select the directory into which you’d like your Photo Stream images to be automatically downloaded.

Got more Photo Stream questions? Let me know!

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Hi Jeffrey! Excellent question—and indeed, it’s one my wife and I had to tackle with our own iPhones.

As it turns out, you don’t need the same iTunes Store account to share photos using Photo Stream—but you will need to share an iCloud account.

Confused yet?

First, a little background for those who aren’t familiar will all things Photo Stream. One of the key features in Apple’s new online iCloud service, Photo Stream tries to solve the problem of syncing photos between your various iDevices.

Once you have Photo Stream set up, you can take a picture on your iPhone, and it will automatically (and wirelessly) appear on your iPad, your Mac, or any other device that you’ve connected to your iCloud account. (Yes, Windows PCs will work with iCloud, but not Android phones or other smartphones with names that don’t begin with a lowercase “i”.)

Related: 5 things you need to know about Photo Stream

But while Photo Stream will sync photos between your various devices, it isn’t intended to be a social photo-sharing service; in other words, there’s no way to “subscribe” to someone else’s Photo Stream.

In practical terms, that means anyone who wants to share their Photo Stream with someone else will also have to share their iCloud account—a cozy arrangement that’s probably better left only for immediate family members or the closest, most trusting of friends.

So, here’s how it works in my family. I have an iCloud account that both my wife and I share; if you go to Settings, iCloud on my wife’s iPhone, you’ll find the Apple ID for my iCloud account. And since we both have Photo Stream enabled on both our handsets, any picture that one of us takes on our iPhone will, a few seconds later, pop up in the Photo Stream folder of the other.

What about the email, contacts and events in my iCloud account? Well, my wife and I share our contacts and calendars, too, although not email (she uses her own Yahoo! Mail account, while I use Gmail).

Now, my better half and I could use the same iCloud account without mingling our calendars, contacts, and mail; all you have to do is switch those features off in the iCloud settings on our iPhones. However, you can’t prevent someone who’s logged into your iCloud account from sharing your mail, calendars, and contacts. It’s something to keep in mind before you starting letting all your friends log into your iCloud account for the sake of Photo Stream.

Remember, too, that once a photo is shared through Photo Stream, it’s not easy to unshare it—meaning that if you accidentally snap a picture of a surprise holiday gift for your wife (and yes, there are other scenarios I can imagine that aren’t quite as sweet), you won’t be able to delete the snapshot from her phone unless you turn off Photo Stream manually on her iPhone. Update: Thanks to a recent iOS software upgrade, you now can delete individual pictures from Photo Stream. Read this article for more details.

OK, so what about your iTunes Store account? Well, this is where it gets (more) confusing.

If you’re new to all things iPhone and iTunes, it’s possible to sign up for a single Apple ID that will sign you into iCloud and manage your iTunes purchase. But many of us longtime iPhone users have, over the years, ended up with different Apple IDs and iTunes Store accounts—and no, you can’t merge them.

That said, you can sign in to iCloud and the iTunes Store using different accounts on a single iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch—and that means you and your wife could, theoretically, use different iTunes acccounts on your phones while still sharing an iCloud account (and, hence, Photo Stream).

Of course, whether you and your wife actually want or need different iTunes accounts is another question; my wife and I, for example, happily share an iTunes account, all the better for sharing purchased apps, music, and videos.

Bottom line: yes, you can share Photo Stream with someone else, but only if you share your iCloud account too—and you probably shouldn’t share your iCloud account with just anyone.

Still have questions? Let me know!

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Update: Good news. Thanks to an update to Apple’s mobile iOS software, you now can delete photos from Photo Stream. Read this article for more details.

That said, you can temporarily disable Photo Stream on your iPhone or iPad, snap or save the images you don’t want shared in iCloud, and then turn Photo Stream back on.

Here’s how you do it.

• On your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, tap Settings, iCloud, Photo Stream, and switch Photo Stream off.
• Once you hit the “Off” switch, all the Photo Stream pictures saved on your device will be automatically deleted. (Keep in mind, though, that the deleted Photo Stream images are all still sitting in your iCloud account, as well as on any other devices or systems connected to your iCloud account that have Photo Stream enabled.)
• Go ahead and snap some photos or save an image from the mobile Safari browser (which you can do by tapping and holding an image, then tap the “Save Image” button that appears).
• All done? Now go back to Settings, tap iCloud, and switch Photo Stream back on. Any Photo Stream images saved in iCloud will be re-downloaded to your device (assuming you’re in Wi-Fi range), but the photos you took while Photo Stream was disabled won’t be uploaded.
• To make sure everything’s working property again, take another photo; the new snapshot should be shared automatically in Photo Stream.

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