iCloud.com’s Photos web app gets image zoom function and sharing via email

iCloud Photos Beta (upload functionality 001)

German enthusiast blog iFun.de has spotted a pair of useful additions concerning the Photos web app on iCloud.com.

Two new features, which were added over the weekend, let you zoom in on an image via a new slider in the toolbar and send photos as email attachments directly from the web UI.

Previously, sharing via email was a tedious multi-step process where you had to download a photo to your computer before attaching it to an email message using a third-party desktop email application or a webmail service.

Log in to iCloud.com, choose the Photos icon and click on any photo in your iCloud Photo Library. You’ll notice a new slide in the toolbar at the top.

iCloud Photos zoom web screenshot 002

Drag the slider to zoom in on the image up to 400 percent. It’s much like pinch-zooming on an iPhone: you’re merely examining finer detail of the image, not cropping/resizing it. You can also pan around the image by holding down the mouse button and dragging the pointer around.

iCloud Photos zoom web screenshot 001

To share the image via email, first o back to the Moments/Albums view and choose Select Photos in the toolbar. Now click one or more photos before clicking the new Email option in the toolbar.

iCloud Photos email web screenshot 003

Up pops the compose window with a progress bar indicating the upload progress.

iCloud Photos email web screenshot 002

After Photos finishes sending image attachments to iCloud Mail, you’ll be able to choose your recipient from Contacts, or type an email address in the TO field if the recipient isn’t in your address book. Provide an optional headline in the subject field and click Send.

iCloud Photos email web screenshot 001

This feature uses iCloud Mail infrastructure so you’ll need to have an email address on the me.com or iCloud.com domain set up in your Apple ID.

As opposed to sharing via email through the native iOS Photos app that has a rather annoying five-photos-per-message limit, the web app lets you email as many photos as you like, as long as the size of your message does not exceed Apple’s 20MB limit.

On the downside, the web app won’t optimize the attachments by offering to resize the photos like its iOS counterpart does.

Source: iCloud Photos via iFun.de (Google Translate)