My second day transferring my iPhoto library to iCloud Photo Library seems to be going very well. The “optimize storage” feature on the iOS devices is going to save users a ton of space.

Yesterday when I posted my last entry I had a 16GB iPad completely full (which was roughly 7GB of photos.) When I returned, all the photos had been uploaded to iCloud, and returned 5GB of space. No matter what I throw at this (and I have about 19GB of images in iCloud now) the devices sit around 2GB utilized for photo storage.

When photos further back in the catalog that are not currently on the device are accessed, they’re retrieved from the cloud in full resolution.

I’m only about 1/5th the way through my library. I’ve been doing it in chunks as I have time, because during the upload process I tend to fully saturate my 5Mb upstream home connection.

If you’ve not turned on iCloud Photo Library yet, even if you don’t intend to do as I’m doing and dump everything into it, you’re really missing out.