How do I force iPhoto to download new photos in my Photo Stream?

Question

I'm listing some items for sale online, and have taken a bunch of pictures with my iPhone. About half-way through the process, iPhoto '11 stopped downloading new photos into its local Photo Stream. I've quit iPhoto and re-opened it. I've gone into the Photos app on my iPhone and confirmed all the pictures are there.

Is this normal behavior? Is there any way to tell iPhoto to download my pictures?

Answer 1

I have found a better way. One that doesn't involve resync'ing the entire stream.

1. Quit iPhoto
2. Open up Activity Monitor
3. In the search field enter: photostreamagent
4. Select all the PhotoStreamAgent processes listed
5. Click the Quit Process button
6. In the confirmation dialog that pops up click the Quit button
7. Confirm that all the PhotoStreamAgent processes are no longer alive by waiting for the Activity Monitor window to show no processes with that name
8. Re-start iPhoto

When you restart iPhoto it will re-start the PhotoStreamAgent process for your iPhoto session and kick off a new Photo Stream sync. You'll get your lastest pictures updated and you won't have to sit through a full re-sync of all your Photo Stream.

Answer 2

In iPhoto, turn Photo Stream off then on.

Go to Preferences > Photo Stream. Uncheck "Enable Photo Stream". Close the preferences window. Click Photo Stream in the left-hand navigation pane and confirm there are no photos. Turn Photo Stream back on in preferences (check "Enable Photo Stream"). After a few seconds, iPhoto will start to download all the photos again. Depending on the number of photos, and your bandwidth, it may take awhile.