Dropbox is an app that helps you keep your digital documents, photos and videos organized.
1. Dropbox can be installed on PCs or MACs and while it is intended for business teams to collaborate on files and documents, it is becoming much more photo friendly. Dropbox Plus is $155.88/yr for 2 TB of storage space.
2. Dropbox saves your photos in full resolution; they do not compress your images.
3. Dropbox keeps your metadata attached – all the information recorded by the camera like the capture date and any geotagging as well as any metadata you’ve added like tags or keywords.
4. Dropbox offers an app for our phones (iPhone and Android) so when we take a picture it is automatically uploaded to the site and stored in our collection. This copy acts as a back up copy of the picture on your phone. If you delete the picture on your phone, it doesn’t change the copy in Dropbox.
5. You can adjust the settings in the phone app so Dropbox will automatically convert HEIC images on an iphone to JPG when it uploads them.
6. Dropbox allows you to upload your photos from different locations – more than one phone, more than one computer.
7. Dropbox works with iCloud to upload full-resolution images, even if you have your photos optimized on your phone.
8. Dropbox lets you begin adding photos from the day your set it up or you can adjust the settings so it will go back and upload every photo on your camera roll.
9. Dropbox protects your privacy without having to change any confusing or complicated settings.
10. Getting your photos out of Dropbox is easy. They don’t compress your images or strip the metadata so when you download a photo from the site you get back exactly what you uploaded to begin with.
11. Dropbox renames you photos to the date taken when they upload from your phone.
12. Dropbox lets you send a link to family members so they can view your photos too.
13. Dropbox allows files up to50 GB to be uploaded through the web browser but allows files of any size to upload through the desktop app or the mobile app. That means we can store even our big videos there!
14. Dropbox has a desktop app you can download that allows you to easily move files between your computer and your Dropbox account. They have a very slick Sync program that lets things upload and download automatically. You can turn the sync function on and off for different files. Be aware that syncing is fantastic for moving data but the files that are synced should be considered one copy of the data, not a back up copy.
Dropbox Photos Wishlist – I use Dropbox to back up my entire photo collection. It works perfectly for that task. I only have one thing on my wish list:
Dropbox is a file hosting service, it’s been designed for storing, sharing, and collaborating on files for business. They’ve only recently started to function like a photo management site by allowing us to automatically upload photos from our phones. They do not offer any of the photo management functionality found on other sites like organizing into albums, using facial recognition, or searching with keywords.
As with any cloud service remember that we are using their service and that they can change this service at any time. Be sure to keep another copy of your photos and videos in a different location.