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Apple Photos
Apple recently beefed up its cloud game by doing away with iPhotos and replacing it with Apple Photos,
which is designed to seamlessly sync users’ pictures across their
iPhones, iPads and Macs through the company’s iCloud software.
Apple Photos is a good choice for hardcore Apple users who
want to access every one of their pictures on each of their devices.
After you turn on Photos’ iCloud capabilities, pictures you take on your
iPhone will immediately appear on your iPad and your Mac -- and vice
versa.
The biggest problem with Apple Photos is that it’s one of
the more expensive options on the market. The company gives users 5
gigabytes of free storage, which is not nearly enough for the number of
pictures many smartphone users take. If you need more space, you’ll need
to pay 99 cents for 20 GB, $3.99 for 200 GB, $9.99 for 500 GB or $19.99
for 1 terabyte, which is the equivalent of 1,000 GB.
Another issue with Apple Photos is that it keeps files on
your computer, which isn’t ideal assuming you’re trying to free up
storage on your devices. There’s file-storage-optimization management,
but if you don’t want your photos taking up any space at all, Apple
isn’t the best option. Which leads us to Dropbox.
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Dropbox
Dropbox is perfect for users who want all of their content
in the cloud, and it’s pretty affordable. The service comes with a tiny 2
GB of free storage, but for $9.99 per month or $99 per year, you can
get 1 TB of storage.
However, the best thing about Dropbox is how easily it
uploads your photos into the cloud. Every time you open the Dropbox app
or connect your device to your computer, Dropbox will automatically
upload every new picture you’ve taken into the cloud. This is perfect
for users like me who frequently find themselves at events and discover
they’re all out of space on their phone. Simply delete pictures with the
comfort of knowing that a copy already exists in Dropbox. You can also
upload photos in bulk by simply moving folders onto your Dropbox folder,
and, afterward, you can remove them from your device by adjusting your settings.
Another benefit of Dropbox is the company’s Carousel software,
which is designed superficially for managing your pictures. The tool
organizes photos by date, letting users scroll through a timeline to
find their pictures. Instagram users will also appreciate Carousel’s
flashback feature, which shows you old photos taken that week in
previous years -- perfect for Throwback Thursday and Flashback Friday.
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Yahoo Flickr
If your top priority is saving money, Yahoo’s Flickr is
probably the best choice. Flickr offers users 1 TB of photo storage for
free. The service includes advertisements, which constitute Yahoo’s main
source of revenue, but users can get rid of them by choosing to pay
$5.99 per month or $49.99 per year.
The service is very easy to begin using. You can upload
photos in bulk using Flickr’s Uploadr tool, and, after that, you can
back up all your phone’s pictures by using the Flickr app.
One neat feature is the way Flickr organizes your pictures.
The service was recently updated to analyze photos and automatically
tag each picture based on its content, meaning Flickr would tag a
black-and-white picture of a boy at a park with labels such as “black
and white,” “boy,” “park” or other relevant terms. Although Yahoo has
run into some issues with offensive tags, the new feature should make searching for your pictures a comparatively efficient process.
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Google+ Photos
If you like looking your best in all your pictures, Google+
Photos may be the best option for you. Every time you upload pictures
to it, the tech giant’s software does a solid job automatically
enhancing each image by improving its contrast, removing red eye or
creating graphics interchange format (GIF) files out of multiple images,
among other ways. Google+ will also sort your images into albums. For
example, I once went on a trip to Dallas, and, by the time I was back,
Google+ had created a neat little scrapbook of the trip based on the
images it knows I took there.
Like Dropbox, Google+ is a good option in case you’d rather
not store files on your own devices. The service will automatically
upload images from your phone when you open up the Google+ app.
Unfortunately, there does not appear to be a way to upload your pictures
in bulk from your personal computer the way there is with Yahoo and
Dropbox.
Google is also a good option because there are many ways to
pay for all kinds of storage. The service comes with 15 GB of space
shared by your photo, Gmail and Google Drive files. If you need more
space, you can pay monthly amounts of $1.99 for 100 GB, $9.99 for 1 TB,
$99.99 for 10 TB, $199.99 for 20 TB or $299.99 for 30 TB.
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Windows Users: Microsoft OneDrive
Microsoft isn’t known for having great photo software -- I mean, the company was bragging about adding an albums feature
as recently as January -- but if you’re a Windows user, it might be
worth paying for OneDrive because it’s one of the cheaper options and
it’ll sync up your files across all your devices the same way Apple
Photos does for iPhone users.
Formerly known as SkyDrive, OneDrive comes with 15 GB for
free, but storage can be expanded to 100 GB for $1.99 per month, 200 GB
for $3.99 per month or 1 TB for $6.99 per month. The good part about the
1 TB option is that it includes Office 365, which is the cloud-based
version of the Microsoft’s Office suite that includes Word, PowerPoint
and Excel.
The Bottom Line
With so many options out there, most of which include some sort of free storage, your best bet is to use more than one service. You can use one service as your main photo-management tool and another as a backup. This can come handy should anything go wrong with your main option and your pictures are suddenly wiped one day -- this is technology, after all.
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