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Dropbox is a simple cloud app that can pretend to be storage space on your computer -- or on multiple computers. They'll let you use 2 GB for free, or a little more if you tout for them. After that they'll upgrade you to 1 TB, but you have to pay.
So far, this looks like a straightforward deal; just keep your usage under 2 GB, which is a lot of pictures even with the monster-sized files modern cameras create. But our family has been using Dropbox to swap pictures of a recent trip, and we've discovered some things about Dropbox that I want to pass along.
EDIT RIGHTS
If you grant someone edit rights on a folder you share with them, they can put pictures in the folder. They can also delete pictures from the folder, even if you put them there. When you share it with three or four people, all with edit, things start to get crazy. Say Person B copies off the pictures he wants, and notices that his Dropbox is full; so he deletes them. Person C goes to get them, but they aren't there. Regardless of the number of computers involved, there is only one shared folder. If you store something only in a shared Dropbox folder, you're hanging out there.
How easy is it to goof this up? If in Finder (Windows, read "Windows Explorer") I drag a picture from the Dropbox folder to a real folder on my computer, it's no longer in Dropbox. So I make a duplicate of each picture and drag the duplicate.
HIERARCHICAL FOLDERS
Just as with real folders, Dropbox folders can contain other Dropbox folders. The "child" folders inherit the properties of their "parent" folder.
So, if you share pictures very often with the same person, you can save time by creating a parent folder for that person and granting him/her privileges on it. After that, you can make a new child folder in the parent each time you want to share pics of something that you want to keep distinct. You won't have to grant the other person privileges all over again; and the other person won't have to manually sync the new child.
SPACE MANAGEMENT
How can two people, each with a 2 GB storage quota, run out of space when they've only stored 3 GB? Like this:
Person A had 500 MB in an unshared Dropbox folder as offsite backup. Then A and B go have fun together and A takes 1 GB of pictures. A puts them in a new folder, bringing his total to 1.5 GB, and shares it with B.
But B had an unshared Dropbox folder too, totalling 1.5 GB. As soon as B syncs the shared folder, B runs out of space. Dropbox offers to sell him more space.
Sharing works out swell for Dropbox, because the more people share a folder, the more times Dropbox can resell the same storage space. Their reasoning; if shared folders weren't counted against your storage quota, you could get unlimited free storage space for yourself by sharing folders with your friends. Now that's dishonest; who would ever do that?
To help you run out of storage space sooner, Dropbox doesn't provide any file compression option. (Flickr, on the other hand, does.) You can compress them yourself, of course; but you have to do it.
[last edit 1/27/2015 7:43 PM by Ganesha - edited 1 times]
"The beauty of mediocrity is that anything can make you better." -Jeff Mallett | |
I've used Dropbox a few times for photoshoot sharing. It's definitely useful for when you want to send large amounts of files to someone distant, but I was unfamiliar with the editing rights.
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Multiple people can edit a document in Dropbox. They promote it as a way to collaborate, for example on a novel. But I don't know what would happen if two people edited a document in Dropbox at once. I expect that the person who saved last would cover over the earlier saver's work. That kind of collision won't often be a problem with photos.
"The beauty of mediocrity is that anything can make you better." -Jeff Mallett | |
I like the idea and I'd love to use this to backup my entire photo library (in addition to the numerous physical backups I already maintain) however my problem has always been with the size of my collection and the time it would take to upload them all to the cloud.
I've got something close to 1TB of photos and it would take me days to upload all of that, not to mention the cost of data-overages I would accrue in doing so. It would be fantastic once they were on the cloud, but a mega pain in the ass to get them there in the first place.
It would be a great idea for them to allow you to mail in a physical hard drive which they could then transfer locally at high-speed and then mail back to you.
Then again, the RAW images my camera shits out are about 50mb each and it's not unusual to come back from a day of shooting with 1 or 2 GB of data that would also take hours to transfer. Until I have gigabit fiber to my house this might remain a pipe-dream, at least for image backup
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