Who doesn't love photos and with cameras available to pretty much everyone, thanks to mobile phones, humans are taking more photos than ever. But storing tons of photos can be a difficult task, especially if you don't have plenty of storage available on your phone, and not every photo is worth getting it printed. So, you need a photo app that can easily store your photo on the cloud.
Many photo apps exist for both Android and iPhone users to ease the cloud storage process. Not every app gives you the same level of functionality or same amount of free storage. So, we've handpicked five apps that you can install on your device to easily and quickly store photos in the cloud.
Google Photos is one of the popular solutions for storing photos online. It lets you back up unlimited photos of up to 16-megapixel resolution for free and is accessible through any mobile device running Android or iOS or directly through the Web — by visiting photos.google.com. In addition to storing photos, this Google photo app can be used to store unlimited videos of up to 1080p resolution. Recent updates to Google Photos also brought features such as private messaging and manual face tagging of contacts.
If Google Photos isn't something that you want to store your memories for some reason, you can go with Dropbox that also provides features such as camera uploads and screenshot backups. The Dropbox's cloud storage that's available on Android and iOS platforms and is accessible online through dropbox.com, comes with 2GB of free storage. Users can, of course, go with a paid plan to get up to 3TB of cloud storage. Dropbox is also claimed to support over 35 image file types and comes with a dedicated Photos tab to let you easily find what you want to see.
For users who have an iPhone or iPad, Apple Photos is the best native option to use. Apple provides 5GB of cloud storage space through iCloud that can be used to store various photos and videos. You can also enable the iCloud Photos feature on your iPhone by going to Settings > Photos to let Apple Photos automatically upload and store all your photos and videos on your cloud storage quota that you can browse, search, and share from any of your devices. Further, there are paid iCloud plans that offer up to 2TB of space. Although Android users don't have a dedicated app to access Apple Photos storage, you can access your iCloud account by visiting icloud.com through an Android device.
For any reason if you don't want to use Google Photos, Dropbox, or iCloud to store your precious memories, you can go with Microsoft OneDrive. Microsoft offers 5GB of free OneDrive cloud storage for users signing up for the first time. You can also connect your Office 365 account, if you have one, to expand storage to 1TB. OneDrive also comes with a Camera backup feature to let you enable auto-upload of photos and videos to your account. Additionally, you can share your photos with your loved ones while observing quarantine or staying at home due to the lockdown. You can install the OneDrive app on your Android and iOS devices.
The last photo app that we've included in our list is Box that provides up to 10GB of cloud storage, with a limit of 250MB per file upload. The Box app can be used to easily upload your favourite photos. It also offers full screen preview for over 200 file types. Further, multiple files available on a Box account can be shared through a single link. You can also enable commenting and mentioning from your colleagues to receive their views on a particular photo. Furthermore, the Box app has real-time search that works across devices.
Features | Google Photos | Dropbox | Apple Photos | Microsoft OneDrive | Box |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Auto-backup | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Social network sharing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Image tagging | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
Cloud editing | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
Timeline view | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Link sharing | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Location-based searching | Yes | No | Yes | No | No |
Duplicate photos deletion | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Getting an app with cloud storage access is indeed useful to store multiple photos online. However, there are some obvious risks, like a hacker can gain access to your cloud account and can easily view and download your photos. So, it is imperative that you make use of two-factor authentication and other security measures available with these services. That being said, you should go with a photo app for storing your memories only if you trust its parent company, understand the security aspects, and have a Wi-Fi network or at least 4G data on your device.
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