It used to be a pain to get photos off of our phones and to the web where we could share them with others, but both Dropbox and Google make it really easy thanks to auto-uploading. Still, once they're uploaded, both services offer different storage limits, sharing options, and editing tools. Let's take a look at which one is best for your shots.
They say the best camera is the one you have with you all the time, and for most of us, that's our cellphone. Like it or not, it's easier these days to snap photos with our phones and have them instantly uploaded to the web for all to see than it is to use an actual camera (even if the photos we'd get from that camera are better.) Dropbox and Google Drive/Google+ both make the process really easy, and offer you a wealth of tools to share, edit, and organize your photos once they've been uploaded. Let's take a look at the two, and determine which one you may want to enable auto-upload on.
Dropbox: Plenty of Storage and Sharing Options, Not Too Many Editing Features
It's no secret that we love Dropbox. It's available on virtually every platform, every mobile device, and its rich third-party developer community and open APIs offer you the ability to extend its features with useful plugins and services that hook into it. You can use it for everything from email attachments to document management and revision history.
When it comes to photos however, Dropbox has made a bit of a play to make you want to upload all of your photos there. They'll give you up to 3GB of space for free just by enabling auto-upload on your computer, iOS, or Android device. Of course, the added space is only for photos, and you get it 500MB at a time (for every 500MB of photos you upload, you get 500MB of space, up to 3GB), but once your photos are all uploaded, they go into a "Camera Uploads" folder where you can browse and organize them either from the mobile app or the web.
Where it Shines
The beauty of using Dropbox to organize all of your photos is that they're easily backed up, seamlessly, in one place. If you already use Dropbox, that means your photos are safe along with the rest of the files that you use on a regular basis. You don't have to think about it, and you can configure Camera Upload to upload via Wi-Fi, 3G/4G, or both—whichever you prefer.. In fact, our own Adam Dachis gave up on photo management apps entirely and just uses Dropbox to organize his photos. Here are some of Dropbox's biggest strengths:
You get total control over your original photos and files. The nice thing about uploading directly to Dropbox is that the original photos you shot on your phone are saved there. They're not edited or resized, and they're not changed in any way. Sit down at your computer, and you have the originals right there too, synced to your Dropbox folder on your PC. That also makes it perfect for desktop organizing or future editing.
You can control the organizational structure within Dropbox. Having that level of control also means you can set up specific folders and sub-galleries for your photos without much effort. You don't need to go through a complicated GUI to do it, you can just create folders inside your Dropbox, and once you have the photos you want added, right-click any of them to get a shareable Dropbox link to send to friends. When they click, they'll see a gallery of those photos with download or view permissions that you set.
You can create galleries on the web too, if you prefer. In addition to managing your photos on the desktop, you can quickly organize your photos into galleries on your smartphone or tablet, or via the Dropbox webapp. Select as many as you choose and add them to whatever gallery you prefer (or create a new one).
Dropbox gives you more sharing options for your photos. Sharing your photos via Dropbox is really easy—just right-click them either on the web or on the desktop and copy their link, then email, tweet, IM, or share that link however you want. On the web, you have the option to import your contacts, and then email the link to the photo or gallery directly, post it to Twitter, or share it on Facebook. Your recipients will see the photo (or gallery) on a Dropbox page, and if you've allowed visitors to download the image, they'll be able to.
Dropbox is ideal for someone who just wants to get their photos backed up, no fuss, and would prefer to either organize them manually or not organize them at all. You get a good amount of space for your photos, and if you prefer to use another tool to edit, organize, or process your photos, having them all automatically uploaded and then synced to your desktop without lifting a finger is a huge boon.
Where it Falls Short
All of that said, Dropbox isn't perfect. While you do get a good bit of storage for your photos, that 3GB is nothing compared to what a number of other services offer, either just for signing up or for uploading your photos (more on that in a moment.)
The flip-side of Dropbox giving you so much control over your photos is that you don't get built-in editing or management tools. On the web, the only things you can really do with a photo are download it, view the original, share it, or perform basic file operations on it (copy/rename/move/delete/etc). If you're looking for ways to edit or organize your photos beyond putting them into galleries, or even the option to crop, resize, or rotate photos, you'll have to look elsewhere (or, use your preferred desktop or mobile photo editor to modify the photo in-place, so Dropbox doesn't lose track of it).
Google Drive/Google+ Photos: Tons of Editing and Organizing Tools, Not So Much on Sharing
Google Drive, Google's own combination of cloud storage service, web-based productivity suite, and back-end data storage for several Google Apps (like Google Keep, for example), is actually a great place to save your photos if you're looking for a home for them. You can dump them right into Google Drive and share them like any Google Doc from the web, and you can have them synced to your computer in your Google Drive folder. Use Picasa on the desktop and you can sync to Picasa Web Albums, although once you've joined Google+, the service will try to push you over there. As for Google+, if you turn on Auto Upload on your iOS or Android device, Google will give you 15GB for all of your files and photos, but that storage is shared across Gmail, Google Drive and Docs, and Google+ Photos. Since Google+ Photos is clearly the direction Google is going with both Picasa and photo sharing in general, we'll focus on that in this piece.
Any Google account that signs up for Google+ can take advantage of auto-upload, so you can add a second account on your smartphone and just let the photos fly. Google will even let you upload unlimited photos and videos as long as they're under certain size limits, but anything larger than that or full-sized will go against your 15GB limit.
Where it Shines
While your photos are hosted using your shared Google Drive space, they're actually available to you at Google+ Photos. That means if you want to see them or edit them, you'll have to open up Google+, and all of your galleries will be automatically organized by date (if you don't organize them differently) there. Here are some of Google+ Photos' strongest features:
You get remarkably powerful web-based editing tools. If you want to edit and touch up your photos right on the web, as soon as they've been uploaded and saved, Google+ Photos lets you do that (assuming you're using Chrome. Some basic features are available in other browsers, but the majority are Chrome-only) easily. Add frames, "drama," play with vintage photo filters or turn your landscape shot into a tilt-shift photo, all from Google+ before sharing your photos out. Even if you just want to touch up the photo as opposed to give it a new and creative look, you can crop, rotate, adjust sharpness or remove redeye, change the brightness and contrast, and more, very easily. You get unlimited undo, and you can always go back to the original if you don't like what you've done.
Google's Auto-Enhance is actually useful. While Google's web-based photo editing tools are thanks to Snapseed, one of our favorite editing tools, the auto-enhancements (aka, "Auto Awesome"), came earlier this year as part of Google's desire to become your "digital darkroom," where you upload your photos, edit them, and then share them out to the web. Even if you don't touch your photos, Google will automatically enhance them with some basic tweaks, like adjusting the colors and light levels, removing noise, and highlighting faces. Best of all, it'll do all of these things for you as soon as the photos are uploaded.
Google supports videos, too. Unlike Dropbox, if you want to host and share videos, you don't have to do anything aside from take the video with your smartphone or tablet. Google's auto-upload will upload the video, in whatever quality your phone supports, and post it to Google Drive as well so you can share it with others or post it to YouTube.
Google automatically organizes your photos for you into galleries. The other nice thing about Google+ Photos is that your photos and videos are automatically organized for you by date. EXIF data is preserved, so you can see it alongside any item you highlight, and you can caption, comment, or tweak any of the information there as you choose. While Dropbox's Photos page does keep things arranged by date, Google groups them immediately, and selecting a group of photos or videos on a given date is a single-click operation. From there you can edit them collectively, share them, or add them to a new gallery together.
Google+ certainly makes the backup process seamless, and they go a long way towards making sure you don't have to spend a lot of time organizing your photos and getting them into shape before you let the world see them. It's not perfect, but the combination of auto-uploading and backups along with the hands-off organization and enhancement features make giving your photos to Google a tempting prospect.
Where it Falls Short
Like we mentioned, Google isn't the perfect host. For one, even if you have Google Drive installed on your computer, you don't get access to the raw versions of those photos if you're using Google+. You'll have to log in to Google+ and head over to the Photos tab in order to even browse them (assuming, like we mentioned earlier, you're not using Drive as a dumping ground directly), much less download the originals and move them to another photo editing app. Unlike Dropbox or other strict file-syncing services, you can't just point another tool at the photos you've taken, or get at the photos you took with your phone on your desktop or laptop using another editing tool. Google wants you to log in to Google+ for everything. That lack of control can be infuriating if you want to do more with your photos.
To be fair, getting your photos back from Google+ Photos isn't difficult; you can download individuals or whole galleries at once with a few clicks. Plus, they're still on your phone, where you can just sync them to your computer. However, it's clear that Google wants you to stay in its playground and share your photos out from there.
Speaking of sharing, if you want to share any of the photos you've uploaded to Google+, you'll have to share them first on Google+. It goes without saying that you'll need a Google+ account to use any of these features, but you can't just touch up a photo and send a friend a link, or post the photo to Twitter. You'll have to share the photo on Google+ first, and then you can share that link with anyone you want to see it. On the upside, people can comment on your photo, re-share it, post the link elsewhere, and you can keep track of views and who's shared or commented on it at any time. Still, all sharing goes right through Google+, one way or another.
The Bottom Line: Which Should You Trust with Your Photos?
If you just want a place to store your photos easily and then get at them with another tool later, Dropbox is the way to go. They make uploading simple and easy, and leave you with total control over the original files. However, it's not ideal if you want a service that doesn't just host your photos, but helps you edit them as well.
Google Drive/Google+ is ideal if you want a service that will both host your photos and help you edit, tweak, and organize those photos all from the same interface. You get pretty solid editing controls, and Google's "Auto Awesome" features actually do improve your photos. The trouble with Google however is that sharing photos is locked in to Google+, which may or may not be a good thing. If you need more space, need editing tools, and like using Google+, Google is the way to go.
Alternatively, you could just use both. Personally, that's what I do, and it never hurts to have your photos backed up in more than one place. Cloud storage is easy to come by these days, and if I need to edit and share at Google+, I can, but if I want to post to another network or categorize and upload my photos into galleries on another service like Flickr, I pull them out of Dropbox. Bottom line: You can choose the one that's right for you, or use them both whenever either is best; it's up to you.
Title image made using sidmay (Shutterstock).