What you need to know about storing and backing up your photos with Dropbox

[Amy]

We see a lot of questions about storing, sharing and backing up your photos on Dropbox so here are some tips to make that as easy as possible! 

Back up photos automatically to your Dropbox account

You know we love an automatic process, so whether it’s your camera roll photos, your screenshots or your document scans, your cloud photos are some of the most important files you have. In fact our own Emmet told us about a time when he almost lost his photos due to a tech malfunction - “One of my old hard drives of photos got corrupted several years ago. This was almost a year of photos. Thankfully, lot of these had been saved to my Dropbox account automatically, and this was important as a couple who I was friends with wanted a high definition photo of them from the first night they went out together, and I was only able to share it on their wedding day because it was saved on Dropbox.“ Keeping full-resolution copies backed up with online photo storage means you can access them anytime, and you know there is a safe and secure copy in the cloud. 

Here are just a few ways Dropbox can keep your photos safe:

• Camera uploads: Once you turn this on, photos from your phone or tablet will be automatically backed up to Dropbox. Or in our desktop app, photos will be copied from cameras, memory cards, or mobile devices whenever you connect one to your computer.
• Screenshot backups: You can set up our desktop app to automatically move screenshot images to your Dropbox, or have mobile device screenshots backed up using camera uploads.
• Document scanning: The native/built-in scan functionality in the Dropbox mobile app lets you use your phone’s camera to scan and make digital backups of receipts, whiteboards, and paper documents.

Managing photos

Share your photos with links, shared folders and control access 

Storing your photos is great, but chances are you will want to share some - whether it’s with family members, teammates or the expense team at work. There are a few ways you can do that, and you can manage the access with a few clicks as well. 

• Shared links: You can easily create a link to share any file or folder in your Dropbox. Copy and paste your link into an email, text message, or chat, to share with anyone—even if they don’t have a Dropbox account.
• Access control: Keep your photos in the right hands by adding password protection, expiration dates, and sign-in requirements to your shared links.
• Shared folders: Want to collect your photos and someone else’s in the same place? Share files back and forth by inviting other people to sync a folder between your account and theirs.

Organize your photos: 

Saving and sharing your photos can be great but it’s no use if you can’t find the one your looking for, so organizing and viewing your photos is essential too! Here are some tips on how to do that, and if that’s not enough you can see how our own Eliene organizes her photos. 

• Photo browsing: View and browse all of your photos and videos from the Photos tab in our mobile app or on the web.
• Image previews: View over 35 image file types from dropbox.com or our mobile app. You can preview common files like JPEG, PNG, TIFF, and GIF; app-specific types like Photoshop and Illustrator; raw formats like CR2, DCR, and DNG; and even iOS HEIC photos. Best of all, there’s no need for special photo software.
• Image tagging: Find your photos fast by adding searchable hashtags to individual photos or an entire folder.

How do you manage your photos with Dropbox? Share your tips in the comments below, or if you have any questions you, we can answer those too! 

[aldensolo]

Can I backup iPhone photos automatically to BOTH iCloud and Dropbox?

[Jay]

Hi @aldensolo, technically, it should be possible to do so, since they are separate systems on the phone. 

Bear in mind, however, that if you have iCloud Photo Library enabled (this is an Apple setting that stores your photos and videos in iCloud), and have its "Optimize iPhone Storage" setting enabled, this will save your full-resolution files in iCloud and store "optimized" versions on your phone.

Since the full-resolution images are stored in iCloud, the "camera uploads" feature needs to connect to the iCloud servers to upload each full-resolution image to Dropbox. This can be a slow process that depends on the strength of the connection to the iCloud servers.