The Photos page is changing...

[Darren S.1]

I've just seen the banner that says "The Photos page is changing on 30 June 2017 but your pictures will stay safe in your Dropbox account. Learn more". The gist is that they are removing the final remants of the Carousel functionality - which makes me wonder what the point was in purchasing it in the first place:

"After that date, you’ll no longer be able to create or share albums on the web, or browse photos in the current timeline view. However, all your photos will remain safe in your Dropbox account."

Even funnier, it says:

"Creating a better photos experience

We’re continuing to work on new photos and file experiences on dropbox.com. As we learn more about how our users prefer to work with photos, we’ll launch improvements to the experience."

With these changes there will be no photos experience that is any different to normal files. If they remove camera uploads, that would be the last straw for me and I'll be moving to a different service.

[Simone C.9]

I renewed automatically recently but have cancelled and removed my credit card and will spend the next year gradually moving evertything away from dropbox.

I don't have time to commit 30 full time hours on photos alone and then hours on all my other files, but this photo issue has made me lose all faith in dropbox, especially how they have marked this as "solved" and not replied properly to anyones questions. Who knows what they'll do in the future. Just seems unreliable to me and they don't seem to care at all about all these hours we will have to spend. Dropbox is supposed to INCREASE your productivity. The jokes on us unless we move our money elsewhere. I will be. 

[Upset23]

I've been going back and forth with drop box and their answer's only make me more upset!!! I like you have spent countless hours on thousands and thousands of pictures and no answer's but confusion!!! I will be finding another service to hold my photos. And with have nothing nice to say about Drop box service and it would serve them right if they lost a lot of customers because of there unanswered help!!!

[Simon J.6]

Having spent the morning downloading all my albums to folders - 1 GB limit on Albums made the process painful where an album contained a couple of videos - I tried the recommended method of using a shared folder. Blerghhh... a shared album was ideal for sharing with family, particularly those without Dropbox. Sharing a folder does not give the recipient a smooth experience. I tried sharing with a user who already had a Dropbox account, and was logged in, they were prompted to Add to their Dropbox - things that you don't want as part of an Album share.

[angry1]

This takes away one of the main reasons I use Dropbox.  If they don't fix it, I will use another service.

[Foxtrot]

When I originally chose DROPBOX, I was able to share photo folders with non-DROPBOX users. When you took that functionality away - forcing my recipients to also get DROPBOX, I had to create a work-around. Which was to go to the photo Timeline, select a block of photos, and send that link to myself, and in turn forward to all my photo recipients. This method was ok for all my recipients - DROPBOX users, and non-DROPBOX users. Now it appears you are taking this functionality away from me!! I will test the new system July 1st, but if too restricted, I have no option but to cancel DROPBOX and move to another photo-file sharing system.

[Rob A.13]

I recently saw the notification on this upcoming change. Since I use folders for albums, the removal of virtual albums is not as impactful for me. However, there needs to be some organization assistance, such as groupings by Today, This Week, this Month, etc. Losing the speed scroller is a pretty big deal if you have thousands of photos. I've noticed using the iOS app that I cannot search based on a filename "mask." For example, if I could search based on "2017-04-*", that would be very helpful. I would appreciate it if Dropbox would consider giving us some search tools that will help us narrow down the photo filelist we are viewing. Thanks much.

[Scott N.15]

I have my photos stored in different folders and also have albums of those photos.  The best thing about an album is that the photo can stay in it's original location but also be a part of several albums.  If I understand this new change correctly, to achieve the same thing I will need to "convert" the albums to folders and have the same photo in multiple folders.  

Where I originally had a photo in one folder and also part of six albums, I will now need six folders and six copies of the same photo to accomplish the same thing.  All this really does is use more space.

[Mike H.57]

This xkcd on "Photo Library Management" is apropos:

https://xkcd.com/1832/

especially the alt (mouseover) text which reads "A good lifehack is to use messy and unstable systems to organize your photos. That way, every five years or so it becomes obsolete and/or collapses, and you have to open it up and pick only your favorite pictures to salvage."

Hello, DB!

[Simon J.6]

If the links page, https://www.dropbox.com/share/links, is being offered as a solution to find and continue sharing Albums - then shouldn't that page be improved before 30 June to allow you to filter links by albums? At the moment, it's just a stream of files, folders and albums.

[Gil K.1]

Far from responsive, this explanation from Dropbox borders on condescending.  "Recognizing" the frustrations caused by the change is not the same as solving the problem caused.  It's corporate talk for "too bad . . . that's the way it is."  What is not addressed is the nature of the problem(s) being solved, and why/how these changes are the solution.

Dopbox and its photo album feature have been very useful.  Without that, I don't see the point of using Dropbox -- rather than one of its competitors.  What is it that will make it valuable (to me) beyond automatic file backup and retrieval of previous versions of files.

So . . . what problem is Dropbox solving?  And why is this the solution?