iCloud Photo Library doesn't play nice with other cloud services

[Razeus]

Well I'm all in with iCloud Photo Library as I continue to get deeper into the Apple ecosystem.

The service itself is nice, but it doesn't play nice with other photo upload services such as Dropbox/Carousel or Google Photos.

You see, since iCloud Photo Library keeps all your photos on your device in the new "All Photos" album (Camera Roll is gone with ICL enabled), those services see these as new photos and begins to upload them, even though they are already on the respective service.

The great thing about Dropbox is that the photos are going in the Camera Uploads folder so I can delete them to avoid duplicates as they are already in their folders they are suppose to be in.

I'm not sure what's going to happen with Google Photos and if it'll "upload" but do a data check and skip the ones it has via deduplication. I'm about find out as the app is doing it's thing now. I'll report back and see if I have dupes.

What's worry is that as my iPhone/iPad runs out of space it will begin "optimizing" the photos on my devices and these services will pick up on the fact that these will be "new" photos, but smaller, resized versions.

I may have to really go "all in with Apple" as I posted in another thread and turn these other apps uploading features off.

 

[tomnavratil]

Well I believe they act as competing products so they won't really play nicely with each other too much unfortunately. Do you have a specific need to use three separate cloud services to store your pictures?

 

[Razeus]

Dropbox is my go to for a while now. I added Google Photos when it launched last month as that service was MILES ahead of Carousel as it's just a timeline viewer. The flashback feature was nice, but frankly they still haven't added a search function to the app. It's great for storing photos but not great for quickly finding something. I don't think they have many folks working on the product over there and it's just a way for Dropbox to quickly fill up the little space they give you so you pay the $99. /rant

That was all I was using until Google Photos dropped. Now that's a great Photo service that reminds me of Everpix. They actually DO something with the photos to help users quickly find things. I didn't even have to label any Faces and "approve" them. They were just there.

ICL I just started because I've decided to go all in with Apple services. The search features are nice as I can type in Malibu and it shows me all the pics. Google Photos simply auto created an album for me. Apple Photo search is good if you have your stuff geo tagged and bothered to click away on their Faces features, but it's not as automated, but iOS/OS X integration is excellent.

Plus using all 3 was just another form of backup. In the end I can always turn off the uploads and let ICL be the king. Everything else can be handled via desktop.