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Drop Box Picture Management on iOS

lordofthereef

lordofthereef

macrumors G5
Original poster
Nov 29, 2011
13,161
3,721
Boston, MA
Wasn't sure if I wanted to post this here... if it's a bad place I guess a mod can move it.

I recently rediscovered drop box. It seems they have gotten more generous with their storage. It used to cap out at 10GB free and is now at something like 26 (maybe more for those who are on top of promos and stuff... I haven't been).

Anyway, with 26 gigs and an easy iOS app I decided this would eb the perfect place to backup photos. We take a TON of them between myself, my mother, and my wife, now that we have a baby boy in our lives!

So I went ahead and backed up my camera roll of about 2200 pictures last night. For the most part the recent pictures seem great. Unfortunatley the older pics (all have been taken with a 5S by the way) are much more severely compressed. When clicked on, they are even smaller than the others. When I look at file sizes, the less compressed ones are about 800KB to 1MB in size. The heavily compressed ones are about 250-350 KB.

While even compressing to 1MB isn't ideal, the 350KB files are almost unusable, even as a backup.

The (maybe) obvious questions:
Why are some pics getting so much more heavily compressed?
Is there a way to upload just the raw file and NOT compress things (directly from iPhone)?
 
lordofthereef said:
Wasn't sure if I wanted to post this here... if it's a bad place I guess a mod can move it.

I recently rediscovered drop box. It seems they have gotten more generous with their storage. It used to cap out at 10GB free and is now at something like 26 (maybe more for those who are on top of promos and stuff... I haven't been).

Anyway, with 26 gigs and an easy iOS app I decided this would eb the perfect place to backup photos. We take a TON of them between myself, my mother, and my wife, now that we have a baby boy in our lives!

So I went ahead and backed up my camera roll of about 2200 pictures last night. For the most part the recent pictures seem great. Unfortunatley the older pics (all have been taken with a 5S by the way) are much more severely compressed. When clicked on, they are even smaller than the others. When I look at file sizes, the less compressed ones are about 800KB to 1MB in size. The heavily compressed ones are about 250-350 KB.

While even compressing to 1MB isn't ideal, the 350KB files are almost unusable, even as a backup.

The (maybe) obvious questions:
Why are some pics getting so much more heavily compressed?
Is there a way to upload just the raw file and NOT compress things (directly from iPhone)?
Click to expand...
Aside from the fact that I am wondering how you got 26GB from the get go (I've been on Dropbox since it started and I only have about 6GB of storage) I am not experiencing this issue at all. Of course I have nowhere near as many photos as you do, but all of my photos come over at the size they were captured at.

Are you looking at the photos online (or using the Dropbox app) or in the Camera Uploads folder on a computer that has Dropbox installed?

I ask because Dropbox doesn't actually "download" anything to your device until you click on it. So if you are looking at it with the app you may just be looking at a low resolution version. The same if viewing on the website. But if you are actually opening the pics on a computer then this should not be happening.
 
OP. I recently did the same thing. However all of my pics (1500 give or take) are actual size of 1-3 mb dating back to when I got the phone in Jan '12.

Sometimes it displays a compressed version for a moment when scrolling though however if I wait a second it snaps to full quality.
 
eyoungren said:
Aside from the fact that I am wondering how you got 26GB from the get go (I've been on Dropbox since it started and I only have about 6GB of storage) I am not experiencing this issue at all. Of course I have nowhere near as many photos as you do, but all of my photos come over at the size they were captured at.

Are you looking at the photos online (or using the Dropbox app) or in the Camera Uploads folder on a computer that has Dropbox installed?

I ask because Dropbox doesn't actually "download" anything to your device until you click on it. So if you are looking at it with the app you may just be looking at a low resolution version. The same if viewing on the website. But if you are actually opening the pics on a computer then this should not be happening.
Click to expand...

I too would like to know that. I have a measly 5gb.
 
As far as the questions about how I get 26GB "from the get go"

You get 16GB for referring friends. It's as simple as making extra accounts on different computers. I found that you can do three accounts per computer before it is flagged as suspicious.

You get another 1GB for downloading the mail app and around another 1GB for doing various other things

I had 8GB when I logged on. I was a "legacy" user. I really don't have more information on that. I signed up for it when it was in beta. At the time they didn't really have an iOS app, it wasn't terribly useful for doing anything other than PC to PC transfer, so I sort of let my account sit. In fact, when I logged in, I was told my password had expired and had to set a new one.


Now, as to the file sizes, no, they aren;t just thumbnails. They actually are uploaded that small. I will post a few of them here in just a sec as comparison.

----------

Here is an example of a full resolution shot:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/uv1ok1hbnfeghkl/QfYz5NMYlx

Here is an example of a compressed shot:
https://www.dropbox.com/sc/w2o4x75288gqhco/1jlF3uzB0R

All of these images were taken with my 5S and they were all uploaded within about 2 hours of one-another.

----------

Feel free to tell me how amazing my son is ;)

----------
eyoungren said:
Are you looking at the photos online (or using the Dropbox app) or in the Camera Uploads folder on a computer that has Dropbox installed?
Click to expand...

I thought I would point out that I am doing all of the above. If you view them as "files" you can also see the file size (which is where I ws getting those numbers from).
 
lordofthereef said:
As far as the questions about how I get 26GB "from the get go"

You get 16GB for referring friends. It's as simple as making extra accounts on different computers. I found that you can do three accounts per computer before it is flagged as suspicious.

You get another 1GB for downloading the mail app and around another 1GB for doing various other things

I had 8GB when I logged on. I was a "legacy" user. I really don't have more information on that. I signed up for it when it was in beta. At the time they didn't really have an iOS app, it wasn't terribly useful for doing anything other than PC to PC transfer, so I sort of let my account sit. In fact, when I logged in, I was told my password had expired and had to set a new one.
Click to expand...
I tried that once. Created a bunch of separate email addresses and referred myself. Dropbox promptly informed me that because I was sending and answering those referrals from one of two IP addresses that I use (home and work) that they did not consider the referrals valid and would not grant me additional space.

I haven't tried since. Maybe I should try again. I've got email addresses out the wazoo.
 
On a side note, those who want more Dropbox storage can just sign into your account on an Android device like a Galaxy S4 or something and you automatically receive 50GB of additional free space. I currently have 76.5GB of storage from 20GB they gave me when I had an HTC One S and another 50GB from signing in on a Galaxy S4 one time.
 
CEmajr said:
On a side note, those who want more Dropbox storage can just sign into your account on an Android device like a Galaxy S4 or something and you automatically receive 50GB of additional free space. I currently have 76.5GB of storage from 20GB they gave me when I had an HTC One S and another 50GB from signing in on a Galaxy S4 one time.
Click to expand...


You sign up to the 50gb but it's only for two years. After which you pay for the additional storage.
 
eyoungren said:
I tried that once. Created a bunch of separate email addresses and referred myself. Dropbox promptly informed me that because I was sending and answering those referrals from one of two IP addresses that I use (home and work) that they did not consider the referrals valid and would not grant me additional space.

I haven't tried since. Maybe I should try again. I've got email addresses out the wazoo.
Click to expand...

My friend set up an @ email tha I can literally type anything in before the @ and it will all forward to the same email. Changing IPs is pretty easy to do ;)

When I log into my account, I DID see a few that said invalid (when I click on invalid it tells me why... "same computer"). Changing IPs helped.

----------

Unfortunately this thread isn;t goig where I hoped. While I am happy that people are discovering drop box has more storage options, I am still a little bummed there has been no resolution to my problem.

Also nobody said my kid was amazing. :eek:
 
lordofthereef said:
My friend set up an @ email tha I can literally type anything in before the @ and it will all forward to the same email. Changing IPs is pretty easy to do ;)

When I log into my account, I DID see a few that said invalid (when I click on invalid it tells me why... "same computer"). Changing IPs helped.

----------

Unfortunately this thread isn;t goig where I hoped. While I am happy that people are discovering drop box has more storage options, I am still a little bummed there has been no resolution to my problem.

Also nobody said my kid was amazing. :eek:
Click to expand...
Your kid is amazing!!!

Mine are 10 and 5. Not so amazing when they tick me off. :D

I don't know the answer. I have not had this happen before so it's new to me.
 
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