Auto-upload
I’ve posted before about the best ways to get photos from your iPhone to your computer if you don’t use iPhoto or Aperture. Dropbox’s auto-upload feature is still my favorite method of doing that. But what if I want to skip the computer altogether? I use the Flickr app’s auto-upload feature.
Honestly, I can’t remember the first app that added auto-upload functionality for photos. Was it Google+? I avoided it. Even though they say that photos are private unless you decide to share them publicly, we all know that once a photo is online, there’s always a chance that it won’t remain private.
Eventually, I realized that none of the photos I was taking on my iPhone were that scandalous. So I let Dropbox auto-upload for me. It made getting photos into Lightroom much easier, and once I imported photos to Lightroom, they were removed from Dropbox anyway.
I tried the Google+ auto upload feature, but honestly, I’m never on Google+. Also, I have multiple Google accounts, and sometimes forget to verify which account is logged in. It just gets messy. And overly complicated.
Flickr
I’ve been a Flickr user since 2005, and have uploaded over 11,000 photos to the site to date. Before Facebook became as popular as it is now, Flickr was my social media hub. Though I only went to a few meet ups, I met some really cool photographers. I reviewed photo comments and group discussions on a daily basis. Eventually, the social aspect waned, and I’m still not sure what I think of the latest changes to the UX of the site. The basic functionality, though, remains almost the same. Post and share photos. Plain and simple.
The late 2012 update to Flickr’s iOS app was huge. The mobile experience is now better than browsing on my computer. It eventually made sense to flip the switch on Flickr’s auto-upload feature. All of my iPhone photos are uploaded to an Auto Upload set and marked private. If I want to share a photo or add it to another set, I just change the permissions on that photo only. I still go through and delete things like screen shots, or photos I know I don’t want to keep, but everything else stays archived on Flickr.
What about you? Do you use any auto-upload features, or is it a privacy risk you’re not willing to take?
Daniel Hedrick 
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