photostorage

The rumor mill in the photography world is a strange one. Churning out snippet after snippet on bodies, glass, and everything in-between, it’s difficult to properly nail down what is fact and what is fiction. That's particularly true when you're dealing with claims like those made yesterday.

According to an article published by the French website 01net.com, Leica is working on something well out of their normal range of products and services: A cloud storage platform for photographers.

There are many cloud storage services out there, some offering a decent amount of space for very little in way of cash. Unfortunately, most aren't built with photographers and other visual junkies in mind. You can upload and store most file types, but viewing them is another matter.

StreamNation is different in that respect. Targeted at photographers and videographers in particular, the site not only lets you upload RAW files, but view and download them on the go as well.

Apple's Photo Stream can be a useful feature if you use multiple devices to do your photo bidding. Take a photo on your phone, and it shows up on your iPad and computer instantly -- not too shabby.

But Photo Stream has limitations, most notably the ability to sync only your most recent thousand photos. That's why Jan Senderek decided to go out and create the Mac and iOS application Loom: an 'infinite camera roll' in the cloud that allows you to share and sync photos across all your devices easily.

Back in December, Dropbox acquired the photo storage service Snapjoy, seemingly getting ready to jump head first into the cloud sharing battle. At the time, the announcement on the Snapjoy blog rang with excitement, and even though they weren't going to be accepting new signups, they promised that "your photos are safe!"

Well, not anymore. As of yesterday, Dropbox has officially decided to shut down the service -- a decision that was confirmed by Snapjoy on its blog and through an email to all of its remaining subscribers.

Since the outset of 2013, Dropbox has consistently sought to improve its ability to handle and share photos. Of course, a cloud storage provider isn't going to compete with the likes of Flickr, but the company still wants to make it extremely easy to store all of your photos.

Dropbox's most recent move in that direction is the announcement of a new beta that allows Mac users to import entire iPhoto libraries and all users to automatically backup and share screenshots.

Earlier today, online photo community and Flickr competitor 500px announced that it would be releasing an overhauled portfolio system very soon. Rebuilt from the ground up, the new system offers a slew of features that 500px "Awesome" users will be able to take advantage of in order to build online portfolios they're proud of.

Facebook has over 240 billion photos on its servers -- that's billion... with a "b" -- and every day about 350 million more are added. Naturally, Facebook needs to store all of those photos somewhere, and that somewhere needs to be accessible at all times because who knows when Jack will need to show Jill some pics of the hill from 3 years ago.

In the world of cloud data storage, Dropbox is one of the 800lb gorillas fighting for your files. In recent days, it has been making big moves to become more of a player in photo storage and sharing. After all, everyone needs a safe place to keep their digital images, right?

The company's latest play came today in the form of an acquisition: Dropbox has acquired fellow cloud-storage company Snapjoy -- a business based around aggregating photos from around the web and from your various devices.

We reported in the middle of last month that Eye-Fi was planning to launch a new cloud-based photo sharing service with the name Circ. That day has arrived: the wireless SD card maker has officially launched the service into private beta. Unlike other cloud services, which cap storage space for free accounts -- 5GB is a popular limit -- Circ doesn't. Rather than limit free accounts by storage, Circ is based on the number of devices used. A free account lets you sync 2 devices, while a $50/year paid account allows up to 20.

It seems like we're saying this every week, but the cloud photo storage industry is becoming more and more packed. Heck, even AT&T launched its own service called Locker earlier this month. The next entrant to the arena looks like it will be a photography company we didn't expect: wireless SD card maker Eye-Fi.

MyShoebox is a new photo storage and sharing service that has been making a splash after launching a little over a week ago. Its offering is easy to describe: free and unlimited cloud storage for photos that can then be viewed from anywhere. Think of it as a Dropbox dedicated to preserving and enjoying photos.

It seems like every company wants a share of the cloud photo storage pie. This past Thursday, Amazon launched a Cloud Drive Photos app for storing and sharing photos through its Cloud Drive storage service. It just so happens that AT&T also launched an almost identical service that same day. It's called AT&T Locker, and is an app for iOS and Android that "lets you store, sync and share your data in one safe, convenient place."

If you've been using Dropbox as a photo backup solution and the official iOS app for accessing your images in the cloud, you may have noticed that downloading photos to your device didn't give you the exact files that you wanted. Instead of beaming the full-resolution images to your Camera Roll, the app would shrink photos to a much smaller size to speed up downloading times. A 14MP 4592x3056 photo would only be saved at 960x638, for example.

This week, Dropbox finally updated the app and removed the resolution ceiling from downloads. Now you can save your entire photos from your backup to your iOS device without seeing it pass under a shrink ray.

It's not uncommon for camera manufacturers to launch their own online photo storage or sharing service, but Canon is looking to make a bigger splash than most. At Photokina last week, the company announced Project 1709, an upcoming cloud-based service that will allow photographers to store their entire library of photographs online. As with most cloud services, the images would then be available from anywhere in the world, accessible using any device (e.g. computer, tablet, smartphone, Internet-connected camera).