From iPhoto to Dropbox: from feature rich to future proof. | Hacker News Reader

From iPhoto to Dropbox: from feature rich to future proof.

blog.vrypan.net

15 pointsvrypan8 comments

Disclaimer: lead developer of Trovebox / OpenPhoto

I wish more folks would make this distinction. Going one step farther I set out to create a layer on top of Dropbox that was optimized for photos (and videos).

Essentially, give a proper photo API to the files in your Dropbox. Things like date searches, plotting photos on a map, etc.

Then another step beyond that. Migrate between any storage service without losing a single feature, keeping every URL in tact and a mobile app which continues to work as if nothing happened. Dropbox is great but it isn't future proof either.

Then the last (and probably most important) open source it all.

https://github.com/photo

I don't consider dropbox to be future proof, it's the filesystem. I could easily replace dropbox with google drive, ownCloud, or BitTorrent Sync.

I tried OpenPhoto a couple of months ago, but I was left with the impression that it was optimised for photos and video didn't work so well.

Replacing one file system with another is significantly easier if you have an abstraction layer (which also happens to include a lot of features).

We just started working on video support so you were left with the correct impression. We released 4.0 on trovebox.com a few months ago and should have it available as a certified build for self installation this week.

It's not perfect, of course, but we're making tremendous progress.

Great! I'll give it a try.

This is a great article. After holding off on switching to automatic Dropbox iPhone camera uploads for months, finally I switched it on as a test and immediately wondered why I had waited.

Very impressed with the OpenPhoto initiative too.

After struggling with the increasingly slower speed of iPhoto (similar to the article author), pretty wrappers on top of file systems/Dropbox look like the foreseeable future of photo library management.

"When I click “photos” I can see ALL the photos that I’ve stored in dropbox -all, as in ALL, no matter where they are stored, and there’s also a time line on the right, making it easy to jump to specific dates!"

I wonder if this is something new that Dropbox is rolling out in stages. I still only see Photos added via Camera Upload.

And yes, I'm a paying Dropbox customer, so that's not the distinction.

I like Adobe Lightroom because it's transparent at the filesystem level. It keeps a separate catalog, but you can point it at any directory for photos.

Is there a workflow that would allow you to import the images via "Camera Upload" functionality to allow for additional free space?

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