You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Forum Discussion
The Photos page is changing...
I've just seen the banner that says "The Photos page is changing on 30 June 2017 but your pictures will stay safe in your Dropbox account. Learn more". The gist is that they are removing the final re...
Hi everyone,
Thanks again for your continued feedback on our upcoming changes.
I wanted to let you know that we've heard your concerns about how difficult it is to preserve your album structures in Dropbox. Our engineers have created a simple album export tool to help make this process easier. It's available starting today at the following URL:
www.dropbox.com/photos/album_download
The tool will allow you to download your albums to your desktop as .zip files. Please note that you'll be downloading a new copy of your photos, not moving them, so the photos will still exist in your Dropbox in the original location you saved them.We hope this tool will help alleviate some of the frustration that some of you have reported in this thread. If you have any problems using the tool, feel free to contact us via www.dropbox.com/support.
Regards,
Richard
I have spent ALOT of time creating and organizing Dropbox photo albums over the years. The "value added" that they provide is that a single photo file can be included in multiple albums, albums based on different themes, events, etc that all relate to that single photo. I have also spent ALOT of time, working with thousands of photos to set the "Date Taken" file attribute, which is the default (and only) sort order available in Dropbox albums.
The recent Dropbox announcement about "changes" to the Photos page appears to take this all away, with no honest explanation offered, and no substitute functionality evident.
It is incredible to me that functionality would be removed from a product in this way. The claim that Dropbox is "focused on building better ways for you to work with all file types" would be laughable if it weren't so distressing.
Is "Date Taken" (and I'm not talking about "Date Modified" here) going to be offered as a sort option in the File list displays that we are left with?
The announcement states that "Dropbox won’t be able to automatically convert existing albums into folders", and instead I should create new file folders to match my albums and "Select the photos you’d like to move by clicking the checkboxes to the left of the file names". Do you really expect me to do this for thousands and thousands of file names?
It's seeming to me that my time might be better invested elsewhere.
- Exactly. They need to address these concerns right away.
The new Photos may be better by I do not understand why existing albums can't be turned into folders automartically (at least as an option) as part of the update so people keep their pictures sorted somewhat like they are used to. I have tons of albums and will have to spend hours on creating folders to re-create the way I have my photos organized. It's like Dropbox pushes a large part of the burden of a extensive update over on their (paying) users. This may give me the Google Photo's itch again. I so want to stay with Dropbox, but this turn may be one too much. I hope not though.
And there's no mention of mobile, in my case Android. Will this affect how photos are synced, accessed and organized on my phone? I would really like to see the option to choose synced folders on the phone like Google Photos has. I would also like to get rid of the "Camera Uploads" folder concept used today. Maybe this will change also after June 30?
For me Dropbox is a finely tuned tool I use to move seamlessly between computer, phone and web access to files and photos in which sync and share is a very important aspect. I am so afraid this will mess it all up for me. I already know it will create a lot of work! It may be a long hot summer! :)
//C
The page https://www.dropbox.com/help/photos-videos/changes-photos?oref=e says
"As we learn more about how our users prefer to work with photos, we’ll launch improvements to the experience."
I think it's pretty clear that many users "prefer to work with photos" by keeping the albums that they spent so long creating ...
So Dropbox's Help Page now explains what the "speed scroller" is. It's the scroll bar on the right side of the Photo Page that enables you to zip back through time to a particular date, and dispays the date as you scroll. This will no longer be available.
It's always a mystery when a company rolls out a new version that is less robust than the last. The speed scroller is an incredibly useful tool, not just for photos, but one could use it for any type of file.
The fact that such useful functionality, already built, is being deleted, together with the double-speak Dropbox is using in announcing and discussing this change, reinforces my suspicion that there is a licensing/patent issue lurking behind this change. They're acting a lot like Nancy Pelosi, "You'll just have to wait to see what's changed." Ominous.
i've decided to prepre for a Google transistion for data and photos making it as painless as possible if I find the Dropbox change(s) to be unacceptable. With a service like this which I use every days on muliple devices even small changes matter a lot. I dumped Google Photos because I was not able to get my pictures to show up in a folder in Drive. Not many people seemed to care about that, but for me, and the way I work, that was a must. So a drastic change like this in Dropbox really freak me out since there a multiple ways it can go wrong for me. And that is also why some sort of beta test or demo would make it much easier for me, and others for whom this is a big deal.
I wondered if anyone has a link to refund my money. Photos is now counterintuitive.
I am so with you on this, I'm really pissed off that they won't automatically create folders out of the albums I have. And there isn't even a way to go into the album and batch move them all into a new folder. Only into a new album or download them. And there's a limit for how much will download at once. I guess this is the problem with relying on a software like this. =/
Agree, i had spent HOURS AND DAYS making my albums and I did follow their prior save and download instructions but it only saved my photos individually, and now I can't even group my photos into files or folders. I feel like I have been photo raped, I have invested so much time and energy into dropbox and will be stopping my subscription unless you can restore my albums. DONE!
I found out that you can still post photos, but they have to be in the "Files" folder. That's all they had to say rather than some inarticulate garble about how photos will be better. So, its format is a bit different but at least you can upload a folder.
IBH
Have you ever noticed that when you delete the file of a photograph that is contained in more than one photo album, the image disappears, by design, from each album? This implies that the file is stored only once by Dropbox, and that "pointers" to it are contained in each photo album.
I'm not sure if anyone has pointed out yet that keeping photos organized in multiple folders (as Dropbox proposes to do after June 30), rather than in albums, has the benefit to Dropbox of consuming more storage space.
That is, if you have a single 5MB photo file displayed in five different albums under the current setup, only 5MB of total storage space is used. When you "migrate" those five albums to the new setup, display of that photo in five separate folders will require 5 x 5MB = 25MB of storage.
I hope someone from Dropbox will correct me if I'm wrong here, but one has to at least wonder whether the goal of selling more storage capacity is related to the announced features change.
- It's true that the albums are simply a system of visual bookmarks.
It's a good question...why add the bloat of unnecessary file duplication?Dropbox is killing cosumer grade services it seems.
They are only making significat profit on Bussines suite and don't really care about services that are not used by large customers.
Too bad, I guess Google Drive and Google Photos is the way to go if you want decent photos support.
cheers
I agree completely. I have invested a great deal of time in finding photos that very often do not have the right date in them and come from multiple folder sources on dropbox. They have provided no way that I can see to easily preserve these groupings in folders. I would have to "navigate" to them, but they provide no way to easily identify the locations of the photos. Even the file names are suppressed in the photo view. I also considered "select all" and download, thinking I might then upload them back into a folder, but many of my albums exceed the 1GB download limit. I would have to break the album up into pieces and download and upload small chunks at a time. This is so lame of Dropbox, I just can't believe it. If they could provide a simple migration path, I would be much happier, but they are just leaving us all to pick up the mess ourselves. I've estimated it would take me 15 minutes to 1/2 hour to painstakingly download each album and re-upload somewhere else (not Dropbox), of which I have 80 albums. So, I guess it will take me something like 20 to 40 hours to go through and preserve my albums. Dropbox, can't you provide a migration path? For example, allow people to "select all" in the photo album view for a given album, and provide a "copy" option. That way, I could at least go through and copy each album's photo and video files to a folder, which is what Dropbox says is my way to handle photos from here on out. Or, give me a way to create a larger download, at least, so I could get the photos back off in the grouping created by the album. Surely, these are not complicated options to provide, given that you already provide a way to "select all" in the photo view. I am apalled at the cheery, glib instructions from Dropbox. Lame. lame. lame, Dropbox.
- I've been going back and forth with drop box and their answer's only make me more upset!!! I like you have spent countless hours on thousands and thousands of pictures and no answer's but confusion!!! I will be finding another service to hold my photos. And with have nothing nice to say about Drop box service and it would serve them right if they lost a lot of customers because of there unanswered help!!!
- Thanks to Rick L. for this articulate and intelligent statement of the problem. I do wish that Dropbox corporate and tech would show even a hint of understanding of the problem which is now causing me, along with Rick L., to look for the alternatives. I spend more than $150 annually on Dropbox, and have been doing so for some years. That income stream (with low cost to them) is about to disappear. I think they can multiply this by many users . . . . It's a bad business decision, pure and simple. Bad show all around.
Gil K.
Is "Date Taken" (and I'm not talking about "Date Modified" here) going to be offered as a sort option in the File list displays that we are left with?What other sites/solutions are there out there, as we are all in a bind? Anyone have a solution?
I would suggest Flickr or Google Photos.
cheers
Well this is the end for me and Dropbox once my subscription comes to an end. I've got until January 2018, but obviously Dropbox is going a different direction to me and we're just not compatible. I've got an Office 365 family subscription so that will cover off any file sync issues. And there's always Google images for photo sync. Its been a good run. Last time I left was when Dropbox said they wouldn't be matching the 1TB plans that Google and Microsoft were offering...then they did so I came back. Who knows, if they add albums back I might return.
