The Photos page is changing...

[Darren S.1]

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 remants of the Carousel functionality - which makes me wonder what the point was in purchasing it in the first place:

"After that date, you’ll no longer be able to create or share albums on the web, or browse photos in the current timeline view. However, all your photos will remain safe in your Dropbox account."

Even funnier, it says:

"Creating a better photos experience

We’re continuing to work on new photos and file experiences on dropbox.com. As we learn more about how our users prefer to work with photos, we’ll launch improvements to the experience."

With these changes there will be no photos experience that is any different to normal files. If they remove camera uploads, that would be the last straw for me and I'll be moving to a different service.

[alphachannel]

Looks like they got that feedback - its now $10 per month unlimited. 

[alphachannel]

Seeing as how Microsoft charges a lot more for computer vision, especially for videos, any flat rate is a good deal. But it looks like they got that feebback elsewhere, I just checked the site and the pricing is now a lot lower. 

[Rich]

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alphachannel wrote:

Or maybe they're planning to add a better experience? 

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From the Photos announcement:

• The Photos page will be replaced with a new, streamlined photos experience that looks more like our redesigned Dropbox website. You’ll be able to access it by navigating to dropbox.com/photos or clicking on Photos in the left-hand menu of dropbox.com.

We’re continuing to work on new photos and file experiences on dropbox.com. As we learn more about how our users prefer to work with photos, we’ll launch improvements to the Photos page.

[alphachannel]

I can't wait - especially on the iOS app. I just want to search for photos of my son at the beach, and just have all the photos that match that show up so I can show my friends on the spot. Instead, I'm stuck scrolling through thousands of photos until I find the one. 

[Rob A.13]

Google Photos does a phenomenal job with photos. Not only can they recognize people and things, but you can search using any metadata, including locations, dates, etc. I'm now using Google Photo free backup for my photos along with OneDrive for full resolution backup and sync to my desktop. If I need to find a photo, I'll search Google first to find it. I just don't want to rely on them for my sole backup without sync back to my desktop. Of course, Google Drive would probably accomplish the same thing, but I already have an Office 365 account with 1TB of storage. Why pay again if I don't have to? 😄

[Ju1]

Yes this functionality is going away.

They are making moves because of traffic and seems like they have a lot of costs. Although they claim its for customer experience, I believe they are making a mistake. June 30, 2017 will not be forgotten when they look back and dropbox is no longer as powerful as they once were. This seems like they want to force something in order to save money or drive even more traffic to dropbox. Let's see.

[Rich]

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@Ju1 wrote:

They are making moves because of traffic and seems like they have a lot of costs.

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That is complete speculation. No one knows what's behind the decision to change the photos experience because they haven't announced it, nor have they announced what the changes will be.

[RichardDBX · Accepted solution]

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

[Rich]

Thanks, @RichardDBX. Very helpful and much appreciated!

[Qbis]

where do you recommend going for photo storage and sharing when you leave dropbox?