We are all photographers thanks to smartphones. Millions of photos of sunsets, lunches, friends, kids, cats (so many cats), and selfies are taken everyday. All that daily chronicling is great. But you don't have to - and shouldn't - keep all those photos on your smartphone.
Snapping pictures with wild abandon will quickly eat up your phone's finite space. No space means no more apps and photos. It can also mean weird OS behavior. Trust us, things are only going to get worse as smartphone cameras improve and produce larger image files. So let's get those photos off the phone and stored in two different places.
Dropbox
First, you'll want to use a cloud service like Dropbox or Flickr to upload all your photos. Both services even let you auto-upload photos. If you already pay for a Dropbox, install the app, sign into your account, and in the app head to Settings and turn on Camera Upload. Turn on Background Uploading so you don't have to launch the app every time you take a few photos. You have the option to turn on uploading via cellular data. Only turn that on if you're on an unlimited data account. For the initial sync, do all your uploading via Wi-Fi. The downside to Dropbox is if you have a free account you probably only have 5GB of storage available. Even if you're paying for more storage, your photos and videos are going to suck up a ton of space.
Flickr
If you're going through life taking photos of absolutely everything, the Flickr app is probably more your speed. Flickr offers up to 1TB of storage. Like the Dropbox app, you can upload photos in the background. (In the app, go to More and turn on Auto Upload.) All the photos will be viewable via the app and on the site, but will be set to private. If you're concerned about your photos being online, even in private mode, you're probably better off with Dropbox.
One issue with these options is that you can only upload new photos in your camera roll. You'll need to take care of the rest from your computer after you sync your phone to it. But once everything is in your preferred cloud service, you can rest easy knowing they won't be hogging up all the valuable space on your phone ever again. Now let's get those old photos onto your computer and then into the cloud.
OS X
If you've never synced your phone to your computer before, be sure to set aside enough time to get all those photos off your phone. I could take a while. On OS X, iPhoto is go-to photo management tool. For iOS it's pretty much just plug and play. To get Android to play nice with your computer, head to Settings > Device > Storage > Menu > USB computer connection. Turn on Camera PTP USB connection. The default MTB USB setting doesn't work with iPhoto and requires you to download and install an app to work with OS X.
Once your phone shows up in the left-hand sidebar of iPhoto, click on it and select the import button in the top right-hand corner. Import everything! At this point if you're using Flickr, use the iPhoto in-app uploader to upload all your photos to the service. Select the photos you want to see via the Flickr app. Click on the Share icon in the lower right-hand corner. Select Flick, then Auto Upload. Be sure to change, 'Photos Viewable By' to 'Only You.' That'll keep them private. Set 'Photo Size' to 'Actual' so you have a full-resolution image backed up and viewable. ( Note: It's best if you upload the photos in chunks. Uploading thousands and thousands of photos at once will bring your computer to a standstill.)
If you're using Dropbox, you can drag and drop the photos into the Camera Uploads folder in your Finder's Dropbox folder.
Once you're done, delete the photos off your smartphone. Remember, everything is available in the cloud now. If you've used iPhoto before and you can't access already imported photos to delete them, fire up Image Capture on OS X and you can delete photos from there.
Windows 8
Again, if you've never synced your phone to your computer before, go make yourself a sandwich or something. If you don't have an app that grabs your photos from your camera, navigate to Computer. Right click on your smartphone icon and select Import Pictures and Videos. The photos will, by default, import into your My Pictures folder.
To get those photos onto Flickr, use Windows Photo Gallery. Launch the app and select the photos you want to upload. Under the Home tab, the services you can share to are in the top right-hand corner. Select Flickr. In the pop up under Permissions select Only You. This will keep the photos private. Under Photo sets select Auto Upload. And under Photo Size, select Original. Now hit publish. If you have a lot of photos, again, it's best to upload in chunks.
If you're using Dropbox, you can drag and drop the photos into the Camera Uploads folder in your Finder's Dropbox folder.
After you've backed up your photos to a cloud service, go ahead and delete them off your smartphone. On the iPhone double click on your smartphone icon and navigate to Internal Storage\DCIM\100APPLE grab the photos and delete them. On Android navigate to DCIM\Camera, grab the photos and delete them. Now everything should be there when you launch Dropbox or Flickr.
Going forward all your photos will be automagically uploaded to your service of choice. Just remember to plug your phone into your computer every once in a while to sync and delete photos.
Roberto is a Wired Staff Writer for Gadget Lab covering cord-cutting, e-readers, home technology, and all the gadgets that fit in your backpack. Got a tip? Send him an email at: roberto_baldwin [at] wired.com.
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