# The big online image grab - some thoughts



## LouieSherwin (Oct 7, 2015)

In the latest round of photo managing software releases over the last year there appears to be a definite trend for each service provider to want to grab *ALL* my photos on all my devices and put them safely on their servers. 

Case in point the last Lightroom Mobile (2.0) turned on the setting to automatically upload my iPhone camera roll and I had to scramble to turn it back off. But it's not just Adobe, Google photos, Apple photos and even Flickr are defaulting to this grab everything mode. I recently downladed Google photos desktop and it tried to immediately grab everything off of my computer. UGG.

Each of these companies are saying how this is all happening for my benefit to have all my photos backed up for "free" on their servers. But some how I don't believe that this is some purely altruistic move on their part. There must be some major advantage to them to invest all these resources into storing all of our photos for "no extra cost". I can only think that they are mining the metadata that is normally left in each image. 

I personally do not like the way each of the companies are making the default settings for these new apps to grab all my images and that I have to carefully dig into the settings to disable that behavior. I especially am annoyed by Adobe with the latest release of LR Mobile that they changed my setting *without asking* and started uploading my camera roll. 

I do think that online image storage is a good thing especially as off site backup. However I prefer to do this on my terms not someone else's. To that end I pay a monthly fee to CrashPlan to keep an encrypted backup of my image library. This seems reasonably safe and private way to protect my images. 

I am curious to hear your thoughs and perspectives on this apparent trend.

-louie


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## clee01l (Oct 7, 2015)

Mining the metadata may well be a an ulterior motive. Also, If Google grabs your photo stream first, then you might be more likely to keep your image at Google and shut out the competition.  These companies like Google generate revenue by getting viewers.   This is not the case with Adobe (AFAIK) or Apple.   I have a Crashplan Backup and this is more critical to me than some lossy JPEG image at google, Facebook or Flickr.


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## johnbeardy (Oct 7, 2015)

A Faustian pact indeed!

I suppose I think back to the time before Lightroom when I had one program to manage all my pictures, Photoshop to Edit Them one at a time, actions and scripts to output a whole shoot in each size I wanted, actions and scripts to....etc , had to manually upload to Flickr or my web site, and so on. It was a Heath Robinson / Rube Goldberg contraption of a workflow. And suddenly there was Aperture, one ring to rule them all (and in the darkness bind them), and then Lightroom.

Back then the stresses were about getting everything to work in sync on your one computer, now they're as much about coordinating your pictures across however many computers or devices you own, and the different environments in which you show your pictures. So as Lightroom was a program connected to Adobe's suite of programs, now it's more part of an ecosystem. Another ecosystem gains its revenues from mining information about you, the other from selling you new devices every couple of years. Take your pick. For me Adobe's in the right place, with the incentive of selling you tools for your creative life, and with the kind of headroom provided by mobile apps and the kind of fully-featured apps like Photoshop or PremierePro or InDesign that you need as soon as you want to do anything advanced. Of course it's not altruistic, but would you really want it to be so? 

John


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## DGStinner (Oct 7, 2015)

I left the auto upload of the camera roll on since all of my iPhone images wind up in Lightroom anyway and IMO it's easier/quicker letting Lr Mobile do it in the background.  The desktop version of the Flickr Uploadr is useless to me since all of my images for the last 2 years have been mostly raw files (the only JPGs are those from my iPhones) and it can't upload raw files.


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## LouieSherwin (Oct 8, 2015)

Thanks everyone for adding your thoughts to this. John, yes indeed a Faustian bargain. What are we giving up for all this convenience?  I do like your analogy to ecosystems and I also tend agree with your overall characterizations of each although it not easy to tell from the outside what are the true motivations.

I find it quite fascinating that all these big gorillas are jumping in to "help" me with all of my mobile device images. And no I do not for a second think this is altruistic on their part. I would love to have been a fly on the wall in all the product management meetings where they worked out the business plans to justify the hundreds of millions of dollars of infrastructure required to hold all these images for "us". I am quite curious to know what they think that they are getting out of this big investment. 

-louie


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## johnbeardy (Oct 8, 2015)

LouieSherwin said:


> I am quite curious to know what they think that they are getting out of this big investment.
> -louie



A lot less than they expect, Louie? I think you can see it as a mix of motives. Partly it's about meeting genuine demand to have pictures wherever we happen to want them, in the future too. There's also self-defence - each has to be a player. And another angle is the Instagram effect - every product manager is being asked why he or she didn't have that idea. So they cast the net widely. In my ecosystem analogy (warning, this is going to make you wonder what I am smoking!) a wide variety of integrated services is the oxygen that keeps it healthy while they throw out lots of seeds and see which grows.


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## LouieSherwin (Oct 8, 2015)

DGStinner said:


> I left the auto upload of the camera roll on since all of my iPhone images wind up in Lightroom anyway and IMO it's easier/quicker letting Lr Mobile do it in the background.  The desktop version of the Flickr Uploadr is useless to me since all of my images for the last 2 years have been mostly raw files (the only JPGs are those from my iPhones) and it can't upload raw files.



I think that this works only for one person with a CC subscription. In my case I need to also collect the images of of my wife's two iDevices and integrate to a shared image library. I'm not ready to pay for another subscription simply for that convenience. 

-louie


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## LouieSherwin (Oct 8, 2015)

johnbeardy said:


> In my ecosystem analogy (warning, this is going to make you wonder what I am smoking!) a wide variety of integrated services is the oxygen that keeps it healthy while they throw out lots of seeds and see which grows.



Well in that case I'll just try to keep my head out of the smoke and see what takes root.


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## Conrad Chavez (Oct 8, 2015)

It isn't necessary for companies like Dropbox, Google, Flickr, Adobe, etc. to look at your images or their metadata. They still benefit in many ways from auto-uploading all your phone images. It's a great way to cement "engagement," the holy grail of every mobile app and service. If a service can become the place where all your photos are, there are all kinds of follow-on consequences that are positive (for them).


If it's the place where all your photos end up, you're more likely to come back and visit that service, and use it, and put your other files on it. It also means you'll probably download that company's phone app and keep using it, and they can start marketing to you directly via emails and app notifications.
Once your files are with them you are less likely to start using a competing service.
The more files you add, the more likely you'll hit whatever the base storage limit is, so the more you're likely to say "looks like I need to pay for more space." Now you're a paid subscriber.
Even if you're with a service with no stated limit like Lightroom Mobile, as your online photo library gets bigger the ease of moving all those photos to another service goes down, so you're more likely to stay put. And if you're paying, that means you're more likely to become a permanent paid subscriber.

Point #4 is even stronger if you've been using web links from the service to share photos, or to embed images in web pages and blog posts. Now if you change services all those links will break. So you end up deciding it's easier to stay with that company so you can leave the images where they are.

The first service to get your photos is the one where you'll probably end up doing a lot of other online activities with those images, many of which make customers "sticky" and are revenue-generating. I think that's why so many services want to auto-upload your photos.


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## Ian.B (Oct 8, 2015)

My worry Louie is my photos will end up in a cloud like this; what will lightning do to my digital files. 





broken hill aust 2011. 180 decrees pano from lots of canon g12 files 
_sorry  _:focus:​Seriously; Thanks for the good thread Louie :nod:. It's something that worried me when it all started and in many ways I still don't understand it all or trust it.


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