New Photo Editing/Enhancement Tools In Google+

Google+ has just rolled out new tools to edit and enhance your photos. Check out the new features below and watch the video to get introduced to the updated photo editor.

• Tune Image - Adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, shadows, and warmth levels
• Selective Adjust - Tune parts of your photo without altering others with control points
• Details - Enhance the fine details and improve the sharpness
• Crop & Rotate - Resize, trim, rotate, straighten, and change the aspect ratio
• Center Focus - Draw attention to the subject of your photo by blurring the surrounding area
• Drama - Add style with a custom effect specifically tailored to your photos
• Frames - Select a border for you photograph
• Tilt-Shift - Simulate depth of field by creating a narrow in-focus area
• Vintage films - Make any photo look vintage
• Retrolux - Go retro with light leaks, scratches, film styles, and more

Give the new tools a try and let us know what you think. (Note: Chrome is required to use these new tools on the web.)

Dropbox Redesigns Web And Releases New Android App

Today Dropbox has redesigned their website's file management portal and updated the Android app to the include the automatic background uploading we saw in the beta test earlier this month.

The new website design, as shown in the screenshots below, is brighter and more spacious. In addition, it includes a lightbox feature that allows you to easily flip through larger images. It will show up once you automatically upload some images.

Once you download the new Android version and allow automatic uploading you will get 500 MB of additional space added to your account when your first photo/video uploads. Your entire current photo and video library will upload automatically, then whenever you take a new photo or record a video it will be uploaded to the "Camera Uploads" folder in your Dropbox account. Over time an additional 3 GB of space will be added to your account when you automatically upload more images and videos; they have not disclosed the specifics of how this increase will work.

Download the new Android version today from the market and let us know what you think. An updated iOS version will be coming soon as well as new Windows and Mac desktop clients.

Dropbox Is Giving Up To 5 GB Extra Space For Testing Android App Version 2.0.9

Dropbox is testing Android Build 2.0.9 and increasing users' storage space by up to 5 GB for trying it out. This experimental version includes the following updates:

• Automatic background uploading of photos and videos over Wi-Fi or data plan (sorry Sync.ly)
• Can now upload files of any size (the 180 MB limit is gone)
• Uploads will pause when there are network issues, then resume when resolved
• Other performance improvements & bug fixes

Once you download the beta version APK and allow for automatic uploading you will get 500 MB of additional space added to your account when your first photo uploads. Your entire current photo and video library will upload automatically, then whenever you take a new photo or record a video it will be uploaded to the "Camera Uploads" folder in your Dropbox account. During the beta period you will get an additional 500 MB of space for every 500 MB of photos/videos that are automatically uploaded. The program caps out at 5 GB of extra cloud storage space.

If anything be sure to at least get the initial 500 MB for trying it out. The app is nice and works smoothly. Save or share this page to come back on your Android device and click here to download Dropbox 2.0.9. If you do not have a Dropbox account you can signup here and get 2 GB of space free.

Snapjoy Stores And Organizes Your Photos - Review, Tour, And Invites

Snapjoy effortlessly organizes your photos while being backed up in the cloud. The website provides a simple and fast interface for uploading your pictures. The startup was founded by JP Ren and Michael Dwan because, as two photographers, they wanted a safe place to share pictures with people while automatically organizing the ever increasing quantity of images taken and stored.

There are no storage/upload limits during the beta period. After that, you will get 5 GB of storage for free with additional paid options available; no word on when the beta will end, but JP said users will be given at least 30 days notice. The free plan is exceptional compared to 1 GB on Picasa, 2 GB on Dropbox, and Flickr's 300 MB monthly limit (it would take you seventeen months to upload 5 GB). If you are not backing up your photos offsite in the cloud then this is a great chance to do just that. Snapjoy has given me twenty invites exclusively to give to you so be sure to request an invite (instructions at the end). Time for the tour!

The home page - be sure to check out the Live Demo.

Creating your account is fast and only needs minimal information. There are no privacy options because the default is, and always will be, private.

It lets you know if your selected username is available. The shown username URL is not currently active, but they plan to offer more public types of sharing in the future, at which time I believe this profile will play a role.

Welcome!

Now it is time upload your pictures. For Windows and Mac you can do a traditional upload where you select the files (I used this method). They also offer "Shoebox" for Mac, which offers a drag and drop style upload.

During the upload you have the ability to cancel individual files from uploading. You will notice only JPG and JPEG are supported. The ability to support RAW files is being looked at.

Upload complete and images are being processed.

If your images lack EXIF data the system is not able to properly organize them. If you are uploading them right out of the camera then this should not be an issue, but if it is for whatever reason, you are able to adjust the date and time details of any photo as shown later on.

After uploading my second set I came to my Timeline.

This is the individual photo display and edit page with a commenting section.

On the left are your editing icons where you can download, rotate, edit date/time details, and delete the photo. The download functionality could use some work as it only opens another tab/window with the full resolution version so that you can right click on it to save the image.

Over to the right side is your sharing button.

Edit the date and time taken.

There are many Library views available. This is the Timeline view we saw before where you can click each row title to drill down further.

Last Roll shows your 48 most recent uploads.

Remember when is fun, especially with a large Library. It randomly displays a photo to bring back your memories.

Shared with you shows the photos you have access to that where shared by your family and friends.

Unsorted (Lost & Found) brings the pictures together that have no date and time information so that you can update them.

This is the view after pressing the delete icon; it moves that photo to your trash.

Your trash folder's images will automatically delete after 30 days, or you can empty it immediately.

Restoring a deleted image is easy.

The settings page lets you view your information and change your password.

Overall the service is clean and responsive with the available storage size and back up aspect being its selling point. Sharing is currently simple but effective, although I hope to see additional features soon. Those features, or others, are coming soon because they have told me to "expect new things within the next week". Snapjoy has some serious work to contend on a large scale but they have built a very strong base platform with an excellent UI to build off of. Besides more social features, enhanced sharing, and better downloading I personally hope to see automatic uploading (desktop and mobile), printing options, embedding capabilities, and enhanced image editing.

I highly recommend you try it out and let everyone know what you think in the comments below. If you want an invite please email me at dain@dainbinder.com and I will get you in. Enjoy! Follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

Syncly - Simply Backup Android Photos

Syncly was released on the Android market and is a simple way to backup your photos to the cloud. Just install the app, set up and account, then link to Dropbox. (Update: HiDrive support was added on February 21, 2012.) You can designate to have it automatically upload over Wifi & 3G, just Wifi, or only when indicated. After that, any time you take a picture it is automatically saved to your Dropbox account in a "Syncly" folder.

This is a great tool to have setup! Google+'s Android application has this functionality built in to automatically send the pictures to Picasa, and it has come in very handy. This dedicated simple app is a great solution for many with its smaller size (1.1 MB installed) and Dropbox integration. If you have Dropbox's desktop program installed your pictures will even be automatically loaded on your computer after you take them.

The Syncly team says it will support other services in the near future to upload to as well as syncing other types of data. The app is brought to you by the Products & Innovation department at Deutsche Telekom AG (T-Mobile) in Berlin. Their unit can create, launch, and try new out products quickly like a startup.

Give it a try and let everyone know what you think in the comments below. I really like it and am looking forward to future updates. I am having an issue with my device where the file name extension (.jpg) is dropping off during upload that they are looking at. Others have not had this issue.

Update: Syncly is no longer available.

Geofences - What It Is And What It Can Be

Yahoo!'s Flickr has enhanced and brought photo location privacy controls to the next level. With Geofences the development team has innovatively increased the options to control geotagged photos. This also inherently increases people's comfort and therefore willingness to allow location data to be sent to Flickr.

The implementation of the tool is simple and straight forward. You can create a zone on the map that will assign a default sharing setting to photos geotagged within that location. The image below helps to understand that photos taken in non-yellow areas get your default privacy setting (probably "anyone") while pictures taken in the School or Home geofenced regions are more private.

I love this idea and think it is an awesome step towards making people more comfortable with sharing their location of photos. One issue that many people may overlook is that you have to geocode your photos for this to work! People may inadvertently share more things publicly by thinking they took them within their geofence, but without location data attached to the image it will get the default setting instead.

Flickr's geofence concept is an interesting one that could be further expanded. What if they flip it around in a way and give the option to only allow people to see specific photos if they are inside the geofence? That could be pretty powerful. Want to see and interact with exclusive pictures of such and such? Then you have to come to our location! Even on the personal side it would be akin to holding an actual photo album when you had to actually go over someones house to see it. How about a scavenger hunt of sorts where you have to be at a location to see the next hint, item, or location? Their are a lot of possibilities.

With more location data being sent to Flickr I was interested in how they may internally use that data. Unfortunately their privacy section is not working; I asked them if it moved and will review the section when it becomes available.

Instagram, Path, PicPlz, TwitPic, TinyPic, etc.

What do you think of the new photo sharing sites?

My thought is that these services are the future but will not survive on their own. Their innovation and technology will be bought and merged into larger services. As of today none of these can compete with Facebook, Flickr, etc.

Are these services anything outside of the tech world? :)  You have your answer.

That said; I do love them, and they are great for use with Twitter. But, for sharing personal pictures of friends and family and having friends and family comment on them... for most, they will not cut the mustard.

A great article discussing these services can be found at The Next Web.