iCloud, Google Photos, Flickr, and Amazon Cloud Drive: Where do I upload my photos?

Saving our photographs in the cloud is something that is increasingly common, not only for the convenience of being able to enjoy them anywhere thanks to the internet and our mobile devices, but also because it is a comfortable, fast and quite simple way to have a copy security of our photographic library against any adverse event that ends up with our hard drive. There are many services that offer us free accounts to upload our photos and videos, and we want to analyze the four best known: iCloud Photo, Google Photos, Flickr and Amazon Cloud Drive.

iCloud, comfort and maximum integration

Apple offers all its users an iCloud account with 5GB of free storage. The data from our applications, the backup copies of our devices and our photos and videos are stored in this account. It is easy to understand that these 5GB are too scarce to consider saving our photographic library, and even less if we have videos in it. The free iCloud account is used for little more than saving the photos we take with our iPhone and to share some with friends and family, but if you really consider using it to upload your entire library, you will be practically obliged to pay for more capacity.

It is true that the prices are not high: for € 0,99 per month you can enjoy 50GB of storage, and for € 2,99 you will have 200GB and for € 9,99 per month you will get up to 1TB of capacity, but is it worth it? pay for it? iCloud Photo has the advantage that it is perfectly integrated with Apple operating systems. Photos for iOS and OS X are perfectly understood, and you just have to configure a couple of options so that your entire library is on all your mobile devices and Mac computers at once. You also have the possibility to configure it so that in iOS it does not occupy all the storage of your device, downloading only the version appropriate to the resolution of your screen. The photographs are uploaded with the same quality as the originals, and you can download them whenever you want with that same quality, keeping all the details. However, all this does not convince the majority of users who opt for other free services.

Google Photos, the rival to beat

Google launched its new service for storing photos and videos in the cloud a year ago. Their free service will allows you to store all photos and videos with no space limit, but with one requirement: all photos must have a maximum resolution of 16Mpx and 1080p videos. Those photos and videos that exceed this requirement will be automatically converted to this size to be uploaded to their servers. If you want them to be uploaded respecting the original format, then you will have to pay a Google Drive account, and there the attractiveness is lost. Photos and videos that do not reach that maximum resolution will also be compressed on Google's servers, although according to the company it will be imperceptible by the user.

Google also raises many questions regarding privacy, because the conditions of its service indicate that the photos will be yours, but that it reserves the right to use them when it deems appropriate, even if you no longer use its service, which generated a lot of controversial at first. Despite this, with its application for iOS and OS X, uploading the photographic library to Google Photos is child's play, and it integrates seamlessly with Photos for Mac, so any photos you add to the Apple app will automatically be uploaded to Google Photos.

The Google service also has some very interesting functions that differentiate it from the others, such as creating animations when you upload many photos of the same moment, necklaces, albums and presentation videos of certain events. This is done by Google automatically analyzing your material and showing it to you so that you can decide if you like it and save it or if you discard it. Once you try it, the truth is that sometimes you get very good results without the slightest effort on your part.

Flickr, a giant gone down

Flickr has always been the reference when it comes to storing photos in the cloud, but competition from Google and other free services, and decisions made recently that have generated the discontent of many of its users have made it relegated to the background. The Yahoo service offers you 1TB of free storage (yes, I was not wrong, 1TB) to upload your photos and videos. So far everything looks fine, but a few months ago he decided that in order to use the desktop application that synchronizes your Photos library with Flickr, you have to have a paid account, something that no one liked. Paying $ 5,99 a month just to use a desktop application seems really disproportionate, since the storage capacity remains unchanged, and the rest of the premium services it offers are not really interesting for most users.

Even so, it has a free application for iOS that does upload the photos automatically, so if what you want is a backup of the photos of your iPhone then this is the best option you have available. The quality of the photos remains unchanged, and from the application itself you can share with other users, keep your photos private or allow your friends or the general public to have access to them.

Amazon Cloud Drive, one I want and I can't

The last service we talk about is unknown to many. Amazon has also offered cloud storage possibilities for a long time, and those Amazon Premium users, in addition to enjoying free shipping on many of the products sold by the internet giant, will have 5GB of free storage on Amazon Cloud Drive, and of all the photos you want, without space limits, although videos do not fit in this case. The photos are uploaded respecting the originals, without compression or modifications, and it also has a desktop application to make uploads easier from your computer.

Amazon Cloud Drive would be an ideal alternative for those who are users of its Premium service, but instead its applications they have a lot to improve. The desktop app doesn't sync the changes you make to Photos for OS X, you have to sync manually, and it doesn't also integrate with Photos like Google Photos does. Amazon Photos, the application for iOS, is responsible for automatically uploading all the photos you have on your iPhone, and has an interface that does not offer you all those functions that Google Photos does have, but at least to browse the collection yes that is more than enough.

Google Photos, above the rest for the majority

After analyzing the four services, each one will have its winner. It is clear that Apple with iCloud would be the undisputed winner for ease of use, integration and for keeping the quality of the photos intact, but space is everything., and having to pay for something that other services offer you for free, although with certain shortcomings, is something that not everyone is willing to do. If we opt for free services, Google Photos is the winner without a doubt, for its desktop applications and for mobile devices, for the integration with Photos for OS X, and for all those compositions, videos and animated gifs that it automatically creates for you. . Of course, you will have to accept those peculiar privacy clauses that Google offers you, and the fact that it compresses your photos and videos.

Amazon Cloud Drive would have many points to be the winner, but its more than improvable desktop application and the fact that the videos are not unlimited subtract many points, so it is relegated to third place. Flickr, the ideal service for many, is for me the one that occupies the fourth position due to the fact that having to pay $ 5,99 a month to be able to use a desktop app that automatically uploads my photos.