How would you like to have the ability to drag and drop images into a folder and know their next stop is your online gallery? It sounds appealing, doesn’t it?
This is what you get with DropGallery. So far, it’s only available for Windows, but they promise applications will be coming soon for Mac as well as the iPhone and Android.
If the convenience of an application such as DropBox is any indication, DropGallery will be a valuable tool for many photographers.
You can use up to 2GB of the service for free. If you like the service, you can upgrade to 50GB for $4.99 a month. The service plans also offer backup service.
This service can be used for many professional and amateur applications. Set the galleries to either public or private, which will give photographers the option of collaborating with other photographers, art directors and editors.
This is a new application with promise. Before long, I’m sure this technology will be integrated into other applications such as Flickr, Photoshelter or Smugmug.
Rosh
Rosh:
While very interesting in terms of technology, I’m afraid that this implementation fails in terms of protecting a photographers work as all embedded metadata appears to be stripped on upload. No IPTC, XMP, or Exif metadata is preserved in the images that are shown online, so the Dropgallery service only serves to create a set of orphan works of the images you share. For details see the last item in the list of preliminary survey results on the “Survey regarding the Preservation of Photo Metadata by Social Media Websites” at http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/socialmedia/ for details.
As this is listed as a “beta” service, I hope that the developers will take a more proactive approach towards preserving metadata and protecting intellectual property.
David
David,
Thank you for taking the time share this information. We’ve all run across new platforms that take our rights and strip meta data. It’s important for the community to raise their hands, but it is also important to talk about the new technology.
Google Chrome originally claimed all rights – a browser! Photographers and others stood up and they changed the policies with in days. I was very active in calling out fotomoto and they changed polices… many more examples. Most tech companies don’t even realize they are hurting their future clients.
It’s up to us photographers to send companies a nice email informing them that we may not be able to use their great technology in its current state.
Rosh
Hi Guys I am one of the Developers of DropGallery and i would like to take a second to respond to your post. First of all thanks for taking the time to look at our product and review it.
We have worked hard to make a program that is small is easy to use and work well. We are not trying abuse your intellectual property rights at all, we are just starting out and can not please everybody.
The version of the photo that is shown on the web is rendered by our servers to a thumbnail and a standard size.
Your original images reside safely on Amazon’s cloud storage servers and we are working on a backup feature that will send them back to you if you need them in their original format. I am pretty sure i can get my guys to do whatever with the metadata of the photo, that did not even hit our radar yet. Getting it to work well and out of beta is first on the list, and we are almost there.
We have yet to launch our more full featured pro photo version.
If you looked at the site you would have noticed that you can not subscribe to it yet. We are hoping to consult with professional photographers and investors in the future to create a system that is suitable for this use. Whether on this site or re skinning it with different features for professionals. Currently it is a free service meant for the average computer user.
We can not build a huge complex secure system for professionals to use and then give it away. Feel free to contact me directly derek@dropgallery.com to discuss this project if you think that you could help.
Thanks
Thank you for taking the time to respond.
The biggest concern among photographers is striping the meta data out of the photo. When meta data is striped out of the image it becomes what is called an orphan work ( If the copyright holder can’t be found). This can create legal issues down the road.
Keep us up to date on the launch of dropgallery.
Rosh
I will Rosh and I will take what I have learned from your blog and try and integrate some of it into later releases, or redevelopment into a full featured version specifically aimed at professionals like yourself !
Thanks again.
Derek
Does this application allow users to drag and drop from desktop to an online folder/gallery? Thanks!
The idea is that you drag and drop your image into a folder on your desktop and it will then be automatically uploaded to the online gallery.