We take lots of photos with the smartphone while we are away from home that often we do not notice the danger of losing everything. A theft, a sudden fall or an involuntary cancellation can make many precious memories disappear that we do not want to give up with a light heart.
The technology comes to our aid in these cases thanks to the use of the cloud (i.e. the virtual space present on the Internet) and the specific apps that can automatically save the photos on the smartphone to be able to review them at any time on the PC, so as to have them always kept (in theory for eternity, or at least as long as the servers are online).
In this guide we will see together how to automatically save the photographs and images on the smartphone (be it Android or iPhone little changes) and how to review them on the PC with real-time synchronization .
1) Cloud services to try
To automatically save our photos to review them on PC we can use Google Photos or Dropbox.
Google Photos is a service combined with Google Drive (so we can consider them one) that allows you to save an infinite number of photos at a predetermined quality; the app personally takes care of reducing the size of the photos to a resolution sufficient for printing and sharing, so that they can be saved in the cloud without any space limit.
If, on the other hand, we want to upload at the highest quality, we will have only the space offered by Google Drive (basic 15 GB), after which we will not be able to upload more photos (if not by purchasing an additional data plan).
You can subscribe to the service for free from here -> Google Drive .
If you already have a Google Account, just enter your credentials to access your cloud space.
READ ALSO: Google Photos with unlimited backup from Android, iPhone and PC
Dropbox is one of the most used services to store any type of file (including photos) in the cloud thanks to the synchronization service dedicated to the photographs taken by the smartphone.
The space available is much more limited (2 GB), so we will have to carefully choose which photos to save and which to delete; in any case it is possible to increase the space available by purchasing one of the paid profiles (starting from € 10 per month for 1 TB of space!).
You can still subscribe to the service for free from here -> Dropbox .
2) Configure the smartphone to save photos automatically
Having chosen the service that is right for us, it is time to prepare the smartphone, so as to automatically save the photos on the chosen cloud.
If you want to use Google Photos just download the free app from here -> Google Photos (Android) and Google Photos (iOS).
Once the app is installed, all we have to do is open the app, go to the side panel (or by pressing the options button at the top) and finally open the Settings menu.
In the new menu we press on the Backup and synchronization item to access the most important screen of the app.
Simply activate the Backup and sync button to save photos to Google Drive.
You can choose the size of the photos to be saved on the same screen, if you want to save some other folder on your smartphone or if you want to save to the cloud even under a data network (watch out for the consumption of the data offer!).
We want to use Dropbox to save photos automatically "> Dropbox (Android) and Dropbox (iOS).
Once the app is installed on the device on which we want to automatically save the photos, simply enter the credentials, open the side menu, select the Settings item and, among the many options available, activate the Enable camera uploads item.
From now on, all the photos taken with the smartphone will be uploaded to Dropbox, together with those that may already be present (the app will take the trouble to also upload the photos already taken and present in the address book).
The app also lets you choose the folders to be synchronized, so that we can avoid those that we do not intend to synchronize.
3) Configure the PC to synchronize the photos saved on the cloud
After configuration on smartphones we can focus on how to have photos of the mobile phone on PC automatically with specific clients.
To have access to all the photos synchronized in the cloud as if it were any folder we will have to use the synchronization programs offered by Google and Dropbox.
To download the Google Drive client we can use the link present here -> Google Drive PC (we download the Backup and synchronization version).
Once installed on our PC we will be asked for Google credentials and where to place the Google Drive folder.
Once the initial configuration has been completed, simply wait for the folders to synchronize (on the slower lines it may take a few minutes); performed the synchronization we will have all the photos taken on the smartphone directly on the PC in the GDrive folder ->
If the device from which to synchronize the photos is connected via WiFi we will see the same after a few seconds; while if the device is away from home (therefore in the data network) we will have to wait for it to connect to a WiFi network to start synchronization.
If, on the other hand, we want to synchronize the Dropbox photo folder, all we have to do is download the specific client from here -> Dropbox PC .
At the end we install the client, insert the login credentials to Dropbox and wait for the synchronization of the contents.
All photos will be available in the Dropbox folder which will appear among the resources of the PC, including the one where there are also uploads from mobile phones.
As already mentioned for Google Photos, photos synchronized on PC will be available only if the portable device is connected to a WiFi network, otherwise they will not appear (unless you change the synchronization settings on your smartphone).
