Today Dropbox announced a new app just for viewing and sharing picture . It ’s calledCarousel , and it admit and your Friend to seamlessly share ikon between your Dropbox brochure . But you might not desire to give it a spin .
There are mass of photographic camera roll replacements out there for both iOS and Android , but unlike most apps that get out your image catalogue from your phone ’s storage , Carousel — uncommitted for Io or Android — synchronize up with your Dropbox story to show you a unified tilt of every single photograph you have uploaded to the cloud , no matter what folder it ’s in .
Your photos are sort by day of the month , where you’re able to scroll vertically day - by - day , or skim across a horizontal ginmill to vanish more quickly through time . Selecting a especial photo will make it large and give you two , and only two , options : swipe down to hide from vista ( you naughty ) , or purloin up to share . Of course ! partake in ! It ’s what Dropbox is really after with Carousel .
partake a exposure with Carousel circumvents email or SMS , delivering the images by way of Dropbox synchronise only . That means that whomever you are sharing with must have a Dropbox account . From right within the app , you could initiate or join conversations where you and your bud merchandise pic back and forth , one or many at a meter .
The welfare is that you are have access to your intact account of photographs , no matter the origin ( as long as they are synced to your Dropbox accounting ) with the power to share and pass with others in a coordinated user interface . Before Carousel , you would have had to initiate an email or text thread , launch the Dropbox app , share a pic , go back to the email or text , show your friend ’s response , and so on .
The purpose behind Carousel makes thoroughgoing sense . The trouble is in carrying into action . Carousel ’s sharing user interface is anything but streamlined . There are just way too many taps and swipes to get through to perform basic undertaking . The wide-eyed operation of saving a photograph from Dropbox to your camera gyre necessitate selecting the photo , hook up to share , penetrate another portion button , clicking a flyout menu , then selecting Save . You ’ll be quondam by then .
The spectator presents zero options for ways to display your photos , squeeze separations by escort . If you only take one photo per daytime , your Carousel will take care like a longsighted unmarried pillar of photos to scroll through . There ’s no way to compress your view or engineer by different attributes . You also do not have memory access to any single file information whatsoever . No metadata is viewable , or file name , or file size of it . It ’s the paradigm and the image alone .
All of these quibbles are amplified by the defeat of requiring everyone you need to share with to be a Dropbox user . The service is by no substance ubiquitous the way Io is , and with current exchange premium pricing so bloated compared toGoogle Driveand other competitors , it ’s deserving wonder whether new waves of people are go to sing up . There is a style to circumvent this limitation , and that is by get off a photo from Carousel to your Mail app , then email it out . The receiver will receive a simple Dropbox link direct to the photo . But if you just ship a photo from within Carousel , the recipient receive an invite to download Carousel before they can get at the photo . It ’s confusing !
Dropbox set out to simplify affair for picture - sharers , and their cloud service certainly allow for a knock-down gumption for the task . But with Carousel , they tripped up with an app that is too limited in function , too awkward in form .
Download Carousel from theApp StoreorGoogle Play .
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