Photo Aggregating & Sharing Service OpenPhoto Launches Android App
Created by a former Yahoo engineer, OpenPhoto is an open-source photo hosting, sharing and aggregation service that supports photo backups both locally and on various renowned cloud storage services like Dropbox, Box, CX and Amazon S3, etc. When we reviewed it earlier in April, OpenPhoto was only available as a web and iOS app. However, the company recently decided to expand its user base by releasing a companion app for Android in the Play Store. Sporting a clean UI, the official Android app is capable of displaying your OpenPhoto images aggregated from various affiliated services in an elegantly laid out gallery. Using the app, you can filter your uploaded images by albums and tags, sync images between your OpenPhoto cloud and device, share public photos with your social or mail contacts, and upload fresh or existing photos to your OpenPhoto account after applying custom tags and effects. In addition, the Android app supports Facebook, Google+ and Dropbox-style instant, automatic photo uploads, as well as the option to limit uploading to Wi-Fi only.
The photo effects and basic image editing tools supported by OpenPhoto are powered by the popular online photo editing service, Aviary. The first limitation you might notice is that the mobile app only lets you log in to your existing OpenPhoto account or a self-hosted server, and you must use the web app to specify your preferred cloud storage affiliation and perform basic account management for your photo backup. First time users have the option to sign up for a new account from within the app. Please note that any account created with the mobile app will, by default, result in automatic uploading of your photos to the OpenPhoto cloud instead of a cloud storage of your liking. It’ll therefore be a good idea to initially sign up and configure your preferences for the service at its website from a web browser. Once your configuration is all set according to your choice, the mobile app can be handy to do the rest.
Let’s now take a look at the mobile app’s UI. You can view all your local and synced social account photos under the Sync tab. Also, this is where you can start creating backups of your local photos from the device to cloud. You may select as many images as required and then upload them to a custom OpenPhoto album with your preferred tags and privacy settings. You also have the option to publicly share photos on Facebook and Twitter.
All the images uploaded using the mobile app are listed under the Home tab, along with their respective tags, location, title and time of sharing. For all the instant uploads, the app can automatically add a tag of your choice to the photos. To view your photos on a dynamically curated collage, just hit the Gallery tab. For new photo upload tasks, you have the option to import the pictures from the Gallery, or snap fresh images via your device’s camera. Prior to uploading, you can tag the photos accordingly, and use the built-in Aviary photo editor to adjust and enhance the image attributes as required.
The app’s settings screen allows you to log out of the app, specify the automatically applied custom tag, trigger the instant upload feature, or enable the WiFi-only upload feature. Like its web and iOS counterpart, the Android app is absolutely free to download.
Download OpenPhoto For Android
