Comparing the best online photo storage options from Flickr, Google+, 500px, Dropbox, Amazon, Instagram, Facebook, and more!

We've talked on numerous occasions about how great of camera you have included with your iPhone and have taken a look at some great photography apps to accompany it, but once you take all those photos and edit them to perfection, where are you going to store them? You can store them locally on various devices and hard drives, but what about in the cloud? Other than Photo Stream, what are other cloud storage options for all those memories you're accumulating?

Facebook, Instagram, Twitpic, and other non-options

Before we jump into the various great options out there, let's first discuss the fact that posting to Facebook, Instagram, Twipic, and any other little photo sharing service is not good enough. It may be easy to think "oh, I posted that to Facebook, so if anything happens, I know I can always retrieve my photo from there." Well, yes, as long as you don't cancel your account or do something that gets you banned, your photos are there, but even though Facebook has a "high resolution" option, it's not actually full resolution. The max size Facebook will save your photos is 2048px along the longest side. A photo taken with an iPhone 4S or iPhone 5 is larger than this.

The quality of your images saved on services such as Instagram, Twitpic, and other "little" sharing services is even worse. You should not consider these as good options for storing photos.

So if Facebook and Instagram aren't good choices, then what are? Between Flickr, 500px, Dropbox, Google+, and Amazon Cloud Drive, you're sure to find a great option to meet your needs.

Flickr

Flickr just updated with an enticing new overhaul that includes 1TB of free storage. Yes, 1 terabyte. For free. Flickr also features a gorgeous new interface and an established community of users. In addition to just storing your photos, you can also publicly share them and join groups and discussions. If you're serious about photography or simply just looking for a place to save your images, Flickr is an excellent option and completely free (with upgrade options).

• Flickr
• Flickr for iPhone - Download now

500px

500px is a unique choice in that, in addition to being a place to store photos, you also have the option to sell your photos in the 500px market. It's also a social network where you can follow specific users and like and comment on their work. 500px does have more of a "professional" vibe that markets towards quality photography, so if you identify yourself as a photographer, 500px will likely be a great fit.

A free account allows 20 uploads per week, and accounts with unlimited uploading begin at $25/year.

• 500px
• 500px for iPhone and iPad - Download now

Google+

Although Google+ is primarily a social network, it also offers a solid option for photo storage. With the Google+ app, you can even choose to automatically upload your photos from your iPhone to Google+ so that you don't even have to remember to do it yourself. However, when uploading from your iPhone, Google+ will store them at "Standard size" which is a max of 2048 pixels on the longest side. If you want to store full size images, you must upload from your desktop.

Full size uploads count against your Google Drive storage quota which starts at 15 GB with a free account. Paid accounts begin at $2.49/mo for 25 GB, but may be changing in the coming weeks.

• Google+
• Google Drive
• Google+ for iPhone and iPad - Download now

Dropbox

If you're not into the social integration associated with Flickr, 500px, and Google+, Dropbox is another excellent choice for storing your photos. It's not a social network, but strictly a storage service; however, if you do wish to share your photos, you can share a link to your folders and Dropbox will nicely display them for you. You can also set up the iPhone and iPad app to automatically upload your photos when you launch the Dropbox app.

A free Dropbox account includes 2 GB (with the ability to reach 18 GB), and "Pro" accounts start at $9.99/mo for 100 GB.

• Dropbox
• Dropbox for iPhone and iPad - Download now

Amazon Cloud Drive

Amazon Cloud Drive is a storage service that's similar to Dropbox, and with the Amazon Cloud Drive Photos companion app for iPhone, you can easily upload and view your saved photos.

A free Amazon Cloud Drive account includes 5 GB of storage with paid plans starting at $10/year for 20 GB.

• Amazon Cloud Drive
• Amazon Cloud Drive Photos for iPhone - Download now

Your favorite way to store photos?

These are just a few of the different options available for storing your precious photographs, and if we missed any good ones, we want to know. Do you use a different service that you believe to be superior to these? Or do you not trust your memories in the hands of a 3rd party and back up onto external hard drives, instead? We want to know your system!

Personally, I'm going to start using Flickr to store everything that's important to me and 500px for photos I'm particularly proud of and value as art.

What about you?

Curious About Shapes and Colors is Curious George's newest iPhone and iPad app that helps teach kids about shapes, colors, sorting, tracing, and more. The entire app is narrated and directed by The Man With The Yellow Hat while George cheers you on.

The premise of the game is that you're helping George build toys by putting all the shapes where they belong. There are 5 different toys (or levels) that you help George with. The activities include matching shapes with cutouts, tracing shapes, organizing based on color, and more.

At the end of each level, you get to play with the toy that you helped George built in a little mini game. These include helping a robot with a jetpack collect falling bananas, sorting fish that are various colors and shapes into groups, a traditional Simon Says memory game with a train, shooting arrows (or plungers) at balloons to gather bananas, and controlling an astronaut car on the ground to collect bananas.

The good

• Teaches kids about basic shapes like circles, squares, and triangles, as well as more complex shapes like diamonds, ovals, and hexagons
• Includes primary and secondary colors, along with varying tones
• Introduces pattern recognition and sequencing, and builds skills like sorting, construction, tracing, and coloring
• Narrated by "The Man With The Yellow Hat"
• Includes fun, short 30 second video
• 5 different "levels" with fun game at the end of each one
• No in-app purchases
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The bad

• The controls for some of the games are a bit difficult for children in the targeted age group

The bottom line

If you have a little kid who likes Curious George, you can't go wrong with Curious About Shapes and Colors for iPhone and iPad. It's well made, does a great job at teaching about shapes and colors, and is just plain fun! It's also designed in a way that can be fun to sit and play with your child -- this is always a plus!

• $2.99 - Download now

Every week, the editors and writers at iMore carefully select some of our favorite, most useful, most extraordinary apps. This week's selections include a war game, a videography app, a classic board game, and a popular twitter client for Mac.

Sky Gamblers - Storm Raiders - Peter Cohen

World War II air combat on the Mac - dogfighting in the skies above Pearl Harbor, Midway, France and more. Fly historic planes with cross-platform multiplayer, Game Center and iCloud support. If you've played the game on your iOS device, you know what to expect. But Atypical Games has reworked Sky Gamblers - Storm Raiders to work on the Mac, which makes it an even more fun game on a bigger screen.

The game costs a paltry 99 cents to download, but content like new planes and weapons come at a price - in-app purchases for a couple of bucks here and there. Still, lots of fun to play and not a lot of coin to make it happen.

• $0.99 - Download now

Luma Camera - Rene Ritchie

While I was at BlackBerry Live -- or was it iMore live? -- one of the developers in attendance came over and showed me Luma Camera for iPhone. It's a video shooting app that offers filters both real-time and for post-processing, as well as optional HD video storage space via their website. The most interesting feature, however, is the image stabilization. Real optical image stabilization requires hardware, but Luma does a respectable job using the iPhones built in sensors and it's powerful graphics processing capabilities.

I haven't had much of a chance to play around with it yet, but it looks like fun. If you try it, let me know what you think!

• Free - Download now

Ticket to Ride Online - Richard Devine

I must confess to being an avid fan of the Geek and Sundry YouTube Show, TableTop starring Wil Wheaton. It's via that show I first became aware of the board game Ticket to Ride, and now I've found and begun playing the Mac version -- Ticket to Ride Online

I've never played the board game, but the Mac version is a beautifully colourful recreation of the original, and follows the rules to the letter. You choose a series of routes, and the objective is to lay trains on as many of those routes as possible before the game is up. The longest routes get an extra reward at the end, and incomplete routes loses points. It's really simple to pick up and play, and there's a comprehensive tutorial game to help you get to grips with the gameplay.

In-App purchases are available to extend the game boards, with new ones available for Europe, another USA board and for Switzerland. And, the online play supports competing against other Mac, PC, and iPad players. I've not tried out the iPad version just yet, but you'll find a link for that too below.

• $9.99 (Mac Version) - Download Now
• $6.99 (iPad Version) - Download Now

Tweetbot for Mac - Ally Kazmucha

There are a wealth of amazing Twitter clients for iOS but when it comes to Mac, there are less to choose from. While I tend to use Twitterrific on my iPhone and iPad, I've never really liked the feel of it on Mac. Tweetbot is my second favorite for iOS and when they released a Mac client a while back, it definitely didn't disappoint.

The price point is quite a bit higher than other Twitter offerings in the Mac App Store but honestly, it's the best available, hands down. If you want the iOS Tweetbot experience on your Mac, there really is no other option.

• $19.99 - Download Now

Your choice?

Now that we've chosen our favorites for the week, we want to hear yours! Did you pick up a killer app, accessory, or game this week? Let us know in the comments below!

It's been said time and time again that the camera on the iPhone is an excellent camera. In fact, it's become such a popular camera that there's a whole genre of photography known as 'iPhoneography'. iPhone photographers not only use the camera and lens built into their iPhone, but also an assortment of apps to edit, enhance, and show off their work. There are so many great apps out there, so we've narrowed it down to a few of our favorites.

KitCam

The first app we're going to take a look at is a fantastic tool for taking your photos. With it, you can adjust exposure, white balance, lenses, and film before you even take the photo. It also features convenient shooting modes like a timer, multi-exposure, time-lapse, and more. You can also view each photo's histogram and make adjustments to levels, brightness, contrast, and saturation. If you're looking to take more control over your iPhone's camera, definitely grab KitCam.

• $0.99 - Download now

See also:

• Camera+ - $0.99 - Download now

Photoforge2

KitCam does offer some nice editing options, but if you want even more, Photoforge2 is an excellent choice that's bursting with advanced controls. The most notable is the ability to use multiple layers and masks and make advanced adjustments including curves, levels, color balance, channel mixer, white balance, noise reduction, and more. You can also add over 25 different filters and FX and combine different films lenses, filters, and textures.

• $3.99 - Download now

See also:

• Snapseed - Free - Download now
• iPhoto - $4.99 - Download now

VSCO CAM

Complex and advanced controls are great, but sometimes you want something quick and easy, yet awesome -- like VSCO CAM. This gem features a sleek design with minimal processing options, but the options are good. There's a nice variety and all the basics are covered. VSCO CAM is a great app to have in your grab bag of editing tools.

• $0.99 - Download now

Facetune

If you're shooting portraits with your iPhone camera, then Facetune should be your go-to app for touching up blemishes, smoothing out skin, enhancing eyes, and even reshaping. Seriously, Facetune is amazing. Check out the review for a full rundown.

• Facetune for iPhone review
• $1.99 - Download now

Fuzel Pro

Collages (or "storyboards") are an excellent way to show off multiple photos at once. They are a great way to tell a story. The App Store is also flooded with apps that help you build collages, but the one I keep coming back to is Fuzel Pro. It has an artistic design, makes it quick and easy to add photos, and gives you control over the layouts of your collages.

• $1.99 - Download now

See also:

• Diptic - $0.99 - Download now

Photolettering

After editing your photo to perfection, you may realize that it would make a great poster, sign, or inspirational message. With Photolettering, you can do just that using fonts from world-renowned type foundry House Industries. It's free with a few fonts and additional fonts are available via in-app purchase. If you're looking to mix photography with typography, Photolettering is the way to go.

• Free - Download now

See also:

• Over - Free - Download now

Instagram

You didn't think I'd get through an article about photography apps without mentioning Instagram, did you? Although there are a lot of things I would love to see changed about Instagram (especially forced square crops), there's no denying it's usefulness as a way to share photos. Yes, there's a lot of snapshots of pets and kids (my own included) and plates of food, but there is also a lot of amazing photography being shared on Instagram, as well.

• Free - Download now

See also:

• Flickr - Free - Download now

Your favorite apps for iPhone photography?

So there you have it! iMore's best apps for iPhone photographers. Did we miss any of your favorites? What apps do you use to shoot, edit, enhance, and show off your photos taking with your iPhone?

Hangouts for iPhone and iPad is Google's new cross-platform messaging app that lets you converse with your friends regardless of what phone, tablet, or computer they are using. It features a beautiful, clean design and support for video messaging.

The chat view in Hangouts is very traditional and flat with some subtle shading. Your messages and picture are on the right and everyone else is on the left. All users' chat bubbles are the same color, so only the picture distinguishes users from each other; something I actually like. It's simple

Tapping a user's photo will take you to their profile which includes everything they've made available on Google+, including work history, basic information, education, and more.

Video chatting with Hangouts is super easy, looks great, and also sounds crisp and clear. I had a quick conversation with Rene while he was in a noisy environment, yet I had no problem hearing or understanding him.

Google Hangouts also gives you control over who gets to hangout with you and who must send a request. You can also choose to automatically snooze notifications after 1-72 hours and block specific users.

The good

• Clean design
• Cross-platform
• Group conversation support
• Video chat support
• Get notifications only once. After you see an alert, it disappears from other devices.
• Snooze notifications
• Save history
• View collections of photos shared from each Hangout
• Emoji support
• Connect to Messages for Mac with Jabber
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The bad

• Requires Google+, a simple Gmail account is not enough
• Can't set your status/availability
• No sound when new message comes in
• No SMS integration. This is not a fault of Google, but rather of iOS API limitations, but it's still a bummer.

The bottom line

If you chat with friends on Google Talk or Google+ often, then Hangouts is awesome and you should definitely pick it up.

• Free - Download now