The Verge has compiled a list of services for managing and syncing your photos, to and from your smartphone. I’d actually been working on essentially the same thing, and gladly defer to their work as it makes a great reference when considering what will work best in your situation.

The only service not on there that I was going to include was Adobe Revel:

• Free Apps for OS X, iOS (Universal) and web (no editing)
• Free tier: 50 photos/month paid tier: $5.99/month unlimited
• JPEG only

The answer is that there is no simple answer to photo management, backup and syncing. Depending on which platforms you use, what kind of photos you shoot, how you use or share them, and what you’re willing to spend will all factor into what works best for you.

The bigger question is this: who will solve the photo problem? The idea of keeping things in sync and backed up has been solved for documents (Dropbox, et al). It has been solved for music (Spotify, et al). Who will solve this for photos, and what will that solution look like? There’s like this Maslow’s hierarchy of storage needs and photos are the next step in achieving digital self-actualization. The solution is not yet clear, but the topic is growing in conversation as more people are talking and writing about it. Right now, it seems like most companies are hoping they can say “someone else beat me to it.”