One problem with Crashplan is that it seems to be all-or-nothing.

I've got it running on my desktop at home; I've got gigs and gigs of photos there. My macbook doesn't have enough free disk space to store all of them - and Crashplan doesn't let me store and sync just the 2014 photos.

Backblaze is $5/month (per machine) and let's you grab single files (or directories) from your backup if you want.

Does it do selective sync? e.g., HOME:/media/pictures contains folders for 2014...etc, and LAPTOP:/media/pictures/ only contains 2014, and any changes to LAPTOP:/media/pictures/2014/ get propagated to HOME:/media/pictures/2014 etc?

It's not a sync service, it's a backup service.

The flow is directories on your machine > BackBlaze.

Anything in the other direction is manual.

Well I guess I am not listing my work flow clearly.

Backup: Comp #1 (Selected) -> HomeNAS Comp #2 (Selected) -> HomeNAS Comp #6 (Out of State Mother Inlaws (Selected) -> HomeNAS

Work Flow Any Comp working on files from NAS (Not local)

That actually just confuses me more.

From my last experience with CrashPlan, it'd take me a year to upload my photos.

Does CrashPlan+ have a mobile app to auto upload photos and such?

Nope, their mobile app is used as a file manager for your backups.

Crashplan has a desktop app that backs up your photos indefinitely though. It backups your external devices as well, been using them for years and I can't tell you how many times it's saved me.