IOS Photos - Proper Cloud Backup & Managemetn

Question

Am I missing a major point here, or is there a big gap in the iOS, iTunes, iCloud design for photo management the way most people (I would guess) want to do it? Excuse the underlining - brevity isn't my forte so trying to highlight the key points.
Here's what I'd like to be able to do:
Use any/all of my iPad and iPhone devices to take photos and also eat photos from my other cameras via SD card reader
Process the photos on an iPad (view, edit, delete), so I don't have to go to a desktop/laptop to do that
Have the photos stored in a cloud in a way that provides privacy (I still own and control them), ability to view online, ability to point others to them online, ability to manage them online including downloading originals etc etc.  Thus not forcing me to rely on local PCs, PC backups, etc etc for photo safety.
Not have to do anything active in order for my photos to be copied to the cloud (don't want to have to remember to sit down at a computer and waste time curating my photos, after having already done that on my iPad)
(When I say "photos" I mean little videos taken on my iOS devices and cameras also)
My understanding of what iOS and iCloud provide is (right or wrong):
New photos taken on each iPhone/iPad can be shared to other iOS devices on the same iTunes account using PhotoStream and iCloudBut this is just for convenient sharing across devices (not really a backup tool, keeps a rolling window or recent photos, photos aren't available online in iCloud anywhere)
New photos taken on each device are backed up to your iTunes computer (if you choose to) and iCloud (if you choose to)
But you can't see or use those photos on your iTunes computer - they are just part of a device backup
And you can't see those photos online in iCloud - again, they are just part of a backup blob
So this is all just about getting a single device back to how it was previously, including the photos it had on it at the time of the backup
This doesn't copy photos to anywhere central or usable/viewable etc
It also doesn't help create a single central repository of photos either on your computer or in the cloud
You can set iTunes to sync a photos folder with your iOS device
But this is about getting photos from the computer onto the iOS device.  It isn't about actually synchronising photos between the device and that folder
So the photos from your device don't end up on your computer that way (ie no help at all for what I am after)
You can use an PhotoStream app on your computer to be a client of the PhotoStream for your iTunes/iCloud account
Again, this is just a moving windows of most recent photos so doesn't really help much with photo centralisation for backup
Also, if there is a way to scrape the photos off PhotoStream to a central repository on your computer, it would involve sitting down and doing that manually (don't know if this is even possible)
Therefore, as far as I can tell, iOS, iTunes and iCloud do not provide what I am after, at least not out of the box
Independently of iOS, iTunes and iCloud:
I know I can plug my iOS device(s) into a PC and manually copy the photos off each device them using the PC OS (Windows, OS X, whatever) support for media storage devices over USBBut this is a manual process per device, so doesn't happen automagically and therefore doesn't meet my requirements
I know I can use the Dropbox iOS app to sync my photos from each individual device to Dropbox
But this isn't really a central repository of photos in the cloud (think it is done on a device-by-device basis and not sure how well it deals with photos that exist on multiple devices - ie duplication etc)
Also I may not want to use Dropbox (not stoked about their security and privacy commitments)
I am prepared to use a third party service for managing the photos from a PC into the cloud
I already use JungleDisk and Duplicati and am happy to configure these to copy my photos to some independent cloud storage, at least for backup purposes
I can also open an account with Flickr, SmugMug, Picassa etc and get more online photo control that way.
However, to do that I first have to get my photos into one central location, eg on a PC, and then I can then run a process on the PC to auto-sync from that location to the cloud
I don't think about photos on a per-device basis.  I think about them on a single-central-library basis.  I would guess most people do.  And iOS devices are a major source of new photos these days, and I like the idea of pre-managing my library from iOS devices because it is nice and easy and you can do it in front of the TV etc in a different mind-set from opening a laptop or going to a computer. But I need to end up with all those photos as viewable and manageable in one place, and I'd ideally like that one place to be a functional, secure cloud that respects my ownership and privacy. And I'd like to avoid having to schedule my brain to remember to sit down and do active things on a computer/laptop in order to achieve that.  That is very 20th Century and not very "cloud" or "iOS".  At this point I can't seem to work out how to even get all the photos into a single place on a single computer in order to manage my own cloud syncing from there.
Am I missing anything?

Answer 1

Am I missing a major point here, or is there a big gap in the iOS, iTunes, iCloud design for photo management the way most people (I would guess) want to do it? Excuse the underlining - brevity isn't my forte so trying to highlight the key points.
Here's what I'd like to be able to do:
Use any/all of my iPad and iPhone devices to take photos and also eat photos from my other cameras via SD card reader
Process the photos on an iPad (view, edit, delete), so I don't have to go to a desktop/laptop to do that
Have the photos stored in a cloud in a way that provides privacy (I still own and control them), ability to view online, ability to point others to them online, ability to manage them online including downloading originals etc etc.  Thus not forcing me to rely on local PCs, PC backups, etc etc for photo safety.
Not have to do anything active in order for my photos to be copied to the cloud (don't want to have to remember to sit down at a computer and waste time curating my photos, after having already done that on my iPad)
(When I say "photos" I mean little videos taken on my iOS devices and cameras also)
My understanding of what iOS and iCloud provide is (right or wrong):
New photos taken on each iPhone/iPad can be shared to other iOS devices on the same iTunes account using PhotoStream and iCloudBut this is just for convenient sharing across devices (not really a backup tool, keeps a rolling window or recent photos, photos aren't available online in iCloud anywhere)
New photos taken on each device are backed up to your iTunes computer (if you choose to) and iCloud (if you choose to)
But you can't see or use those photos on your iTunes computer - they are just part of a device backup
And you can't see those photos online in iCloud - again, they are just part of a backup blob
So this is all just about getting a single device back to how it was previously, including the photos it had on it at the time of the backup
This doesn't copy photos to anywhere central or usable/viewable etc
It also doesn't help create a single central repository of photos either on your computer or in the cloud
You can set iTunes to sync a photos folder with your iOS device
But this is about getting photos from the computer onto the iOS device.  It isn't about actually synchronising photos between the device and that folder
So the photos from your device don't end up on your computer that way (ie no help at all for what I am after)
You can use an PhotoStream app on your computer to be a client of the PhotoStream for your iTunes/iCloud account
Again, this is just a moving windows of most recent photos so doesn't really help much with photo centralisation for backup
Also, if there is a way to scrape the photos off PhotoStream to a central repository on your computer, it would involve sitting down and doing that manually (don't know if this is even possible)
Therefore, as far as I can tell, iOS, iTunes and iCloud do not provide what I am after, at least not out of the box
Independently of iOS, iTunes and iCloud:
I know I can plug my iOS device(s) into a PC and manually copy the photos off each device them using the PC OS (Windows, OS X, whatever) support for media storage devices over USBBut this is a manual process per device, so doesn't happen automagically and therefore doesn't meet my requirements
I know I can use the Dropbox iOS app to sync my photos from each individual device to Dropbox
But this isn't really a central repository of photos in the cloud (think it is done on a device-by-device basis and not sure how well it deals with photos that exist on multiple devices - ie duplication etc)
Also I may not want to use Dropbox (not stoked about their security and privacy commitments)
I am prepared to use a third party service for managing the photos from a PC into the cloud
I already use JungleDisk and Duplicati and am happy to configure these to copy my photos to some independent cloud storage, at least for backup purposes
I can also open an account with Flickr, SmugMug, Picassa etc and get more online photo control that way.
However, to do that I first have to get my photos into one central location, eg on a PC, and then I can then run a process on the PC to auto-sync from that location to the cloud
I don't think about photos on a per-device basis.  I think about them on a single-central-library basis.  I would guess most people do.  And iOS devices are a major source of new photos these days, and I like the idea of pre-managing my library from iOS devices because it is nice and easy and you can do it in front of the TV etc in a different mind-set from opening a laptop or going to a computer. But I need to end up with all those photos as viewable and manageable in one place, and I'd ideally like that one place to be a functional, secure cloud that respects my ownership and privacy. And I'd like to avoid having to schedule my brain to remember to sit down and do active things on a computer/laptop in order to achieve that.  That is very 20th Century and not very "cloud" or "iOS".  At this point I can't seem to work out how to even get all the photos into a single place on a single computer in order to manage my own cloud syncing from there.
Am I missing anything?