Splitting LARGE images?

Has anybody encountered this use case?

Photographer wants to backup & post photos on his website, in a single click.
So we are dealing with 10+MegaByte Jpeg files.

I'm currently running on a shared server, but a VPS could be added to the assets for this. I made some tests and the shared server doesn't seem to support such large uploads.

What if I made a desktop app (with AIR or third party add-ons) which will do the following:

1) backup original version.
1.1) split the file in a series of smaller portions: into a series of smaller uploads;
1.2) uploading all the portions;
1.3) backend collects portions and recreates the file (or the same could be done by the desktop app upon download, removing all the logic from the server);
2) optimize and upload online version.
2.1) reduce size to the largest online size;
2.2) correct colors etc...
2.3) upload optimized version;
2.4) backend generates other formats (preview, thumbnails etc).

How are you uploading? via web form?
Could it be done via FTP instead?

Oh yes, that's something I really didn't think of.
Can Flash handle that, via AIR? Is it stable?

I haven't looked at AIR at all yet so I wouldn't know.
Have you looked into the MAX_FILE_SIZE option of the HTML input element? I have a feeling it is limited to 2mb or something by default. I think it's in bytes so the following would be limited to 10k

Code:

---

<form ENCTYPE="multipart/form-data" METHOD="post" ACTION='sendfile.php'> 
    <input type="hidden" name="MAX_FILE_SIZE" value="10000"> 
    <input id='uploadName' name='fileName' type='file'> 
    <input type='submit'>
</form>

---

I've done it all on that side.
.htaccess modifies the PHP settings for:
- max memory allowed.
- script timeout.
- max inbound file size allowed.

But still the script just doesn't work, when I load a 12mp image, it loads the script as if no file was sent.