Chris, are you wanting to perform these actions as an admin user or a client of the
site?
-Conrad
You use paperclip to handle file uploads, sending to s3, and storing the info in the database. The model that stores the image information should belong_to a User, so that you can implement per-user access controls. Then when a file is to be downloaded, assuming the currently logged-in user can access the file, you render a time-limited (5 minutes or so) s3 URL so that user can download it without leaving the file wide open on s3.