Does Dropbox-->Joomla syn download the files or only metadata about the files? Can they be accessed in Joomla?

For the Dropbox integration, is a file put in dropbox outside of joomla then downloaded to the joomla server where dropfiles is located, or is it just the "information" about the file that is downloaded to the joomla server?

If the files sent to Dropbox outside of Joomla were image files, is there a way to access the path to these files, or the directory where they are stored, so that this location could be used by any one of the many Joomla image galleries which can take a Joomla dir path and use that as the location from which to display images?

I suppose if the syn from Dropbox to Joomla is only of the "metadata" about the files, then the answer to my question above is "no".

What's the answer?

Thanks!