The easiest and fastest way to change the upload folders in a blink without messing around with the config file or even phpmyadmin. Meanwhile an old but still a flawlessly working plugin.

Modifies the paths of all existing uploads making them unusable.

I tried the wp-config.php define('UPLOADS', 'wp-content/example'); trick and, while it did save new uploads to the desired folder, images/thumbs were not available, because in media library the new path was concatenated onto the original path -- the new path as shown was wrong anyway (slashes got removed), so it wouldn't have worked regardless. I also tried a different plugin to change/hide URLs and protect the wp site from anonymous direct access to files, which means it allowed for changing default paths. That didn't work, but this simple one does. Thanks!

thanks !