Back in the “olden days”, photo storage consisted of keeping rolls of undeveloped film in a shoe box. If you were really ambitious, you’d take that roll of film down to the photo mat to get developed, then spend hours careful labeling and dating each photo before putting it into the appropriate photo gallery. The photo landscape obviously changed with the invention of the digital camera, and now, with everyone and their brother carrying a high quality camera on their cellphone, the need to save and store large quantities of photos has never been greater. Today, we take a look at three photo storage services you may not be aware of. Two of three you may even have access to already!
Let’s begin with Flickr. Flickr offers 1TB (1000GB) of free photo storage. That’s enough storage for approximately half a million photos! In my case, that would almost be enough to save all of the photos my wife takes of our dog. Photos can be no larger than 200 MB each, and videos can be a maximum of 1GB, with each video limited to three minutes. Photos can be uploaded from any of your devices, by logging into the website on your computer, or downloading the Flickr app from the App Store or Google Play, as the app is available for iOS, Android, and Windows. You may download photos from Flickr, organize them into albums, tag them with keywords, and share them with others. Flickr is a Yahoo company, so if you already have a Yahoo e-mail account, you can sign in with that. If not, you’ll need to create one before signing up for your free account. Visit https://www.flickr.com/ to get started.
I love Amazon. You can buy anything you want from them, and at great prices to boot. If you ever need to buy me something for Christmas, you can’t go wrong with an Amazon gift card. Now that that’s out of the way, you’re probably familiar with Amazon Prime. Amazon Prime is a $99 per year service with many benefits. Members receive free two-day shipping on most orders, enjoy free streaming of television shows and movies, unlimited streaming of over a million songs, thirty minute early access to “Lightning Deals”, plus over 800,000 free ebooks. I didn’t even know before researching for this post that there was such a thing as Amazon Prime Photos. Amazon Prime members receive free, unlimited photo storage, automatic backup, and access from all devices. There is a 5GB limit for non-photos (videos or documents). Amazon Prime Photos is “barebones” compared to other storage options, but very easy to use. To learn more about Amazon Prime, click here. For more information about Amazon Prime Photos, click here.
Are you a Gmail user? If so , you’re not alone. Gmail had a staggering 900 million users in May 2015 (http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/gmail-statistics/). Are you aware of the many Google Apps you receive for free when you sign up for a Gmail account? If not, sign into Gmail, and look for the “nine squares” in the top right of your screen. Click that grid to peruse what’s available. If you click the Photos icon (the logo is in our graphic), you’ll open Google Photos. If you have a Gmail account, you’ll get 15GB of free storage. An additional 100GB will cost you $1.99 per month, and 1TB can be had for $9.99 per month. Like the others mentioned, photos can be uploaded and synced across any device, and the app can be set to automatically upload new photos to Google Photos as you take them. Google Photos also includes the ability to create “Stories”. These are interactive albums that enable pictures to be displayed in a timeline with location pins detailing a vacation or other special memory. For more information on Google Photos, click here.
This is a little long for a Hot Lap, but saving your precious memories is well worth it. I always advocate additional ways to back up irreplaceable data (photos, videos, documents), and each of these services fit the bill. Of course, there are other free and paid options available, but you’d be reading for hours!