If you are like me, you have photographs in frames and albums, in boxes, on your phone and tablet, on a thumb or external hard drive, and maybe even on a roll of film stashed somewhere long forgotten. In other words, memories scattered all over!
What’s the best way to store these for safe keeping and also allow for sharing with family and friends? I have not yet begun the laborious process of converting my own printed photos to digital, but for those images already in digital format, I’ve been pondering this question.
I could (and do) post them on Facebook, but not all my loved ones will see them this way, as many do not use it. Occasionally I have prints made to snail mail to various family members, and sometimes I email or create digital mini-albums that family and friends can access by just clicking a link. This is time consuming, though, and it is not actual photo storage, so I still have the original issue of where best to store them so that they are organized, accessible, and most importantly – backed up.
While the quality of photos and the ease of sharing them has increased dramatically with advances in technology (my tablet and phone take better pictures than my digital camera!), so, too, has the number of companies offering photo storage. Deciding which one to trust with your cherished memories can be daunting. When surveying the options, here are some things to keep in mind:
- Do you need permanent photo storage, or just the ability to organize and share?
- Do you connect to your computer to download your photos to it and then on to the cloud, or do you need the ability to upload photos directly to the cloud from any device?
- Do you want to share your photos once stored in the cloud? If so, do you want these albums to be public? Private? Some of both?
- How much photo storage space do you need? How much are you willing to spend for a plan?
- Do you want the ability to edit photos online once uploaded?
Wilson Rothman wrote a helpful piece for the Wall Street Journal in which he compares cloud photo storage options: Apple’s photo stream, Dropbox, Facebook, Flickr, Shutterfly, SmugMug, and Google.
His winner? Flickr (with SmugMug coming in a close second).
While your needs may differ, Rothman cited Flickr’s free terabyte of image storage, public and private photo sharing options, ease of use, and lack of upsells (it’s not a retail product, so you’re not required to buy additional products/services to retain your account) as the reasons for it rising to the top of his list. Flickr allows you to upload photos from your mobile devices without having to connect first to your computer, and you can even set it to automatically upload from your device while on a WiFi network, so you don’t have to remember to sync your devices!
Read Rothman’s article online to learn more!
(Note: WSJ subscribers can read the article at any time; non-subscribers may only read a limited number of articles for free a month, so if you’ve reached that capacity this month, you may only see an excerpt.)