Online Photo Storage

Intro

Hi.  Welcome to episode 9 of my Productivity Matters Podcast.  I’m Julian, you host for this podcast, and on this episode I’m going to take a look at online photo storage, and some of the various options available to you.

Coming up after the intro jingle. 

The Past

If you're over 30, you probably remember taking cartridges of film from the instamatic camera you had, or the 35mm rolls from your SLR camera, to a local chemist, to have the pictures developed.

You'll remember receiving an envelope with a print of each photo, along with the strips of the negatives. Some of the pictures may have had stickers on them, advising low light, or blurry!

You then put the packet of photos in a box, and every now and then, would retrieve them and reminisce. Some of the photos may have made it into an album - particularly when relating to an event, like a wedding or family holiday.

Over time, the advent of digital photography took the place of physical film, and we were using Compact Flash cards, or SD cards to store the pictures.

All that changed in the not too distant pass, with the advent of cameras on mobile phones.

The Current

They say that the best camera you own is the one that you have with you. With a mobile phone, that means you always have a camera with you.

Today, the top-of-the-range mobile phones really do provide quality of images that rivals those captured on traditional cameras.

Since these are then available to post online and share with friends and family, instantly, the camera on the phone is usually a selling point of a device.

Higher density of pixels and the ability to capture in low-light along with cameras on both sides of the phone (yes, the blessed selfie was born!) has led to a whole new industry.

However, there is one downside of all this technology.

The printing of photos is now the exception, rather than the norm.

Taking Pictures

As there is no film to purchase and have developed; the cost of taking photos has diminished, to almost nothing! There are no processing costs to be able to see the pictures, so it means we can take many more photos.

Rather than frame the subject and taking a couple of shots, we now have the ability to take tens of pictures, then choose the favourite. Or do we? Do we choose? Do we delete the photos we don't want? In a lot of cases, we just have lots of the same thing - because memory is cheap.

And because memory is cheap it's now normal for a phone to have a minimum of 64GB of storage. Taking out the amount used by the operating system of the phone, this leaves you with space to store 1000s, literally thousands, of photos!

Where to Store

So; here's the thing. You have all the pictures, but the mobile screen isn't THAT big. Yes, it might have a retina display and stretch from corner to corner; but you want to see your pictures on a bigger screen.

That's where the need to store the photos somewhere else comes in.

I'm not going to talk about downloading photos to a computer hard-drive. This podcast is about online storage. So, what are your options.

Google Photos

The first choice, available across iOS, Android and via the web, is Google Photos.

This is an obvious choice, mainly because you get a whole lot of goodness, for absolutely zero pennies. Some might argue that you're giving up your privacy, but if you use other Google services, then there's nothing else to lose.

Google Photos will let you back up photos with a resolution up to 16 megapixels in size, free. You can also backup videos up to 1080p in resolution.

When I checked, there are over 16,500 photos and videos in my account! Now, I don't normally spend long looking through them.

There is one aspect of the Google service that I love. The fact that, on a given date, Google will show me photos of that day in history.

It's wonderful when suddenly I'm seeing pictures of my children from 8, 9, 10 years ago! Or photos from a holiday or an event.

And, because this is Google, then searching is a breeze.

Look up a date. Search for a place. Find a landmark. Search for photos with the colour blue (or red, green, yellow - you get the idea) and they will be displayed.

You can create albums and you can share these albums, or individually photos with whoever you like. You can also create a shared album, so that other people can add their pictures.

I should also mention that there are basic photo editing capabilites as well; to crop, or add a filter to a photo. Want to create a movie from your photos? No problem.

It's definitely my 'go to app' when I've spent a day taking photos. Then, it's just a case of deleting the pictures on my phone, to free up space.

It should go without saying, that since the photos are attached to my Google account, I can view them wherever I can access Google.

iCloud

For Apple users, there's also iCloud Photos. With this switched on, then any photos or videos you take are automatically backed up to your iCloud account; making them available across all your Apple devices.

However, the big drawback is that these are not free, and count towards your storage quota. Whilst the included, free, storage is 5GB, you'll soon eat into this, and may end up spending 79p (yes, a whole 79p per month) to get an additional 50GB of storage.

It's very simple to use, but the 5GB limit puts me off from using it.

Prime Photos

If you're an Amazon Prime member, then you could use their Amazon Photos app. This also offer unlimited free uploads of full resolution photos and 5GB of videos. They also have a 'This Day' recollection too.

There's a Family Vault for sharing photos.

I use this as a duplicate for Google; although it’s relatively new, so there are only 5300 photos stored here!! This is equivalent to 10.3GB.

Other Options

Other online options include Box, Dropbox and Flickr. Flickr is more reserved for professional photography and offers 1TB of storage space. Whilst I have an account, I rarely use this service.

Conclusion

As you might have concluded yourself; Google Photos is the winner when it comes to online photo storage.

It's easy to use, has a mass of features; with more constantly being developed and most importantly, it's free to use.

Thank You

I hope you’ve found this episode interesting.

If you have any questions about online photo storage or anything else, then please get in touch via Twitter @prodmatters or via the comments below.

Don’t forget to subscribe where you normally listen to podcasts.

Thank you very much for listening and until next time, remember, Productivity Matters.

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