Have you Backed Up Your Photos?

Many of the photographs that you take are non-replaceable. Whether they are snapshots of family, birthday, anniversary, reunion or other events, most likely they are important possessions that you do not want to lose.

In the days before digital photography, many of us stuffed negatives, slides and snapshots in the proverbial shoebox for safekeeping. But with the advent of digital cameras photography became easier and less expensive resulting in a steep increase of the number of pictures and videos that we took. And of the number has literally exploded with the addition of our always handy cellphone camera.

The question is – are we taking the steps to backup and/or organize all of our photos and videos? Nowadays there are a myriad ways to store images. The one you choose is based on the amount of effort you have to expend to backup and organize your stash and the cost for storing them.

Here’s a few of the ways that I backup and organize my photos and videos. From here on in when I refer to images this is to be both photographs and videos.

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Cellphones fall into either the Apple iOS category or the Android category. And since your cellphone doubles as cameras, it’s a good idea to backup the images regularly.

While I’m insistent on safeguarding the images on my cellphone, I’m also interested in doing so as easily and inexpensively as possible. So I’ve chosen several ways to do this that are simple and automated.

My cell is an iPhone so I don’t have a lot of experience with Android models. Android owners can use both the Google and Amazon services for backup up their images.

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Apple Photos app

My iPhone can automatically upload all of my photos to the Apple cloud for safekeeping.

1. Go to the Settings menu:
2. Beneath your name choose Apple ID, iCloud+, Media & Purchases.
3. Choose iCloud
4. Choose Photos
5. Next to Sync this iPhone turn the button on

Apple iCloud users are entitled to 5GB of storage with their account. This amount of storage is enough for about 2500 photos of average size. For larger photo collections, you can purchase 50GB additional storage for $.99 (99 cents) a month. I have 8,000 photos and 1,300 videos in my current collection. If you have a huge collection you can purchase 2TB of storage for $9.99 a month.

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Google Photos app

I also have Google Photos app installed on my iPhone. Google Photos copies the photos on my iPhone to my Google Library in the cloud. I purchased 100 GB of storage which cost $1.99 per month. Currently I have more than 30,000 images but using only 36 GB of the allocated storage. There are other options to purchase additional storage on the Google cloud. For Android users the Google Photos app has an option to backup the photos on your cell phone to your Google Library in the cloud.

Google Photos has features to edit, add descriptions and comments, identify faces, organize images into albums and share images.

Google Photos users are entitled to 15GB of storage with their account. This amount of storage is enough for about 7500 photos of average size. For larger photo collections, you can purchase 100GB additional storage for $1.99 a month.

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Amazon Photos app

The Amazon Photos app is also installed on my iPhone. Amazon Prime members receive unlimited free storage for photos and 5 GB for videos. You can use either their iOS (iPhone/iPad) or Android app to automatically backup your images. Non-Prime members can purchase 100 GB of storage on the Amazon cloud for $19.99 per year ($1.66/month). Currently, I have about 9,000 photos and 2000 videos stored on the Amazon’s cloud using 82 GB of storage.

Amazon Photos has features to edit, apply filters, add text and organize images into albums or groups and share images.

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As you can see, I have safeguarded my cellphone photos in three different places. Maybe it’s “overkill” to have three different backups but the process is automatic. Since I have more images than the allotted free space for the various services I don’t mind the few dollars a month since it saves me the worry that I might otherwise loose an important event.

It’s easy and either free or inexpensive so please don’t forget to protect your photos and videos.

Written by: Arnie Lee
 
 

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Innovative New Feature Makes the Eye-Fi Even More Valuable

 

A few months ago, I ran into Ziv Gillat, one of the co-founders of Eye-Fi at a photography trade show. His company developed a set of SD-cards that can send images directly from your digital camera to your personal computer by way of a local wi-fi network.

For background information about these cards, you can read the original review of the Eye-Fi from a few weeks ago here.

Anyway, Ziv was excited to tell me about a new feature that the company was developing. Finally last week, Eye-Fi unveiled a fascinating new capability for any of their X2 series cards. With this free update, the Eye-Fi can now send images directly to a mobile device – either an iPhone, iPad or Android. By itself, this provides an automated way to backup your images. On the mobile device, you’ll need to download and install either an iPhone/iPad app or an Android app. These free mobile apps (also provided by Eye-Fi) receive the images from the Eye-Fi card. The apps provide another very useful feature – they let you resend the images to other online sites. And since they use cellular to upload, the mobile devices replace the personal computer.

To use the new capability which the company calls Direct Mode, I downloaded and installed an update to the included Eye-Fi Center software that is used to configure the SD-card. Using one of the dialogs, I added my iPhone and Android device to my list of supported wi-fi networks. Next I installed the Eye-Fi iPhone app from the iTunes website (and later the Android app from Market) and I was ready to give Direct Mode a try.
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