Let’s make Cloud photo storage less scary and free up some space on your phones. You’ve finally gotten a hold of that fancy new phone! It works with your favorite apps to turn on your lights, unlock your door, or allow you to launch your toddler’s favorite song with just your voice.
All you care about are your pictures. Those thousands of photos you’ve taken of your babies, where you take 20+ shots to get that beautiful picture. Now you have some duplicates you can’t bear to delete, but you must!
You’re quickly running out of storage and can’t trust that “cloud thingy.”
What is The Cloud?
Let’s clear up the mysticism surrounding The Cloud. Cloud technology is just tech speak for getting information online instead of your computer’s hard drive. It’s a network of servers that store information that is accessible online. It’s a big deal to businesses because they see significant savings in purchasing storage space on The Cloud (through different providers) instead of physical machines to store information.
Is it Safe?
Cloud storage is secure. The comfort you feel with having your precious photos on your computer or phone is just a feeling. It has nothing to do with the actual security. It’s not about the location of your information but more about the accessibility of your data. Hackers have equal opportunity to steal information from either location, whether on The Cloud or your hard drive/phone. The key is to protect yourself by using strong passwords for each account (not using the same passwords for everything.) Life Hacker has a great article on how to create a strong password.
Recommended Cloud-Based Services?
There are tons of them available. I’ve narrowed them down to three. The criteria are ease of use, feature sets, and pricing.
1. Google Photos
If you have a Gmail account, great news: you can already access Google Photos. Their cloud-based services give you 15GBs free to share across your Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Photos. You can choose between “Original Size” or “High Quality.” Choose “High Quality” for unlimited photo storage for free! Most folks won’t notice the difference in quality since all photos can print 24” x16.” If you want to learn more about “Original Size” vs. “High Quality” and compression rates, Huffington Post has a great article.
Google Photos has the best facial recognition, keyword search, and location algorithm to organize your photos. Additional features include Google Photo Assistant, which automatically creates collages, animations, movies, shows memories, and Then and now pictures.
Ease of use: Some Android phones have it pre-installed; otherwise, install the app. Then log in using your Gmail account and sync your photos. There is seamless integration to show pictures on your TV via Google Chromecast on your desktop and mobile device or via Google Home. Google Photos just added a new feature or app that allows you to scan physical photos to add to your digital photo library. You can also get an easy photo book printed for $10! Need more storage? It’s $1.99/month for 100GBs and $9.99/month for 1TB.
2. iCloud:
Most moms are iPhone users, so if you own Apple devices, iCloud Photo Library is your best bet. iCloud offers up to 5GBs free and also allows you the option of saving your photos as “Original” or “High-Resolution,” you can also save space by selecting “Optimize iPhone Storage” on your iPhone. The latter option helps you save space on your iPhone by keeping the most recent images on deck and uploading the rest into your iCloud library. The iCloud Photo Library has features that include facial recognition, keyword searches, location tags, and shows memories.
Ease of use: If you already have an iPhone, you’d need to set up your iCloud across all your devices and then sign in to your AppleID—seamless integration across all Apple devices, including iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Apple TV. Plus, Apple has the best photo editing and print services. You get complete control of layouts for photo books via iPhoto, a seamless process. You can only share single photos or albums; you don’t have the option of a collaborator to pool your photos into one account collectively. Additional Storage is $0.99/month for 50GBs and $2.99 for 1TB for $9.99.
3. Amazon
If you’re an Amazon Prime member ($99/year), great news! You have access to the revamped Prime Photos cloud storage for free. Prime members get free unlimited storage for photos only and up to 5GBs for video storage. There’s also this great feature called “The Family Vault,” which allows you to add up to five (5) family members to your account to view, share, curate, and add photos to the cloud. It offers features similar to Google Photos, including facial recognition, keyword searches, location tags, and recalling memories. Please note that Amazon does not compress photos, which is great for those professional photographers out there.
Ease of use: All you need to do is install the app onto your mobile device, log in to your Amazon Prime account, and select “Turn on Auto-Save.” Every time you take a picture from your camera, it backs it up to the Amazon Cloud—seamless integration to show images for Amazon devices like Echo Show and Fire TV. Amazon has a photo print service with free shipping for Prime Members. Need additional storage? It’s 100GBs for $11.99/year and 1TB for $59.99/year.
Whatever your phone device, there’s an easy Cloud Photo Storage solution. You can free up all that space on your phones and add some cool new games.
