Image storage and safety is something I take very seriously as a professional photographer, not just for the photos I take for my clients, but also for my own family’s photos and videos. I get emails every year that make my heart hurt, emails like these:
” We lost all our photos, albums, and back up drives in a fire.”
“I had a pipe burst and it flooded my house. I lost all my photos and backup drives”
“Our computer crashed and we can’t find our back up drive.”
I wish there was a way I could help prevent the total loss of precious photos and videos for every person. I hope sharing this wisdom I’ve gleaned over many years of photography will help you create a simple system to back up your photos online and on external hard drives. If you haven’t already, check out my previous post about my favorite external hard drives. Saving copies of your photos on your computer and a hard drive is wonderful, but what happens when both get lost in a fire, flood, or accident? Backing up your photos in secure online storage is a wonderful way to safeguard your photos off site, and provide an accident proof alternative to recover what you’ve lost. Here are a few of the best online photo back up solutions:
Most people use google in some form, so it may be the easiest option. You can start for free with 15GB of storage for photos up to 16 megapixels (if you have professional photos, you may need to resize them to fit this constraint). You can upgrade to 2TB of storage with NO size constraints for $9.99/mo. A lot of my clients have used this option and have been happy with the result.
If you’re a Prime Member, you get free unlimited photo storage simply for paying your annual prime membership fee of $119/yr. That breaks down to just under $10 per month. Plus, the the photos are stored in full resolution. A lot of other sites compress photos to be stored more easily.
Free for up to 1000 photos, and you can upgrade to unlimited storage for $49.99/yr. Flickr is a great option that has great image sharing capabilities. I used this when I was just starting out with photography and I loved how easy it was to store and share my photos.
Start for free with 10GB of storage, and you can upgrade to 100GB of storage for $5/month or unlimited storage for $15/month. Box is very similar to dropbox, but feels a little easier to navigate, in my opinion.
Free to start with 2GB of storage and you can expand your storage by sharing dropbox with others, or you can upgrade to 1TB for $9.99/month.
*Disclaimer: I use dropbox for my online storage of business and personal photos and its works just fine, but if I’m being completely honest, it’s not my favorite interface to use. When I get some time to migrate my backups, I will likely be moving things over to another platform.
iCloud is a good option, especially if you’re already an apple user. It makes it almost seamless to back up the images and videos on all your devices. It’s easily shared between family members. You can start with 5GB free, and you can upgrade to 50GB of storage for .99 cents per month or 200GB of storage for $3/month. You can also upgrade to 2TB (my favorite) of storage for $9.99/month.
*Windows OS friendly! To use iCloud for photo storage on a computer that operates with Windows OS, you need to download and install the “iCloud for Windows” app, which allows you to have access your iCloud Photos directly within the Microsoft Photos app, making it easy for you to view, download, and upload photos from your Windows PC. Make sure to turn on iCloud Photos within the app after signing in with your Apple ID.
A few last notes…
I included most upgrade options in terabyte options (1 Tb = 1000 GB) because as technology grows and image size and quality increase, it’s better, in my opinion, to have more space than you need currently. And lastly, I’ve included some affiliate links because I currently use most of these images storage solutions in some capacity personally or professionally, so your clicks and sign-ups help support my small business and family.