If you aren’t sure how to handle all your digital media: photos, editing and storage I recommend you start with my first post, Photos: Digital Media #1, then come back up and continue with this post.
So, when we left off you had:
- taken lots of photos with your digital camera.
- purchased the largest memory card you can afford.
- uploaded the photos from your memory card on to your computer.
Now what?
Mistake Number Five: Assuming you’ll remember the dates and events of your photos and having only one copy of them.
Darcy’s Tips: Don’t name your new batch of photos something absurd like “New Photos” (taken from comments, sorry Gwendolyn but your hubby gets the prize for that one!). Because let’s face it, they are only “New Photos” until the next batch and soon you have no idea what photos are from when. If you can’t be as “granular” as organizing by year> month> day (thanks, Todd!) then at least name your batch of photos something recognizable, like: Christmas 2008 or Einstein’s 8th Birthday.
Then, for the love of all things chocolate: DO NOT STOP THERE.
Here is a list of ways to back up your photos and digital media online:
Flickr – specializes in handling photos. Photo storage, Image Hosting.
Pros: Allows multi-sized downloads of photos. Nicely sized thumbnail directly. Easy to organize sets. Permissions for family, friends, anyone or only you to see your photos.
Cons: all photos you display on the web must link back to Flickr (really, really annoying.)
Associated with: Target for 1 hr prints, or Qoop for novelty photo gifts.
Cost: Free with limited uploads -or- $25/year for unlimited storage. $0.15 prints.
Photobucket – specializes in both photos and graphics. Photo storage, Image Hosting, Limited Editing
Pros: Easy access of codes directly below the image. Now has multi-album storage. Some basic editing. Has a photo organizing tool that lets you batch organize, tag and name all your graphics and photos. Private albums and password protection available.
Cons: Annoying ads on free accounts.
Associated with: Target for 1 hr prints, or Qoop for novelty photo gifts.
Cost: Free with limited uploads -or- $25/year for ad-free, unlimited storage. $0.15 prints.
picnik – Photo editing only at the free level.
Pros: Pretty. Tons of editing features. Interactive with Flickr, Photobucket, etc. You can make collages with your photos. Black & White, vignette, sharpen, recolor. Easy editing. Prints at home very easily.
Cons: Only upload/store 5 photos at a time at the free level. Doesn’t store your photos, but sends them where you want.
Associated with: Qoop for prints and novelty photo gifts.
Cost: Free for basic. $25/year for premium features.
Snapfish – Photo Storage only.
Pros: Get 50 free prints for registering.
Cons: forces viewers to become a member to view your photos. Does not provide codes for hosting images.
Associated with: Walgreens, Staples, Meijer.
Cost: Free. $0.09 prints.
Photoshop Express – PSx Photo Storage, Photo Editing.
Pros: Pretty powerful photo editing for a free program. Red eye, sharpen, tint, crop, add text & graphics, etc. Perfect for a newbie!
Cons: Directs you to Shutterfly to order prints. Slow page loads. No codes for image hosting.
Cost: Free for 2 GB. $20 for 20 GB, $40 for 40 GB and $100 for 100 GB.
Picasa
Picasa has both downloadable software for organizing and online services for hosting.
Pros: If you use Blogger (Blogspot) this is your default hosting. You already have an account there, whether you know it or not. Warning: If you delete something from your Picasa account, it will no longer appear on your blog!
Cons: Colors tend to appear muted on Blogger uploader. Not good for hosting graphics.
Cost: Free (must have a Google/Gmail account)
Darcy’s Tips: I recommend picking one of those for online storage and using it frequently. Each site offers password protection and varying levels of public/private viewing. You can host your photos online and remain anonymous. How? Don’t name your albums with your name or email address.
My top picks:
For photo storage & hosting: Flickr and Photobucket
For graphics storage: Photobucket
For online editing: picnik
If you’re going to pick only one: Photobucket wins.
One of the biggest benefits of using online storage is in case of disaster. If your house floods, catches fire, is trampled by tornado, etc., your photos are available from any computer in the world. The Pro or Premium prices on these online photo storage sites are so reasonable ($25/year) that you have NO REASON not to upload a copy of your photos onto one of these sites and use it as a backup for ALL your digital photos. Think $25 is a lot? Call Geek Squad and ask them how much data retrieval services are on a dead computer.
Now does $25 sound expensive? I didn’t think so.
Next in the series: More storage choices and tips. Photo editing software prices and comparison.
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I’ve got a Photobucket account and a Picnik account. I’ve been toying with the idea of Flickr – maybe I’ll look into it more now. Thanks!
We keep all our pictures on our external hard drive in case our computer dies, but I didn’t even think about something like a natural disaster tearing EVERYTHING up! This is a great idea, Darcy!
Thanks to your previous post, I spent a lot of time yesterday organizing my 2007 photos. It’s a great feeling to have that done. I scrapbook and was getting overwhelmed because I had no idea what I had not scrapped. (I use year-month-event organization) Now on to 2008. Then, of course, there’s pre-2007, which are stored elsewhere.
Since I’m only interested in photo storage, I use Snapfish. I almost always get my pictures printed at Walgreens, so this is very convenient for me. I’ve had my pictures stored there for years with no problems. Online photo storage is the main reason I don’t stress about losing my photos on my computer. Love it!
I like photobucket too! I have used flickr through scrapblog…that has been fun!
Thank you for your wise tips!
-sandy toe
At the risk of sounding really dumb (after all, I *SHOULD* know this stuff)… do you download full-res versions of your photos to Flickr, etc.???
I’ve actually never thought of using them as backup harddrive source. All the photos I’ve ever downloaded to them have been 70%, reduced size, 72 dpi – great for blog pics but no good for printing purposes.
We back up our pictures on a separate harddrive periodically. But the idea of putting them all online in case of fire is brilliant. So when do I start to tackle this job of uploading 19,780 pictures onto Photobucket? Ugh.
Not that there aren’t plenty of services out there, but Shutterfly is pretty awesome. Especially because they let you store unlimited photos for free these days. You can also create your own little photoblog through them. Just like Snapfish, they’ll send all kinds of great offers for discounted prints and other products.
I'm loving this!
Thank you for sharing & I can't wait until the next post.
Tiff
Another great post! Keeping coming girl! The PEOPLE need to hear this! LOL!
Yikes! That is a lot of wonderful free education you are providing.
I’m just trying to figure out how to organize my photos on my laptop. I have pic under My pictures and then different ones under IPhoto. I’d like to put them into albums in one place. Someone told me some of my pictures can get truncated if I move them around. I don’t have enough knowledge yet to know what to do!!!
Anyone out there who can help??
Thanks so much!
WOW-so glad I found this blog. Its amazing what a little networking will do..In this case, it lead me to finding tips on another one of my hobbies.
My husband thinks I am crazy because I take pictures of EVERYTHING. Glad to know that I am not the only “Soccer-Mom” with a passion for photos. I look forward to reading this blog for more tips!
(running in the room now to let him know that I am NOT crazy…)
I didn’t know I already had a Picasa account until you told me. Thanks! I decided to take them up on their offer since it is there for the taking.
I told you I was new to blogging. This just confirms it.
okie dokie. Getting them moved over to photobucket ASAP. This is no small undertaking!
Great tips and reminders. BTW, Winkflash is good too.
Stacy
Thank you for sharing this information.
There’s so much here that I didn’t know I needed to know, but definitely need to know.
Whew! I’m glad I picked Photobucket the first time around!
yeah! great information!!!! i posted the questions to your answers and one of your loyal readers sent me to this post! keep the tips coming! i am adding you to my reader right now!
Um…So, glad I read this b/c I was going to eliminate Picasa off my computer! Thanks
I’m finally getting to your ‘Digital Media’ posts. Tons of info…off to upload pic’s to PB!! Oh, and read #3.:)
Okay…I read this post last week and was going to get right on online storage. I waited 5 days too many – my hard drive went and I lost all of the pictures that we have from our 6 week family mission trip. Mexico, Grand Canyon, Disneyland, Redwood Forest…gone.
I know, I know. I’m still sobbing – especially because some of the shots were so great that I was going to get them printed on a canvas to decorate my home.
So here’s the deal…I’m wanting to upload my other photos to Photobucket. How do I do this in a resolution that is EXACTLY what I downloaded off of my camera? I want to be able to enlarge them and do other things with them afterwards. I know this is a basic question, but I am soooo not tech-savvy.
Thanks for your help!
Oh Amy! That is terrible. I am so sorry.
In Photobucket, it is a little trickier to upload it at the large size than it is in Flickr. Underneath the upload box, there is a little drop down menu that has sizes. Just pull it down all the way to the largest one – which I believe is a 5MB file. This is a pretty big file size, so it should accommodate all but the most enormous resolutions.
I am so very sorry. I have been there, too, I lost all my photos from a trip to Italy. This is why I urge others to back up frequently – it’s such a loss!
Thanks Darcy.
Maybe I’ll switch to Flickr. I don’t know much about either – you had just said that if you had to choose only one, it would be Photobucket.
I use Carbonite for automatic backup of files on my computer. This method works for me because I tend to be too flighty to remember to upload to Flickr. (even though I have an account with them and Photobucket!)
Carbonite uploads automatically whenever my computer is on, doesn’t seem to slow down my computer and stores every kind of file on my computer unless I specify areas I don’t want it to touch. It can be shut off when needed, and it picks up where it left off on backing up my files whenever I turn it back on.
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