Monday 19 August 2013

Digital Photos…How Should I Preserve Them?

Do you have fun taking tons of digital photos because they are free? The more you take, the less chance you have to miss that special moment, right?.  Now, what do you do with those tens, hundreds, thousands of digital pictures?  In order to preserve them for future use and generations, it is important to make sure they are stored securely.


First things first, before you store them, come up with a way to organize the photos that makes it easy to find what you are looking for quickly once they are stored.  One way to arrange photos is to keep a folder of photos for each year and organize them in that folder by month.  If you label the months numerically, for example “01January2013”, they will stay in order.  You can also use the sorting future on Windows of iPhoto to automatically organize your photos by day or month.


Now for storage, make sure it is reliable and permanent.  Many people believe CDs are a great permanent storage, but they are unaware that CDs can start to degrade over the years and eventually become unusable.  One place to store your photos is on an external hard drive.



This allows you to put a large amount of photos in one secure place.  Just make sure you regularly backup your current photos to your external hard drive.  The other solution is to use a cloud storage site.  Many companies that archive your photos are free and a great place to print your photos or make photo books as another way to preserve your memories.  Here are a few popular cloud storages companies:


Flicker - This service allows you to store, organize and tag photos. In addition, there is a messaging system that allows users to comment on photos. First terabyte is free.

Smugmug  - A service that allows you to upload photos from your computer or mobile device.  It keeps the geotags and allows for easy organization.  Pictures may be shared and printed on this site. Monthly pricing starts at $5
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Shutterfly – This site allows you to upload, organize, print, and make books and gifts with your photos.  In addition you can share photos by creating a personal webpage.  The basic service is free.

JustCloud – Users are able to upload, organize, share, and view photos from everywhere using an internet connection.  You can also click on a picture and start a web slide show. Basic accounts are free.

Sugarsync – This photo storage site allows you to upload photos from your computer or through a mobile app.  Sharing is easy and can be separated into groups.  First 5GB are free.

Photo archiving may be a bit overwhelming at first, but once you develop a system, it can take as little time as a couple minutes each month and your irreplaceable snapshots will be accessible and able to be enjoyed for a lifetime.

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Written By Amy Murphy, TLC Computer Solutions, Las Vegas, NV