Most of your photos are likely to be digital. They’re possibly stored in different places such as on your phone, your spouse's phone and, if you have a digital camera, on your laptop. If anything happens to these devices, you could lose all those memories. It's also difficult to pass digital photos on to the next generation when they’re on your phone, except through posting on social media.
A cloud-storage photo album solves these problems and offers a secure backup to protect your precious memories. It allows you to access your photos anywhere you have an internet connection and frees you from the need to lug around an external hard drive. Not only that, but storing photos in the cloud is a seamless operation that occurs in the background so you don't have to worry about it after setting the process in motion.
Numerous online photo storage options are available to you, including those offered by Google for Android and iCloud for Apple products. Before choosing a platform, it's wise to research the pros and cons of your various choices, understand their costs and determine the amount of storage you need.
Two possibilities for online photo albums are standard cloud storage for photos and dedicated photo storage platforms like SmugMug. Both types allow you to store and organize your photos, and many also include editing and tagging features. Some present your photos as small icons, while others allow you to view your photos on the digital equivalent of a contact sheet.
Although there are plenty of free photo storage sites, most have limitations on how much storage you get. Free options include Google Photos with 15GB storage, which lets you store around 900 photos, and Box with a 10GB free storage limit. If you have a large digital portfolio, consider a paid online photo storage option. Prices start at around $2.50 per month for 2,000 images and go up to $10 per month for 2TB of storage. Some platforms have unlimited storage plans.
Unless your photos are already stored online, you'll need to consider the bandwidth required to upload photos. Ideally, that means using a fast internet connection without a data cap.
Once your photos are stored online, the fun really starts. You can create a family album online, put together photo books and print items like calendars, T-shirts and mugs.
Share your photos with family and friends by creating an online album for a special occasion. All you need do is create a public folder and copy photos into it. Then, decide who can see the photos by sending out invitations or creating sharing permissions, depending on the platform.
Use your online photo album to share special memories by creating a high-quality photo book. To do this, select the photos you want and send them to a commercial photo book website like Shutterfly or Google Photos.
Turn your photos into personalized gifts for friends and family. Many companies, including Shutterfly, Walmart and Staples, will print your photos onto coffee mugs or custom calendars. If you have a printer, you can even create your calendar at home.
Choosing photos for your modern photo album in the cloud is an exciting exercise that allows you to relive old memories as you go. Sort your photos into logical folders before uploading to help keep similar photos together. Possible ways to sort photos include:
Don't forget your old black-and-white and color photos either — you can scan them into digital files. Most smartphones have scanning apps, as do several of the photo album websites, including Dropbox. You can also use a desktop scanner or a photo scanning service.
As you’re getting organized, think about who's going to view your photos. Sort through and delete duplicate copies and blurry or poorly exposed photos. Also, consider annotating your photos so viewers can see when they were taken and read a description of each one.
Depending on your camera equipment, your photos may be in different formats such as JPEG, TIFF, HEIF or PNG. For viewing, consider converting them to a standard format such as JPEG. Photo storage sites like Dropbox allow you to convert image formats easily.
Finally, edit your photos. Adjust the exposure, brightness, contrast and saturation, and crop photos to remove unnecessary background. Many photo album websites also include basic photo editing, so you can edit the photos there.
Taking the time to create an online photo album helps store your memories safely. You, your children and other loved ones will be able to view your photos anytime and, with the right photo album plan, keep them online in perpetuity.
