Email and photo storage suggestions needed

[Anonymous]

I use Google photos but transfer everything I want over to Shutterfly. I make one family album each year but make two copies of it. One for each child when they get older.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I use Google photos but transfer everything I want over to Shutterfly. I make one family album each year but make two copies of it. One for each child when they get older.

Printing is great. Shutterfly as storage is not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Also, for photos, print the good ones and send copies to friends and relatives. You don't want to find out fifty years from now that the old hard disk in a shoe box is unreadable and, even if it were, that the file formats are obsolete. Make sure that your family has some actual silver-halide prints (made at a real photo lab, not ink jet printed, which is not archival) of your favorite pictures.

Good advice. Digital is risky for archiving purposes.

Where to go for the silver halide prints?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I use Google photos but transfer everything I want over to Shutterfly. I make one family album each year but make two copies of it. One for each child when they get older.

Printing is great. Shutterfly as storage is not.

I have them on Google and Shutterfly as well as hard copies and it's been working for 15 years so I'm not really sure why you think it's that bad

[Anonymous]

Where to go for the silver halide prints?

A professional photo lab. You can bring them a CD or flash drive and have photographic prints made.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I use Google photos but transfer everything I want over to Shutterfly. I make one family album each year but make two copies of it. One for each child when they get older.

Printing is great. Shutterfly as storage is not.

I have them on Google and Shutterfly as well as hard copies and it's been working for 15 years so I'm not really sure why you think it's that bad

Agree. Somehow I’ve become the family historian. I’ve scanned hundreds of thousands of photos, and made many Shutterfly albums dating from 1895 to present day. The photos are stored digitally in many places, so I have thrown almost all of the original photos away - yes! No one needs all that clutter - it is liberating to be free of it and to have organized albums to enjoy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I use Google photos but transfer everything I want over to Shutterfly. I make one family album each year but make two copies of it. One for each child when they get older.

Printing is great. Shutterfly as storage is not.

I have them on Google and Shutterfly as well as hard copies and it's been working for 15 years so I'm not really sure why you think it's that bad

Shutterfly is meant for printing and gifts. Not for storage. One reason is that there is no bulk download. Two is that you are subject to their changing business policies. For example, a while ago they took away shared albums. If you are doing google for storage, you’re probably fine. But Shutterfly is not a reliable storage option.
I keep my photos in iCloud and then backup to Amazon photos (free with prime) and then have an external hard drive.

[Anonymous]

Doesn't Google recompress uploaded photos? That would be a good reason not to use them (the process effectively throws away information), or at least not rely on them. I wouldn't trust any cloud service as primary storage for such things, but they work well enough as backups.

The photos are stored digitally in many places, so I have thrown almost all of the original photos away

Throwing away originals was a mistake. Over time, scanners will improve (but you will have nothing to re-scan), and, if something happens to you, others in your family may not know or care enough to maintain the electronic files. Also, original photographs often contain important metadata (even just the photofinisher's stamps, sometimes), that can help to date the picture or provide important information about the location where they were taken. Think of the people who had home movies transferred to VHS in the 1980s and threw away the film. If they hadn't done that, they could have beautiful HD transfers made now (or just project the originals on a large screen).

[Anonymous]

Google does not compress photos in the paid plan. If you don’t pay, then yes it does.

I would also caution against saving in multiple different places as no one will ever find them.

I took a class on this and if you want the comparisons between cloud backups:
https://missfreddy.com/digital-organizing/how-to-easily-save-your-photos-in-the-cloud/

Important note that Apple’s iCloud is not a backup. It’s a sync. If your toddler grabs your phone and deletes a photo, it also deletes it from your cloud (and will be gone after 30 days).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:NONE are fully secure. All will say they are. Do you really trust them?

If you use Advanced Data Protection it is likely pretty secure from theft.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/108756#:~:text=On%20iPhone%20or%20iPad,Turn%20on%20Advanced%20Data%20Protection.

But it is way way easier to lock yourself out, so less secure from loss.

[Anonymous]

We use One Drive.