Backing Up Your Phone Photos • RI Family Photographer
Our phones go everywhere with us nowadays. If you had told childhood me that, I’d probably have looked at you like you were crazy. But there in our pockets or purses or hands we have this little thing that is not just a phone but a GPS, a calendar, a compass, an organizer of practically our entire lives, and, of course, a camera.
Having that camera with you all the time has likely allowed you to capture hundreds or thousands of photos and videos of your everyday. Your children, your pets, times with your friends and family. My camera roll is full of photos of my dog and cat, what can I say. Have you ever thought of what would happen if your phone crashed? Or if it was lost or stolen? As a RI family photographer, I back up my client and personal photos that are taken with my DSLR, but my phone photos are also backed up. It’s something that I always thought was a no-brainer, but I’ve found that lots of people don’t do it or don’t realize how important it is.
I’m going to share several different methods of backing up your phone photos. If you’re not already using one of these methods, make sure to start! Do you have a favorite backup method for your phone photos? Let me know in the comments!
Amazon Prime Photos
Do you have Amazon Prime? If you do you can use Amazon Prime Photos for unlimited photo uploads and storage. The catch with Prime Photos is that you can only use it for photos and not for videos. Amazon Prime does also offer 5 gb of free storage for videos, and more can be purchased for an extra cost. This is definitely a benefit worth using if you’re already a Prime member.
iCloud and iTunes backup
These options are available for iPhones only. You can perform full backups of your phone on your computer via iTunes. This is one of the ways I back up my phone and how I transfer all information to a new phone when I get one. You can also do full backups via iCloud, or just back up certain things like photos and videos.
Google Photos
This is my favorite option that is available for both iOS and Android. There is an app that you install on your phone, then sign in with your Google ID. Once you upload photos, you can access them via the cloud on all your devices and also at photos.google.com. Google Photos offers unlimited storage, though the service does compress your photos (unless you’ve got a Google Pixel phone). The compression has very little noticeable impact on photos, though.
Dropbox
Get the Dropbox app on your phone and upload photos to your account, and access them from any other computer or device via your Dropbox sign in. This is a great free option for storage and backup, and you can upload videos, photos, or any other file type. Do keep in mind that the free version of Dropbox limits the amount of space you have available on your account to just 2 gb, which is fairly small. You can earn more space in several ways, or you can upgrade to a paid account which gives you 1 tb of space. If Dropbox is your choice, investing in the paid version is definitely worth it to keep your photos safe.