dotPhoto Blog

The Best Ways to Archive Photos in 2018

In the bleak midwinter, our thoughts turn to “Where will my photos be in 15 years?” Well, maybe not, but perhaps we should consider the question because most of us give scant thought to protecting our photos until after a computer breaks or a house floods or someone passes away.

This dotphoto newsletter is devoted to various photo preservation strategies and examines the cost of each. Some combination of these techniques is probably right for you.

Backing Up your Photos Online
Naturally, we think online backup to the cloud is a terrific idea because it is historically the most reliable storage. However, the cloud has its problems. Most photo web sites downsize photos after a week and again after a year.  Facebook doesn’t work with anything over 100K, so your archived photos may be much smaller than you remember them. At dotphoto, we do NOT downsize photos.  dotphoto Club members get unlimited storage and the full size image up to 20MB, which is a very large photo.

dotphoto’s cloud storage is backed up across multiple data centers and is extremely secure, but we recommend that you also keep a copy locally because, well, it’s the Internet. For instance, just two weeks ago, Intel announced a security problem with all of its processors. That problem is probably patched by operating systems, but even fans of technology know that multiple backups are prudent.

Free Downloads of your dotphoto Albums
dotphoto Club and paid plan members can download their albums free at any time. Just go into an album, click on Organize and choose Download. We offer this service because dotphoto is a photo management service — not a photo printing service. We also happen to have the lowest prices on prints in the industry, but dotphoto takes a wider view of your photo needs.  More on free downloads

Value prints!
The dotphoto cart can handle about 1000 different prints at a time, and you can even add a message to the back of your prints. Shipping is free for Club members over $10, so 1000 prints with the Readers Reward Discount (the coupon code this week is BACKUP) would only be only $76 or 7.6 cents per print delivered. (This is even less than so-called “free print” services that limit charge over a certain number of prints per month and tack on huge shipping charges.)

Value booksValue books! (Sometimes less expensive than prints)
Many dotphoto books can include up to 154 pages, so, if you put 4 photos on a page, you’ll archive about 600 photos per book. With dotphoto’s SAVE49 coupon code for books, you’ll save $49 on every book order of $79 or more (premium books as low as $30), and you can split multiple books into multiple orders to use the coupon again. Depending on the choices that you make for your book — cover type, paper type, book size — you can get a better value and experience with a book. How to make a photo book

SD CardSD Cards
We stopped using CDs and DVDs years ago because the devices are getting increasingly hard to find. You may have a photo CD in the future, but nothing to read it with. SD cards are used in millions of computers and cameras, and SD cards fit neatly into storage boxes. If you don’t want to download all your albums, dotphoto offers a customized service that backs up your photos to SD cards and sends them by mail.  SD card backup info

Posted: 1/26/2018 4:42:21 AM

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