As cameras on our smartphones get better every year, we can now take high-quality digital photos wherever we go at the click of a button. In the last few years, in particular, dedicated digital cameras have become unnecessary, with keen photographers moving to DSLR cameras if they need to take their photography to the next level. This has brought its own issues, though. The main one is that as people no longer print their pictures as often, simply keeping them on their phone or PC, there’s the potential for them to be lost forever if anything happens to the device. Because of this, it’s still very much necessary to back up your photos somewhere.
External hard drive
The easiest way to back up your photos is to make sure they are all saved to an external hard drive. This means that if anything happens to your phone or your computer, you have them stored away safely and can reaccess them. You can now buy hard drives with 1 TB of memory for a very reasonable price, which means that even if you’re taking very high-quality pictures, you’ll have plenty of room to store them. Simply connect the hard drive to your device with a USB, and you can have your whole library backed up in a few hours.
Online back-up
There are lots of online storage services appearing such as Tapshare which allow you to back up your files online. These services are simple to use, and once you’ve signed up, it will sync with your device automatically, storing your images in the cloud. This means that if anything causes you to lose your photos, you can just sign in and re-download them.
Storing on your computer
If you take all of your photos on your phone or camera, the first place to save them is to your computer. This will have more space than your device or the memory cards your camera uses, meaning you can then wipe your device or card and free up more space for taking new photos.
Saving to microfilm
If your photography is particularly precious to you, you may consider making a microfilm copy. When stored correctly, microfilm can last for hundreds of years and can be physically locked away. This is the way that newspapers save images that are sensitive and need to be stored securely.
Printing them out
For important photos, the best way to save them is still to make a hard copy. Online printing services now mean that you can print out hundreds of photos for relatively cheap, and these can easily be stored. Going through photographs is still one of the best ways to share memories. High-quality photos can be printed at any size you want and can be framed and displayed around your house. If you ever need to save an image digitally again, scanners are now advanced enough to take very high-resolution scans, so you can get a picture back on your laptop for editing.
