I thought it might be time for a bit of a mini review on this topic as many people are still unaware of the benefits of cloud storage.
I have mentioned in a couple of threads that I no longer buy stand alone cameras. The digital camera has been a fantastic invention, allowing us to take photos, review and keep or discard, store and for the first few years, lose valuable photos.
Mobile phone camera technology is now absolutely fantastic. I recently upgraded from a Samsung Galaxy S5 to a Samsung Galaxy Note 5. The difference has been noticeable, low light is no longer a problem and images are much sharper with lovely colour. Here are a couple of examples I recently took.
The advantage of using a quality phone camera is having direct cloud storage. As soon as I take a photo, it is automatically upload to my cloud account (dependant on settings). If I dropped my phone in the ocean at the end of the day, I wouldn't lose the photos that I took. I would lose the copies on the phone of course, but a copy has already gone up to my cloud account.
I have recently had a good play with the 4 most popular cloud storage offerings and have reviewed them for members below.
Google have done a pretty good job with their offering. Previously, you had to subscribe to Google Plus to use Google Photos but Google obviously took on board the complaints (most from people like me that didnt want to be forced to use a social media tool like Plus) and came back with an even better offering.
If you already have a Gmail account, you already have Google Photos. With a Google Account you receive 15 gig of storage space. This is shared by Google Drive (used to store anything from images to documents), Google Photos and Gmail. If you go over 15 gig, you can purchase extra storage from Google - (Prices in USD) $1.99 a month - 100 gig, $9.99 a month - 1 TB, $99.99 a month - 10 TB.
Google offers a unique option with Google Photos - they will store your photos for free at what they call "High Quality" using adavnced compression techinques or if you wish to store your photos at the exact same quality that you took them, then they are counted against your quota. I personally prefer to keep mine at their original quality, but I must say that I cant see any visible difference on photos they have compressed. That makes Google Photos a great free backup option for many. From what I have read, they start compressing at around 16 MP.
The Google Photos App is excellent. Easy to use and full of features. It was already on my phone when I bought it (like most brand name android phones) so all I had to do was log in and change settings to suit what I want. When I take a photo, its backed up to my cloud account based on my settings. I have mine mainly set to "wifi only", so photos only upload when I am connected to wireless to avoid mobile data charges.
Photos can be displayed in a number of different formats such as standard view, month view, and year view as shown in listed in order below :
Automatic face and place recognition is excellent. The App will scan your photos (if you let it) and will identify individual people and group them together. All you then have to add is add a label (ie name).
It will do the same with places and even with everyday items, ie, dogs, cats, churchs, cars etc etc. It works amazingly well and is very accurate, though you will get the odd item in the wrong group which is easily removed. But all up, its great and works well. If for example you wanted to show a friend a photo from when you went camping in 2012, you can easily find it simply by using Year View , or by Places.
With many people using Gmail these days, its a must have. One other thing I will mention is that when you click on and view a photo with Google Photos, its allows you full zooming if you want to zone in on something. None of its competitors have zooming on this scale which is disappointing. A lot of the time you will look at a photo and think (for example) what written on that guys shirt and want to zoom in. Its great in this app.
I will review Dropbox next when I have time (in this same thread) followed by Amazon Photos and then Microsoft OneDrive. Comments, questions are welcome.
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