In simpler times we had photos developed and printed on a regular basis – but they were still vulnerable to irreparable damage. Fire, sunshine, water, time, etc.
Then we began to use digital cameras and gradually our phones (digital) became our primary photo-taking device. And we took lots of them – often—building up a huge number of photos….and why?
Because they were free and we were sharing them (on phones via texts but more often, on social media, on Facebook particularly). Facebook is the largest social networking site in the world, with more than 2.2 billion monthly active users.
So, no surprise that Facebook is one of the biggest photo directories online.
Facebook (and Instagram) are great for sharing photos. These platforms are free, and used by so many people around the world, it can be hugely beneficial for photographers or casual shooters to store their photos in Mark Zuckerberg’s cloud.
But sharing is the only thing for which Facebook is good. The storage issue is that once a photo slides off the bottom of your timelines (or your friends’ news feeds), you might as well kiss it goodbye….like somewhere between “nonexistent” and “incredibly frustrating”.
In fact, one site I checked questioned why Facebook, with its vast wealth and its army of engineers and its hundreds of billions of photos, has put so little effort into building decent tools for creating, editing and browsing photo albums. Don’t look too hard for it – it isn’t there and doesn’t seem to be coming.
OK, I know that nothing lasts forever – and digital images can disappear in seconds. People lose their most important photos every day when hard drives fail, when smartphones and laptops are lost or stolen, and when online services shut down. Or decide to not to hold them for you any more.
Making digital documents last forever therefore involves two processes. First, you have to keep moving the data to new storage systems before the old one fails or becomes unreadable. Second, you may have to keep converting documents to whichever file format becomes dominant before the old one is abandoned.
And, of course, the one thing we know about hard drives (used most often for backup) is that most of them fail sooner rather than later. Some after a few months while others may go a decade – but increasingly likely to fail after five years (that’s roughly 10 hard drives in all to cover 50 years).
And then there is cloud storage – remember that data in the cloud is not safe and not under your control. Plus the biggest risk is being locked out of your account either because of being hacked or because of lack of payment, or the service shuts down or goes bust. Large companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft & Apple offer photo storage services – but these can be expensive if you need a lot.
But the biggest problem is your photos will not be as accessible as they are on a local hard drive. Before you commit to making some large uploads, check how easy it is to download files. And be careful of services that don’t preserve your original photos exactly as you uploaded them. Facebook’s photo storage is free but it reduces images from printable quality to web-viewing quality.
So….what to do?
If you remember one of my recent blog emails, I shared that I am creating a system which leads to a completed Life-Story Album quickly by following a guide through 3 easy steps (and the big goal is to become a habitually successful story saver a.k.a. album-maker)
I am using the Forever.com products in this system – and I am falling in love with their full panoply of offerings! I had known about their Historian software (photo management) and their Artisan 6 software (digital project creator) and used both for years.
WHAT IS NEW TO ME and is working beautifully in my album system is their quick and easy solution to permanent storage for important memorable photos, documents and stories. You own storage rather than “rent” it – for generations. No data mining – no advertising – and you can share with your friends and family. Length of storage? ….your life plus 100 years.
I love the Library, Album organization process, and the large size of photo viewing and easy managing ability (plus sharing) of the photo albums. Works great for my genealogy as well!
There is so much more – check it out for yourself at my link HERE
You can open a new FOREVER account for FREE and get 2 GB of FREE storage in your Forever Library – plus earn a $20 off coupon valid for 60 days on select items. Poke around, learn more about the full range of options (even digitizing photos & videos etc.).
And…I am here to help you get started. Just get in touch and let me know you would like my initial walk-through and demo of how I am using Forever.com for my photos and memories.
Want another little “bonus”? Here is a link to a site I found titled: “How to Download All Photos From Facebook in 2021″ (as well as single photos). HERE
May you find a solution for those precious photos and memories that gives you “peace”!
