Storing and Accessing your Photos

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Whether you use just one Head Shot Photo for publicity or product photos to show clients, you need to have your photos organized for easy access. This is not very difficult to do. Today you have many choices so lets discuss a few with the the Pro’s and Con’s of each:

Save to your Computer

  1. PRO’S:
    1. Always ready for you to access without too much trouble
  2. CON’S:
    1. Could get lost in everything you have on computer
    2. Many photos will take up space on hard drive, slowing down computer (more common if you have an older computer).
    3. If Hard Drive fails, you lose your photos

Save to a USB drive

  1. PRO’S
    1. Will not have to worry about slowing down the hard drive of your computer
    2. Mobility, you can take the USB drive anywhere and plug into any computer to access your photos
    3. Works as a great backup
    4. Inexpensive to purchase
  2. CON’S
    1. USB drives are small and easily misplaced or lost

Save to the Cloud

  1. PRO’S
    1. Always accessible with Internet access any any computer
    2. Will not have to worry about hard drive space
    3. Will not have worry about lost USB drives or failed hard drives
    4. Works as a great back up
  2. CON’S
    1. Need internet access.
    2. Need to set up an account, some are Free and some are for a fee

I personally like using a combination of USB drives and the cloud. You can use a portable hard drive as well as a USB drive but they are bigger and bulkier to carry. I try to back up to Google Drive. It is free and easy to use. You just need to sign up for a google account.  You can create folders with multiple photos and then share the entire folder with your client. This is much easier than emailing a lot of photos.

Just beware, some of the Free online photo storage sites will only let you share thumbnail or low quality images. They allow you to store your photos with the idea you will order prints through them. It is difficult, if not impossible to retrieve a full resolution image from these sites. In business you NEED your full resolution photo files.