keeping your photos safe

We all know that the whole point of taking family photos is to actually use and save said photos, but sometimes the execution is a little bit harder than we think. I mean, I’m a family photographer and I still struggle when it comes to managing and organizing the digital copies of my family photos. We’re all in the same boat! That said, here are my favorite ways to keep your photos safe! Please join me in backing up your photos correctly so that you children and children children can enjoy them decades from now!

How to Back up Your Online Gallery on Google Photos

Once you receive your gallery, there are a couple of different directions you can take with managing your digital photos. I always say, back them up in at least two places!

Using an online platform like Google Drive/Google Photos is a great way to store your images and have access them online wherever you are. You can also put your photos on an external hard drive or thumb drive. You want to always have a backup of the full resolution original photos from your photographer so you can access and use them anytime you want.

Set your google photo account to the correct settings

If you download your photos right from your personal online gallery to your Google Photos: make sure your google photo account is set to save your photos in “original size” before saving them to google drive. If not, your images will be compressed while saving and if you go to print them later on, you will not have your full-resolution files. Here are directions from google on how to do this from Google Photos Help: Choose the upload size of your photos.

Always Back up your images on a desktop or laptop computer

If you download your photos to a device: make sure that device is a desktop or laptop computer. Your online gallery will allow you to download photos to your phone or iPad, but again that won’t save as a full resolution image file.

With an online platform like google photos, you can give people access to your photos and you don’t have to worry about keeping track of a hard drive or thumb drives. Also, some of these platforms connect to the smart devices you have in your home so you can also display your photos too. Google Home, Amazon Echo, and Apple TV allow you to use uploaded photos as slideshow screensavers on your device. I think this is a really cool way to display your photos and store your photos digitally. 

Set up Shared Family albums on google photos

One thing I love most about google photos is that I can set an album to automatically add all photos of my kid or pet to a folder that my husband and grandparents have access to! In an album like this you can mix cell phone family photos with your professional family photos and access them on your phone with the google photos app anytime you want enjoy them!

always print your photos

Managing your digital family photos is important because I firmly believe that backups save lives. There’s nothing worse than photos being lost or ruined and not having any way to replace them. But remember, once you’ve secured your digital photos, don’t forget to print them! Your family photos are meant to be displayed and not sitting on your computer forever. If you’re unsure about how to best print your photos, check out the professional prints offered through your gallery. Printing your family photos through your photographer ensure that you will receive professional, high quality prints and it supports your local small business! Whatever you do, DO NOT print your gorgeous family photos through a discount pint company like Walgreens or Costco, you will regret it!