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Amazon, Google, SmugMug, Apple: what’s the best home for your photos?

When last we met, I pointed out the perils of using Apple’s iCloud Photos for photo backup for one simple reason: if you delete an image off your iPhone, Apple will in turn also delete it from iCloud*.

This time I’d like to go over the best alternative photo backup options for you in more detail, because like it or not, in today’s world, just like paying for food, shelter and taxes, if you snap photos on your smartphone or camera, you will be paying for online storage. And paying more in the coming years as well, as you snap more images.

There’s no such thing as free backup anymore.

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Don’t use iCloud to backup your photos

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My friend Bill just returned from a family vacation in Costa Rica and shot lots of photos and video on his iPhone, including some killer shots of breakfasts with local monkeys.

No surprise that once he got home, he checked his iPhone storage and found that it was 98% full. Just a few more snaps, and he’d be totally out of room.

His solution? “I’ll just put them all on iCloud, and then delete them off my iPhone,” he told me.

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PSA: Google’s free cloud photo storage ends in 2 weeks – Here are eight alternatives

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Last November, Google announced that its free unlimited photo backup was going to end and it would all fall under the free shared 15GB get you with Google’s other services, like Gmail and Google Drive. Now, it’s almost upon us, with the service set to shut down on June 1st. You can, of course, upgrade to Google One (although there’s no “Unlimited” package), but what are your alternatives?

Well, none of the alternatives are really free, either. Not for unlimited storage, anyway. But with Google shifting over to a paid-only option with minimal free storage, the advantage they once had is now gone. Here we take a look at a few of the competing services for you to check out and see which best fits your needs.

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PSA: Amazon Photos auto-save might not be auto-saving all of your raw files

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The whole cloud backup thing has been a hot topic for a while now as various services have been simultaneously killing off unlimited storage while others have been bringing it back and trying to outdo each other to win over your business. Amazon Photos is one such service that offers unlimited space as long as you have a prime account – including your raw photos. But it seems it’s not backing up everything – even if you think that it is.

Reddit user /u/somebodytoshove posted to /r/photography noting that the auto-save feature of the Amazon Photos iOS app has not been uploading the .raf files from his Fuji mirrorless camera. It thinks it has, and it looks like it has, but when you look at the uploaded files, they actually contain only the jpg preview.

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Amber X is a privacy-focused in-home cloud storage for your photos you can access anywhere

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With all the goings-on at Google and people looking for alternate cloud storage options, sometimes it’s easier to just be your own cloud. I use Resilio Sync for this, but that does usually mean building up a dedicated PC. The Amber X wants to simplify that process with an inexpensive cloud-storage-in-a-box solution that lets you store your data and retrieve it anywhere.

Amber X is currently running on Indiegogo, where it’s long since passed its goal. It has a couple of days left to go, with pledges starting at $129. But we’ve got you a special link that’ll let you get your hands on one for just $119 – about the same cost you’d pay for a year of Google Photos or iCloud for the same storage, except there’s no subscription with this!

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New Google Photos storage rules could delete your Gmail and Google Drive files too

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Google recently announced they were killing off free storage for Google Photos from June 1st, 2021. A lot of people haven’t been happy with Google’s track record on moves like this, and have been seeking alternatives.

Many users assumed that any images already there would remain safe, but it seems not. Google has started emailing some of its Gmail, Drive and Photos users to let them know that their content may soon be deleted without warning or permission. Like the new Google Photos restrictions, these new policies also come into effect on June 1st, 2021.

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5 alternatives to Google Photos cloud storage for backing up your work

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Google Photos has been one of the best photo hosting cloud services out there, offering storage for an unlimited number of your photos absolutely free – as long as you didn’t mind a slight hit in image quality. But that is coming to an end and Google is abandoning its free tier. You still get your free 15GB (shared across all Google services, like Gmail, etc), but if you want any more than that, you’ll have to pay now.

It was a sweet ride while it lasted, and there aren’t really any great free alternatives out there now. But now that you do have to pay, what are the other top paid alternatives out there? Let’s take a look at five of them.

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Google is killing unlimited storage for non enterprise users – don’t move away from G Suite

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If you have been using the unlimited storage feature of G Suite to back up your photos and videos, wait before moving into Google Workplace. Google Workspace only has unlimited storage on enterprise plans.

Google made some big noise about replacing the G Suite with an even better Google Workspace. Among the many changes that may or may not be incredible for you, one change is clearly not in favor of high storage users.

If you or your team were using G Suite Business, you would get unlimited storage for $12/user. If I recall correctly, you needed at least four users to enroll in that level of service.  Now Google Workspace will only give you 2 TB of storage for your $12, 5TB for $18, and according to Android Police, you can move to an Enterprise account for $20 ($30 for enterprise+) and get the same unlimited storage. However, it will be at least 50% significantly more expensive.

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Those images you lost on image.canon? Yeah, you ain’t getting them back Canon says

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Canon has posted an update to the recent issues surrounding its image.canon service. According to TechRadar, the official word from Canon now is that they did not find any unauthorised access to the system as a result of the issue that caused data loss. They say that it’s completely unrelated to the ransomware attack, which also happened last week.

The company has now confirmed that that the whole data loss issue was down to a simple coding error. Unfortunately, they’ve also confirmed that this is an irreversible error and those images and videos that were lost are lost permanently and can not be recovered.

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image.canon is down after losing some of its users’ photos and videos

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Canon’s cloud platform image.canon has been down since 30 June and no one knew why. But Canon has now spoken up and revealed that there has been a data loss on the platform. Some of the users’ photos and videos uploaded before 16 June have been lost, and it looks like they still haven’t been retrieved.

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