What to do without free cloud storage

Options: Google Photos to drop free unlimited storage on images and videos. Here are your other options.

Don MacAskill, CEO of Smugmug, in conversation with Peek’s Ruzwana Bashir and Blurb’s Eileen Gittins. (Photo: Jefferson Graham)

MacAskill hopes that by Google making this move, consumers will awaken to the perils of putting all their eggs in a bait and switch basket that starts as no cost, “because there’s just no such thing as free.”

Amazon Photos (Photo: junpinzon / iStock / Getty Images Plus)

Elsewhere, you’ll probably need to pay extra, whether that’s from Apple’s iCloud or Dropbox, which both charge $9.99 monthly for 2 TB of storage, or Microsoft’s 365 offering, which offers 1 TB for $70 yearly. 

MacAskill has a way better deal. However, as a small company that’s not on the home screen of iPhones, Windows computers or Fire TV streaming stick screens, most consumers don’t know about it. His company offers unlimited storage starting at $55 a year on SmugMug, which is aimed at pro photographers, or $59 for Flickr. That means no nags urging us to upgrade storage because we’ve run out of room. 

MacAskill says people are shooting more pictures than ever before, in high resolution. He gets over 10 million daily uploads to SmugMug and Flickr. 

One thing he would like consumers to pay attention to is the industry approach to photo management. When Google, Apple and other companies urge us to delete photos from our phones, because they’re backed up elsewhere, and then the companies changes the rules it “opens up a world of hurt,” says MacAskill. 

For years, the bargain Google offered was free storage in order for the company to mine our images for information it could later use to create personalized advertising. For instance, if Google knows from your photos that you like to visit Columbus, Ohio, and eat in the Short North district, it could start hitting you up with offers of places to frequent in those subtle pitches that appear near search results.

Should we charge Google for our photos?

On Twitter this week, several users spoke out about Google’s move, asking if now that Google is charging us, whether we reciprocate. Perhaps Google should start paying us when we upload photos to Maps and Google My Business. Ditto to Trip Advisor, Yelp and other sites that couldn’t exist without our photos.

Meanwhile, what can consumers do, going forward? 

You can throw all your photos on Amazon and hope to be able to find them. To make it easier, consumers should go in and create albums, to make them searchable. Even if Amazon doesn’t become your go-to place, Prime members should check out the app, especially if you have Fire TV streaming in your home. With Amazon Photos, you can have a screensaver automatically generated from your most recent smartphone photos, which get uploaded automatically. 

Apple’s iCloud has a similar offering via its Apple TV streaming box, but again, you’re looking at thousands of automatically uploaded photos from phones and tablets. Take the time to create albums and you’ll have an easier time finding them. 

I use SmugMug like a hard drive, creating titled galleries after every shoot, and curating the “best of,” first in Adobe Lightroom software, and then looking up the galleries when I need to find a specific photo, (from Manhattan Beach sunsets to Thanksgiving 2019) in the search bar. This works well for me, although there are limitations. I can’t upload camera RAW files without paying extra, and videos can go up only if they’re under 3 GB in size and 20 minutes in length. 

SmugMug interface (Photo: Screenshot)

(For those of you without access to pro software like Lightroom, which starts at $9.99  monthly, use what you have to showcase your best work, whether that’s creating albums in Apple’s free Photos app or Microsoft’s Photos app for Windows.)

But most importantly, beyond online backup is to have another copy of each image somewhere else, says MacAskill – whether that be a hard drive, tons of flash drives or even memory cards. Remember that you can buy a hefty 8 TB spinning disk hard drive for around $150, but those drives tend to fail as they get used more often. A solid state drive has no moving parts and is more reliable, but more costly. A 2 TB solid state drive sells for around $200, which is two years worth of an iCloud or Dropbox subscription, so if plans change and rates go up, you have another backup option nearby. 

“The main message,” says MacAskill, “is to pay for safe storage somewhere and do not use anything free ever again, because the business model never works out.”

In other tech news this week

Facebook owned Instagram added Reels and Shop tabs in its home screen, while removing search and notifications tabs. Instagram cites a change in trends amid the pandemic’s shelter in place orders , according to a blog post. The company says it has seen a surge in engagement with short, entertaining videos on their platform, as well as online shopping. Additionally, Facebook began rolling out a new feature that makes messages disappear in Messenger and Instagram. Vanish mode makes messages disappear after they are seen by the recipient and they leave the chat. Users can turn on the new feature by swiping up on their mobile device in and existing chat thread. To return to the original messaging mode, users can swipe up on their screen again and have the regular chat screen. 

This week’s Talking Tech podcasts

Those powerful new Macs. The new computers will be out next week. 

First look: new iPhone 12 Pro Max and Mini. I’m sold. 

More on the new Macs. What exactly is an M1 chip anyway? 

Preview: Microsoft and Sony’s new game consoles. USA TODAY’s Brett Molina on the new game platforms. 

How to stage a film festival virtually. The organizers of the Coast Film Festival tell us all about it. 

Let me hear from you! I’m @jeffersongraham on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. 

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/nletter/2020/11/14/free-photo-cloud-storage-google-alternative/6271910002/