HOW TO SAVE YOUR PHOTOS

Photo backup is a perfect use of the Cloud: save a lot of big, valuable files that are, unless you’re famous, of little interest to data thieves. Here’s my system. 1. PICK TWO APPS Using at least two separate apps means safety in redundancy, in case one Cloud provider loses your data. It’s like having two identical physical photo albums, one on your living-room bookshelf, the other in a safe deposit box. I use Amazon Photos, which is included with a Prime membership ($100 per year, which is about R1 375 in South African money). Besides unlimited storage, a huge chunk of the world’s Internet has run on Amazon’s Cloud division (Amazon Web Services, AWS) for years. The security and longevity are worth the ugly menu system. In addition, I use Google Photos, which has free unlimited storage and the most intuitive user interface of any app, including a Free Up Space function that deletes backed-up photos from your device. Unless you pay, it compresses images. But you won’t really notice a difference unless you print them, which I usually don’t do. 2. MANUALLY BACK UP Even with unlimited storage apps, you don’t want unnecessary clutter. Most phones automatically back up photos in the background. To disable this, go to Settings and uncheck icloud Photos Library. Then, in Background App Refresh, uncheck the boxes next to your photo apps (iphone), or check Restrict Background Data (Android). During my daily subway commute or while in line at the grocery store, I look through my phone’s photos and delete the outtakes. When I get home or to our office’s Wi-fi, I open Amazon Photos and Google Photos and pull down with my thumb to upload, sending copies of my images to far-off data centres. If I used a camera, I plug the SD card into my laptop, open my browser, sign in to Amazon and Google, and upload there. Sounds tedious, but it takes seconds with decent Wi-fi. 3. CLEAN YOUR PHONE With copies of my photos and videos in Amazon and Google’s care, it’s time to delete the originals from my phone. Skip this step and you’ll eventually get that Not Enough Storage error when you go to capture your Bill Murray encounter. If deletion makes your palms sweat, just sign in to your Amazon or Google account from a laptop to confirm your photos are there first. – AG