From Fleeting to Forever, Zoner Edition

Author Acknowledgments
No book, even a modest e-book, comes together on its own. This book is
no exception.
The authors would like to thank the following people for their
contributions:
James Krayer, for his cover design and for his work on Your-DigitalLife.com (you can view Mr. Krayer’s other work and put him to work for you
by visiting http://www.jameskrayer.com/); Mark Hawver for his editing and
formatting assistance; Alene Scoblete for her eagle eye; and Dawn Scoblete and
Kim McEnaney for their edits, advice and encouragement.
This edition of From Fleeting to Forever was published by G-Scobe
Media, LLC. in cooperation with Zoner Software, A.S.
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Get Organized
• Chapter Two: Prints and Photo Books
• Chapter Three: Wall Art
• Chapter Four: Your Photos On… Anything!
• Chapter Five: Digital Sharing and Social Networking
• Chapter Six : Your Videos
• Chapter Seven: How to Protect Your Images
• Conclusion: Your Digital Life
Introduction
This book is based on a simple idea: that the thousands of digital photos
and videos you snap every year constitute your digital life.
Like any life, those digital memories are worth celebrating, cherishing and
saving for others.
Among our phones, cameras and camcorders, we’re taking billions of
photos a year. The website 1000memories.com estimated that “ every two
minutes we snap as many photos as the whole of humanity did in the 1800s.”
Facebook alone receives roughly 300 million photo uploads per day. That’s a
lot. It’s like a blizzard of digital data and like any massive storm, we find it
overwhelming to dig ourselves out. Ask yourself: do your photos usually sit for
a while in a camera or phone? Once they’re on your computer, do you do much
with them?
If the answer is no, you’re not alone. Most of us struggle to even organize
all the photos we’re taking, much less take advantage of all the great creative
options for our images and videos. That’s a tragic irony, because while digital
photography has made it easy to “ snap and forget” it has also unleashed a wide
range of creative possibilities for our images—from wall art, to photo books,
sculptures, multimedia videos and virtual collages—there’s never been a better
time to be taking pictures. Our technology has also created some unique
challenges: digital photos are easy to take, and easy to lose. Unlike printed
photos, there’s no simple method to ensure your digital photos will be
viewable by future generations.
Image credit - HP
So this book was born from a simple desire—to show you that there’s
more to your digital memories than stuffing them onto your computer or leaving
them to pile up on your phone. We (the authors) have spent the last decade
immersed in digital photography and have witnessed first-hand the explosion of
creative possibilities for photographs. We’ve also learned a thing or two about
the challenges of preserving digital images so that they’ll last as long, if not
longer, than film photos.
Throughout this virtual volume, we will not only explain some best
practices for handling your digital photos and videos but also, in some cases,
recommend specific products and services. In all those cases, we have personally
tested the service in question. We decided to offer specific recommendations in
certain cases because those are more useful than general guidelines, although we
offer plenty of those as well. However, whenever you get specific in book form,
even e-book form, you run the risk that a product or service disappears during
publication or critical elements, such as pricing, change.
We have tried to insulate ourselves from this by steering clear of very
specific pricing information, offering ranges instead, but we can’t promise that
every price quoted or service mentioned in this book is still active while you’re
reading it. The free market can be a cruel mistress, after all.
This book is also the product of a website we created – your-digitallife.com – with the same mission, to educate people about enjoying and
preserving their digital memories. The website is updated regularly and is a
great resource for the latest news, information and videos. If you like what you
read here, you should enjoy the website as well!
Get Digital
The subtitle of this book is “ Enjoying and Preserving Your Digital
Photos and Videos.” We assume that you, like tens of millions of people, shoot
your photos with a digital camera (or smartphone). Yet many of us have boxes
and albums full of photo prints sitting in an attic or closet. In many cases, these
could be some of your most prized photographic possessions—images of longlost loved ones or great family memories. Because those photos aren’t digital,
you aren’t able to take advantage of the great services you’ll read about in the
following chapters.
So, before we embark on our digital adventure, we thought we’d help you
take those older, printed memories along for the ride. You can scan these
photos, creating digital files that you can then use to make products like photo
books or share digitally via email or Facebook. There are two basic ways to go
about this.
Scan them yourself: For under $200 you can purchase a high quality
photo scanner from companies such as Epson or HP. You could also spring for a
“ multifunction” printer that includes a built-in scanner (this would be our
choice, because it is more versatile).
Depending on the model you select, you can fit between four to six
standard photo prints per scan. That’s not a lot, particularly if you have a very
large photo print collection. However, high-speed scanners that can run through
dozens of images a minute cost over $1,000 and aren’t practical for home use,
unless you’re running a photo-scanning business out of your garage.
Scanning your own photo collection requires two things: time and
patience. It’s not technically difficult. You simply slap a photo into the scanner,
hit “ scan” and it will appear on your computer in a folder of your choosing. If
you want to get creative, you can use software typically provided with the
scanner to do some basic corrections to those images as well. More expensive
scanners can repair images automatically as you scan them in, saving you the
work.
The plus side to the do-it-yourself model is that it’s a fairly low cost way
to digitize your old photo prints. After the expense of the scanner, your only
other outlay is time. However, you may need hours, or even days, to scan your
way through a large photo collection. If you’re not very familiar with photo
editing software, repairing old or damaged photos may not be an easy task.
Let a professional do it: If spending hours on end feeding photos into a
scanner isn’t your idea of a fun weekend, you can have someone else do it for
you. Professional scanning services can accept boxes or even whole albums full
of photos and scan them for you. You’ll get your photos back along with a CD
or DVD of your digital files. Some services will even post the photos online, so
you can easily email them or order merchandize, such as calendars or photo
cards, using your older photos.
Scanning services will tend to cost more than simply buying your own
scanner and doing it yourself, but you’ll obviously save yourself the time and
effort. Many scanning services offer professional retouching as well, so the
images they’re digitizing appear better than the original.
There are a number of professional scanning services you can choose from.
All of them tackle a range of formats: your photo prints, negatives, slides, and
videos on VHS, MiniDV, Hi8, etc. Here are three national offerings that we
like:
Scan Digital: Each photo you send to Scan Digital is hand-scanned,
“ optimized” and reviewed by three technicians. You have a choice of receiving
your digital files on CD, DVD, hard drive or even in an SD memory card preloaded onto a digital photo frame. Images can also be stored in an online
archive. Pricing starts at $0.48 per image for loose photos or $0.68 for photos
inside of album pages.
ScanCafe: With a high quality scanning service, ScanCafe offers a lower
cost ($0.29 per photo and $0.69 for 35mm negatives) than ScanDigital for a
higher-resolution scan, but photo retouching/optimization isn’t included. They
offer photo-retouching for $7 a photo, or more, depending on the damage. You
can receive a free quote if you upload a sample of the damaged photo first.
PeggyBank: Photo scans at PeggyBank cost $0.45 and each scan is
uploaded to the company’s PeggyVault—an online storage service that can store
your scanned images, or movies, for free. Any image scanned to the vault can be
downloaded to your computer, for free, at anytime. You can also order a $20
DVD of your images or have files scanned to a USB flash drive. We think the
flash drive is a great option because they will generally last far longer than
DVDs, they’re not prone to scratching, are easier to store and far more likely to
be accessible on future computers. (Many computers, such as Apple’s Mac line,
no longer offer CD/DVD drives built-in).
Chapter One: Get Organized
Whether you take photographs on a digital camera or your smartphone (or
both), it’s amazing how rapidly your photos add up. In the old days (we won’t
exactly call them “ good”), it was costly to take photographs; you paid for film,
you paid to have the film developed and you paid for prints.
Today, thankfully, after you’ve bought the camera, the photos are free. So
it’s no surprise we take a lot of them. In fact, we take an estimated 380 billion
photos a year, according to a study from 1000memories.com. That’s a handful
and for many of us, it can be overwhelming. It’s all too easy to let photos sit
idly on a memory card, on our phones or in our computers when we get around
to transferring them.
Before you can take advantage of all the amazing options there are to do
with your images, you need to know where those images are. You need to get
organized.
Now, we know what you’re thinking: “ Organized? That sounds painful
— and dull.” To which we’d reply: so is brushing your teeth, but you still
have to do it.
The truth is, it’s fairly easy to organize your photos and once you get up
and running, very easy to maintain. In fact, there are five simple steps to follow
to help keep your photos and videos organized.
1. Make sure your camera’s date & time function is turned on and
accurate. This is important, because many of the tools you’ll use to organize
your digital photos and videos use the date/time information recorded by your
camera. If it’s incorrect – if you’re snapping December photos with a camera set
to June 10 – it can make images more difficult to find as you add hundreds upon
thousands more to your collection. For all you smartphone shooters out there,
good news: this is done for you automatically.
2. Get them off your camera’s memory card as soon as you can.
Whether you shoot a birthday party or a lazy day around the house, try to get
the photos off the card the same day, or at the longest, the same week as you
took them. Letting files build up on your memory card will only complicate
your efforts—it will create multiple folders on the card and make images harder
to track. Plus, if the card gets lost or damaged, you’ll lose more photos.
One solution that’s particularly helpful here is the Eye Fi wireless
memory card. This digital camera memory card instantly turns your camera (or
camcorder) into a wireless camera, allowing you to automatically upload photos
and videos to your desktop and to over two dozen photo or video websites.
Whenever your camera is turned on and in range of your wireless network, your
photos and videos transfer automatically into folders arranged on your computer
labeled with the date they were shot. You can configure the card to erase photos
after they’ve been transferred too, so almost all the work is done for you. The
one catch—if you have a lot of images or video, you’ll have to leave the camera
turned on to ensure all the files transfer, and that could be a few minutes or
more. Still, it automates the process of moving images off your card and onto
the computer.
Image credit - Eye-Fi
If you’re an iPhone user, iCloud does much the same thing. Whenever
you shoot a photo (but not a video), it will appear in your “ Photostream”
which is accessible via a folder on your computer. The catch is that once you’ve
reached 1,000 photos in the stream, it will begin to erase old ones to make way
for new images. The solution: simply go into your Photostream folder on your
computer and drag-and-drop those files into another folder. It’s a bit tedious, but
it’s better than losing those images.
Android users can take advantage of several apps, such as SugarSync,
which automatically upload photos to your computer so you don’t have to do it
manually. This app does more too — it syncs other documents and makes them
accessible from a variety of devices. Another good choice for Android owners
is Zoner Photo Studio for Android. The app will monitor your camera roll and
automatically upload new images to Zonerama.com, a secure, online cloud
service. Using Zoner Photo Studio desktop software, you can access all the
photos you've uploaded to Zonerama for editing, sharing and more.
However you choose to handle it, the key point is that you get in the
habit of routinely transferring images off your memory card as soon as humanly
possible. If you can automate that process, great. If not, carve out five minutes a
week to sit down at the computer and transfer your photos.
3. Use software, don’t drag-and-drop. If you’re a PC user and don’t
use the wireless/automated route described above, you may simply be opening
your memory card using Windows and dragging (or copying) your photo files
into your “ My Pictures” folder. Don’t. Using a software program to import and
organize your photos (and videos) is not only easier, but it includes more
sophisticated options for labeling and tagging your images, which will make
them easier to find in the future.
Using Zoner Photo Studio's "import" function not only lets you name
folders but also assign author and copyright information to images, have them
automatically rotated and more.
The other virtue of using software is that it can help you organize an
unruly collection of images. If you’re the kind of person that just lets your
photos build up in a mish-mash of poorly labeled folders, software like Zoner
Photo Studio can scour your computer and bring all those images into a single
interface so you can view, move and rename those images. Using photo software
can help you get organized and stay organized.
4. Tag and be specific. During the process of importing your images,
you’ll have the opportunity to create a folder for those images to be stored in.
Give that folder as specific a name as possible, including the event you
photographed, the month and the year. If your software program supports
tagging (and most, like Zoner, do), you should add tags to those images as
well.
Tagging is just another way to categorize your photos. So, for instance,
popular tags will be general terms like “ people” “ pets” “ vacations” and so on.
You can also create custom tags, so if you want to get more specific, say, by
using a person’s name, you could. By tagging your photos, you make them
easier to search; most programs will let you sort images by their tags. Rather
than scroll endlessly through a collection of photos, you can simply type in a
tag name and search a much smaller selection of images. And by the way, you
don’t have to tag photos individually, they can be done in batches or even
whole folders.
Zoner Photo Studio will also provide you with photo labels, a series of
color coded boxes you can assign to photos to help you find them later. You
can also assign a rank to each image (on a scale of one through five) for
additional sorting.
You can also “ geo-tag” your images, which means you can input where
you were when you took a particular photo or video. If you own a camera or
video camera with GPS built in, geo-tagging is done for you. It’s also done for
you on many smartphones, such as the iPhone, with GPS chips built in. Some
Eye Fi cards can also add geographical coordinates to your images. If you geotag your photo, you’ll have a permanent record of where you were when you
took a particular image. You’ll also be able to plot it out programs that support
GPS data, such as Zoner Photo Studio or Google Earth.
Image credit - Western Digital
5. Back them up. Once you’ve transferred and tagged your photos, you
should back them up. Yes, this isn’t technically “ organizing” them, but it’s so
important we thought we’d mention it now, just to prime the pump. Keeping
your photos organized is the critical first step to preserving your digital photos
so your great, great grandkids can enjoy them. But it’s not enough. You can’t
just store your photos on your computer’s hard drive and assume they’ll be
safe. That hard drive will fail and when it does, it may wipe out years of
precious digital memories. We’ll dive into protecting your images in chapter
seven. Just bear in mind, it’s important.
After your photos are transferred, organized and backed up, it’s time to
enjoy them.
Bonus step: seek professional help. If the above five steps sound too
daunting, or if you just have too little time on your hands to wrestle with a
disorganized photo collection (either your own or perhaps one you’ve inherited),
you can actually pay someone do to it for you. A “ personal photo organizer”
can come to your home, organize your prints and digital photos and get you
ready to move on to actually doing creative and enjoyable things with your
digital memories. They can teach you first-hand how to use photo software as
well as tackle image archiving, photo book making and more. You can find a
local organizer by visiting http://www.appo.org.
Chapter Two: Prints and Photo Books
For some of us, photography has never involved films or prints — it’s
always been pixels and screens. Others remember well when a photo was
something tangible — something to be held, hung and savored in the physical
world. While prints don’t occupy the same pride of place in the photographic
universe that they once did, they’re still a critical piece of your digital life.
Why? Well, we can think of four reasons:
1. Prints never crash. Unlike your hard drive, those prints won’t be
suddenly erased without warning. And while a hard drive crash is inevitable, it
usually takes an act of nature to permanently destroy a person’s photo prints.
2. Prints are never obsolete. Every last device that’s storing your digital
photo files today will be laughably obsolete in 50 years. The image files of
today— the JPEGs, TIFs, and the like—will surely be unreadable by the
devices of the future. Not a print. As long as your eyes work, you’ll be able to
relive that photographic memory, even in your flying car (suffice it to say, if
you’re operating a flying car, your eyes had better work).
3. Prints are long lasting. In addition to being forever readable, prints
can actually last for generations. Some home printer, ink and paper
combinations can create a print that, when properly stored, can last 200 years. If
you want to pass on photos to your great grandkid’s great grandkid, only a
print will do.
4. People like prints. Many people, not just older generations, like to
hold and handle a photo print, or would prefer to see them physically, in an
album, instead of on a lifeless computer monitor. We both have young children
and have seen much more enthusiasm when pictures are presented to them as
tangible objects rather than as images scrolling past on a computer screen or
tablet.
Prints: Many Different Kinds
Of course, to print out every last image you snap with your camera or
phone is unreasonable as well as expensive and time consuming. Instead, we
practice selective printing — identifying images that we must have for
generations and printing those — either at home or through a retail service.
For those of you that have neither the time nor the inclination to print
your selected favorite images at home, there are myriad options for turning your
pixels into paper as the venerable 4-x-6-inch print (along with other popular
sizes) lives on.
For online shoppers, the options are vast and easy to navigate as all the
national retail chains (Target, CVS, etc.) have photo sections on their websites,
offering various size print options at prices ranging from six cents per print on
up. Home delivery often comes at no additional charge and same day, in-store
pick-up at the particular chain’s location nearest to your home is usually an
option through a “ store locator” page on each site.
If actually visiting retail locations is more a part of your daily routine, the
self-serve photo kiosk functions much like a “ photo ATM”, dispensing images
instead of cash. These easy-to-use machines accept all manner of digital media
including all the major camera media card formats as well as flash drives.
Simply plugging your media of choice into the appropriate slot on the kiosk
begins the process and you’re in control from that point regarding what images
you select for printing and at what sizes. Photo book creation is also a big part
of the kiosk service mix as well.
One interesting trend we’re seeing is the ability to send images from your
phone to a retail location for print pick-up. CVS is one chain that has taken the
lead with this option (it’s a free app for Apple and Android smartphones) but
we’re certain the other major chains will soon follow suit here.
Image credit - Kodak
We’re also big fans of photo books
Photo books are basically the traditional photo album, only higher
quality and considerably more attractive. Photos are printed directly to the paper
and the book is bound like a traditional hardcover or paperback. The paper stock
can vary, but photo books — like photo prints — will last for years. Prices
range from under $10 for a soft-bound book on inexpensive paper to $100 plus
for a hard-bound volume on high quality paper stock.
Online photo services such as MailPix, Shutterfly and Snapfish have easy
to use tools for uploading images and laying out a photo book. The process can
be as simple or as complicated as you choose; if you want to add captions, edit
images and take a hands-on approach, you can. Otherwise, you can trust
algorithms and simply upload a batch of your photos and let a photo book
service place the images for you.
In addition to making a great gift, photo books are a nice way to print and
preserve your photos without creating individual prints. We know people who
make a photo book a month of that month’s favorite photos. If that’s too
expensive or creates too much clutter for your tastes, one photo book a year with
all the images you couldn’t live without is a great way to preserve your
memories.
Here are some print and photo book services we like.
This Is a Frame Up: How many times have you sent someone a print
only to have him stick it in a drawer or on the fridge because he/she never got
around to buying a frame for it? Now, thanks to “ This is A Frame Up” your
photos can be mailed in a “ pop-up” frame that fits in a flat envelope. When the
recipient opens the envelope, the frame pops open and is ready for display.
You can choose from a number of frame themes including baby, wedding,
graduation, theme park, cruise ship, holiday, sports and various others. The
“ This Is A Frame Up” package includes a mailing envelope and optional
greeting card and is available for 3 x 5, 4 x 6, 5 x 7, 6 x 8 and 8 x 10-inch
photos.
Pinhole Press Storybook: Like any product, there are inexpensive photo
books and high-end photo books. The Storybook is the latter, a classy,
contemporary take on a photo book (it’s the photo book of choice for Martha
Stewart). What sets the books apart is the paper stock (for the technically
inclined, it’s 100-percent recycled Mohawk Options Smooth i-Tone Panoramic
paper). The books can lay completely flat too; the pages won’t curl up or turn
over on you.
You upload your photos to the Pinhole Press site and you can personalize
each page with text and layout templates. Of course, it all comes with a price. A
20-page book will cost around $45.
MyPhotoCreations: Attend a wedding and chances are you’ll have a sea of
flashes going off through the ceremony and reception. These, mostly amateur,
shutterbugs are compiling an alternate history of your event that professional
photographers can’t always recreate. Rather than let these images sit in the
inbox, a service called MyPhotoCreations can help you transform those pictures
into a professional wedding album.
MyPhotoCreations will mail you a storage box and some design software
that lets you lay out and create your album using photos on your computer.
When you’re happy with your album, upload those files back to
MyPhotoCreations, wait a few days, and you’ll get a professional, high quality
wedding album returned to you in the mail.
All the photos you send to MyPhotoCreations are color corrected, and
you’ll have the option to share the album online (free of charge). There are three
kits to choose from, with prices starting at around $260.
Krome Photo Books: While photo books are a great product, the process
of making them can be a bit demanding, if not intimidating, at least for some of
us. Krome Photo Books nicely streamlines the process by removing most of the
customization features found on other photo book making sites (i.e. the adding
of captions, choosing layouts or cropping and editing photos to properly place
them within the dimensions of a photo book page). You simply upload your
photos and wait for Krome Books to send you a digital preview of a finished
book. In other words, you won’t be cropping, resizing, adding captions, etc.
You’ll leave that up to Krome’s professional design team.
Of course, you’ll get to give the final thumbs up on the finished product
so you won’t be in for any nasty surprises when the process is done. The
Krome Photo Book starts at $46, considerably more expensive than some other
solutions but then again, you’re paying for someone else to do the work for
you.
Blurb: Blurb is one of the premier self-publishing websites and while it
offers traditional photo books, we particularly like its Facebook offering, dubbed
Book Flow. It is a Facebook app that can turn images you’ve stored on a
Facebook account into a photo book, automatically.
The “ flow” doesn’t just sweep up your photos—comments and captions
associated with those images are also incorporated into the pages around each
image. Photos are automatically enhanced so that they look better on the printed
page. If you want to get more hands-on, you can customize the book yourself.
The finished product can be produced for as little as $11 for a 7 x 7-inch square
format book.
Image credit - Blurb
Print Your Own Coloring Book
There is more to a photo print than simply reproducing your image.
Thanks to photo software, you can print images creatively by adding filters and
borders. One project we’re big fans of is turning photos into coloring book
pages to entertain the kids.
Kids love coloring books (as the pile of half-used ones under our feet
attest) and they love looking at photos of themselves or friends and family. You
can combine these two passions quite simply. Here’s how:
Zoner It: You can create your pages using photo editing software
like Zoner Photo Studio. When you've found the image you'd like to use,
simply open it in the editor and select "pencil sketch" from the "effects" dropdown menu. Your photo is instantly rendered into a pencil-style drawing. Using
the "thickness" slider you can adjust how dark you'd like the outlines to appear.
There's no hard-and-fast rule for how thick the lines need to be, so experiment
until you find the thickness that works best for your photo (Photo Studio lets
you adjust thickness on scale from 0-100 so you have a lot control over the final
image).
When you’re ready to print, be sure that you use plain paper, not a glossy
photo paper, and give the print at least five minutes to dry completely before
handing it over to eager children.
Image credit - Zoner
There’s another very simple and kid friendly way to do it via Crayola’s
Lights, Camera, Color web application. The site allows you to upload an image
and convert it into a sketch. You can save that sketch to your computer to print
it out. The catch: to print, you’ll need to enter in a code from Crayola (it’s on
select boxes of their crayons).
Another alternative, if you’re artistically inclined, is to draw your own
design and scan it into your computer. Better still—have your kids draw their
own sketches, scan those in, and print out as many copies as you like.
Chapter Three: Wall Art
Of all the cool things there are to do with your digital images, turning
them into wall art is probably our favorite.
Ancient alchemists were prized for their ability to turn ordinary metals
into gold. Today, there are a number of digital alchemists who promise to turn
your digital photos not into gold, per-se, but into a range of exotic materials
like aluminum, bamboo, glass or acrylic. In short, they promise to turn your
photos into eye-popping pieces of wall art. And unlike the alchemists of old,
these in the digital age aren’t frauds or wizards.
What is Personal Wall Art?
There’s no hard-and-fast definition for what constitutes a piece of
photographic wall art. For our purposes, we’re talking about services that will
print your photos onto a unique material, such as canvas, glass, mirrors, acrylic,
aluminum, or bamboo. In general, these prints are large in size (upwards of 20inches wide or larger) and ideally are hung on the mantle or prominently
displayed on a wall. These can be ordered online, using photos you’ve snapped
on your own. Portrait studios, wedding and other professional photographers are
also offering the option to have their images (of you) turned into wall art.
Why Would You Want That?
Well, for one, it looks unique. Slapping a photo into a frame and a frame
onto a wall is a well-honored tradition—and we have nothing against it—but
sometimes it’s nice to do things differently. Whether you’re passionate about
your photography or passionate about a particular picture (say of your family at
their happiest), turning your photo into a piece of wall art delivers dramatic pop
to any room. Depending on the material you choose, you can achieve a range of
styles to suit your temperament; from a refined print on canvas to a sparkling,
ultra-modern print on metal.
What Do You Need to Make Photo Wall Art?
Two things. First, you’ll need a high-resolution digital photo, the higher
resolution (i.e. the larger the file size) the better. The services that produce wall
art can tell you if your photo file is large enough to make a good print, so don’t
worry if you’re not sure about the resolution of your photograph. Generally,
though, you should try to avoid using photos snapped with a smartphone,
especially if you’re looking to enlarge the photo above 12 inches as the quality
of those camera phone photos will degrade sharply as you enlarge them.
Second, you’ll need a spot to hang it. Sounds obvious, but you’ll need
to put a bit of thought into this as you don’t want to expose your piece of art to
direct sunlight for prolonged periods of time, lest it fade. In general, wall art
will resist fading longer than a plain old photo print, but given the investment
it’s better to minimize the amount of sun-bathing it does.
There is an exception to this, however, and that’s photos printed onto
glass. In this case, you may want to have light pass through it to provide a kind
of natural back-lighting effect. Photos on glass can be framed and hung on a wall
of course, but smaller sized photos can be mounted in a stand on a counter or
mantle to let the light pass through. These smaller glass prints are less
expensive, so even if some fading does occur, it’s not a huge expense to replace
them over time.
While the sun does pose fading concerns (as it does for any photo print)
many wall art materials are far more robust than photo paper. Metal prints tend
to be scratch and water resistant, so they can be hung in places (like bathrooms)
with high humidity or within reach of the pawing hands of young children.
What Materials Can You Print To?
Image credit - Canvas Press
The short answer is almost anything you can imagine. Some of the more
exotic surfaces include aluminum, glass, acrylic, and mirrors. You can also print
to tapestries, Kirei boards, even wallpaper!
One thing to keep in mind when evaluating your choices is the difference
between printing and mounting. Some printers will produce a photo print on
paper and then mount, or adhere, that print to a surface like bamboo. They may
call it a “ bamboo print” but it’s really a photo print stuck on a bamboo surface.
Mounted prints can look very attractive, but they look more like traditional
photo prints and don’t have the unique characteristics of photos printed directly
to a surface.
What Does Photo Wall Art Cost?
Cost typically rests on three factors—the kind of materials used; the size
of your print; and framing options. Of course, it’s going to cost more to print a
photo on an exotic material like aluminum than it is to print the same sized
photo on paper.
Framing is another consideration: some wall art products can be mounted
directly to your wall, others, like glass-based products, may require a frame to
be displayed securely. Frames can add $10 or more to the final cost.
Many online wall art printers won’t list pricing, or make it a bit difficult
to discover what the final price is without first uploading an image. (Don’t
worry though, you will be able to determine the final price well before being
locked into an order.) This is more common for those looking for exotic prints,
which are often produced by professional labs or commercial printers who work
mostly with other businesses, not consumers. Prices for canvas-based wall art
are more readily available.
If we take a 20 x 20-inch photo, you can expect to pay above $120 for an
acrylic print, upwards of $70 for an aluminum print, roughly $90 for canvas, and
closer to $200 for that photo on a mirror. Prices don’t include shipping or
framing options, so they’re on the lower-end of the spectrum.
What You Need to Look For When Ordering
There are two important factors to research in advance of choosing a wall
art provider. First, is there a warranty, or some form of guarantee, against either
fading or damage? Photo wall art can be quite expensive and it’s nice to know
your provider will stand behind the work.
Second, will it arrive fully assembled and ready to hang, or will you have
to do any additional work before you hang the piece? Most services will deliver
wall prints that are ready to hang, but it’s best to ensure you know what the
final product looks like so you’re not stuck trying to frame a huge piece of
aluminum.
Some Wall Art Options We Like
Gallery Direct: Gallery Direct provides several custom printing options
including prints on canvas, aluminum and acrylic, but they also offer something
unique—mirror prints. These mirror photos aren’t the best choice for a portrait
photo; they are too disorienting. However, they are a great option for artistic
shots or landscapes, with or without people.
Unframed mirror prints are available starting just under $200 for a 21 x
17-inch mirror up to an XL size (48 x 36-inch) for under $700. Small aluminum
prints (18 x 14-inch) start at $128 and are available in three different framing
styles (suspended, floated and tiered). Acrylic is the most expensive option of
the bunch, as a small (18 x 14-inch) print starts at around $320.
Aluminyze: This company will put your image on a lightweight but hard
sheet of aluminum using a special technology that actually infuses the image
right into the body of the aluminum. A translucent coating is also placed over
the image, and you can order an easel stand built into the back of the sheet so
you can display the finished piece anywhere. The aluminum is extremely
durable and the outer coating protects the image from fading due to sunlight as
well as any liquids that might accidentally hit the surface of the print.
The print we ordered was delivered in three days, packed in a hard
cardboard box, with the aluminized image wrapped in several layers of bubble
wrap, so it was well protected. The subject in our print truly popped out of the
background and the colors were vibrantly reproduced.
An 8×10 can be had for around $25, although you can get prints in larger
sizes too.
ChromaLuxe: The ChromaLuxe Connections are a series of aluminum
photo panels grouped together to create a unique finished image for the home or
office wall. The panels are available in an array of sizes and can be arranged in a
variety of configurations using multiple photos, or a single image that is
divided across the group of panels to form a unified piece of wall art.
ChromaLuxe offers a variety of panel sizes within their Connections
gallery from 6 x 6-inch up to 24 x 26-inches. This one can get fairly expensive,
as you’ll be combining several panels together to make one mural; so pricing
will vary depending on the number of panels you go with as well as the sizes
you choose, but the final product will be a conversation starter hanging on your
living room wall.
Image credit - FractureMe
FractureMe Looking for prints on glass? FractureMe—though it sounds
painful—offers a unique print-on-glass service that produces stunning results at
very affordable prices. Your images are printed directly to glass and mounted on
a sturdy foam backing so you can safely hang it on a wall.
The FractureMe.com site also offers a variety of borders you can add to
the image or you can simply request a borderless option. A variety of shapes
such as landscape, square, and portrait are available in sizes from 5 x 7-inch,
priced at $8 on up to an 11 x 14-inch that costs $25.
Nations Photo Lab Gallery Blocks: Nations Photo Lab produces solid
wood Gallery Blocks that can be arranged in various configurations with
multiple images to create a three-dimensional piece of art. Using special wood
and laminated photographic paper, each Gallery Block looks as though it is
literally floating above your choice of backgrounds.
A quick download of the site’s software allows you to upload your
images and play around with a variety of possible layouts. Their preview feature
of the finished product needs improvement as you aren’t afforded a great look at
your finished “ block” but trust us, the final results are beautiful and easy to
achieve.
All About Canvas
Image credit - HP
If aluminum and other materials sound too exotic for your taste, canvas
prints are a great way to channel some of your artistic aesthetic. In fact, canvas
prints are probably the most popular wall art option going these days. Since
antiquity, we’ve associated “ canvas” with “ art” and even if you don’t think
your photographic skills merit such a weighty term, printing your photos on
canvas lends a certain gravitas.
Size and Price
A canvas print can be ordered in sizes usually starting at 8 x 10-inches up
to 40 x 60-inches. You can make a larger print by creating “ blocks”—i.e. a
single photo divided into three or more distinct prints (you can produce this
“ block” effect with smaller-sized prints as well).
The size of your canvas print will be determined by your photo’s
resolution. If you have a high-resolution digital camera (one that snaps about 7megapixels photos or higher), you should be able to order a larger canvas print
in the 30 x 40-inch range. If you have an older digital camera with a lower
resolution, or an older smartphone, you’ll be limited to smaller sizes.
The size of your canvas print will determine its price, with larger prints
naturally costing more. But there’s more to the price than print size, such as
whether you order the print in “ rolled” or “ framed” format.
Rolled vs. Framed or Stretched
Image credit - www.favillephoto.com
A “ rolled” canvas is a photo print that’s not stretched out over, or placed
beneath, a frame. Instead, it’s simply rolled up like a scroll. It’s less expensive
to order a rolled canvas print, since the printer won’t have to stretch and frame
the canvas himself. But that means you’ll have to handle that job yourself. A
“ stretched” canvas is a print that’s flattened out and anchored around a wooden
frame. You can still frame a stretched canvas, as it is usually wrapped over a
wooden frame, obscuring it from view.
Where Can You Make a Canvas Print?
Unlike prints on aluminum or other exotic materials, canvas prints are
available at a much wider assortment of retail outlets, both physical and online.
This can range from mass market chains like Walmart to specialty printers like
Canvas Pop, Jondo, and Best Canvas.
Specialty services are a bit pricier but offer a much wider selection and
greater options when it comes to framing and presentation. Specialty canvas
printers can also do things such as photo retouching or creative editing that
mass merchants can’t, or won’t, do. These edits and retouches will give your
canvas a unique look or fix small imperfections in your photo before it gets
blown up to wall art dimensions.
Can You Make Your Own Canvas Print?
Image credit - Kodak
Printing on something like glass is daunting and no home printer can
handle it, but canvas is simply another form of paper and some home inkjet
printers can print to canvas paper stocks.
Canvas paper is sold in both sheet and roll forms, but you can’t just drop
some canvas sheets into any inkjet printer and expect good results. Canvas
paper is thicker than your average photo paper and could get stuck in your home
printer. Most printers will indicate in their specifications what paper thickness
they can handle, and all papers will tell you how thick they are. The easiest way
to ensure you don’t cram the wrong sized canvas paper into your printer is to
consult the manufacturer’s website for that specific model. There will usually be
a list of possible papers it accepts on the site. If you see a canvas option among
them, buy that particular paper since it’s guaranteed to work with your specific
printer model.
Companies such as Epson and specialty brands such as BF Inkjet and
Hahnemuhle, offer canvas papers for just such at-home printers. After you’ve
printed your photo onto canvas paper, you can stretch it out yourself or bring it
to a framer for the assist. Obviously when you make your own canvas print on
an inkjet photo printer, you’re going to be limited in size.
How Long Will a Canvas Print Last?
If you’re spending $100 or more on an over-the-mantel piece of photo art,
you should rightly expect it to last for decades. Unfortunately, there’s no easy
way to tell upfront how long the print will last. Every print process is different
as different services use different printers, ink and paper, and every home
environment is different. If you’re hanging your print in direct sunlight, it’s
going to fade faster than a print hanging in a shadier location.
That said, there are some things to look for to ensure a longer-lasting
print. First, make sure it’s coated or laminated. An uncoated print will fade
faster. Second, particularly if you’re doing it yourself, check to see if Wilhelm
Research has produced any studies on the paper you’re using. Wilhelm
Research, one of the foremost authorities on print longevity, does extensive
testing on a number of printers, papers and ink, including many canvas papers.
If you see your paper, ink and printer combo listed, you can see how well it will
hold up over the long term.
Any Downsides to Canvas Prints?
You may think that because it’s a digital print process, your canvas photo
print will be reproduced perfectly but printing photos on canvas is often a bit of
an art in itself. Colors may not reproduce perfectly, although this holds true for
printing onto any style of paper. Given the expense, especially for larger print
sizes, be sure to check for return and warranty policies before you order.
Image credit - Snap Art
Some Canvas Services We Like
Jondo: If you want to give your photos that high-touch artistic look we
think the canvas prints offered up by Jondo are the best we’ve seen.
You have two primary finishing options. The canvas can simply be
stretched and framed to your specifications, or it can be Gallery Wrapped,
stretching the canvas over a wooden frame so that the edges of the material are
drawn around it. Prices start at roughly $36 for a 12 x 16-inch print and you can
order up to a 30 x 40-inch print.
MailPix: In addition to a very large selection of canvas prints, MailPix
offers very attractive pricing on their canvas products. You'll find options to
produce square prints (a great option for Instagrammers) in addition to
panoramic and standard photo dimensions.
HP Faux Canvas: While canvas prints are gorgeous conversation pieces,
they can get pricey. If you like the look but don’t want to shell out for the real
thing, HP offers a “ Faux Canvas” that mimics the look and feel of canvas
without the cost and the weight of a true canvas.
We tested this service (at a Walmart) and were pleasantly surprised by the
quality. It’s not a true canvas, but we paid $20 for an 11 x 14-inch print that
looks quite like the real thing. The ordering process is easy—we purchased ours
at a kiosk but it can also be ordered online. Larger sizes, such as 12 x 12-inch
or 16 x 20-inch are available for under $30.
Cheap Oil Painting: A number of software filters on our phones or
computers promise to transform your regular digital photos into oil paintings,
but those images remain virtual creations. You could print them at home, but
it’s tougher to replicate that true oil painting look on your home printer, even
using canvas paper. The service CheapOilPainting promises to make that
transformation real.
You simply submit a photo and the service will hand-paint that image
using oil paints onto a canvas. There are several online services that can give
your photos the look of a hand-crafted oil painting but, unlike
CheapOilPainting, they achieve the look using software, CheapOilPainting
takes retro to a whole new level.
Sizes on CheapOilPainting range from 12 inches to 60-inches wide with
prices starting at about $140 (remember, someone is creating this by hand).
These paintings can be delivered unframed, in a rolled tube, stretched in a
wooden frame (for an extra $30) or delivered as an edgeless gallery wrap for an
extra $50. There is also a selection of high-end frames from which you can
choose.
Paint-a-Pic: If you like the idea of a hand-printed reproduction of your
photo, but don’t necessarily want someone else’s hand doing the painting, a
service called Paint-a-Pic transforms your photos into a large (12 x 16-inch),
blank, paint-by-numbers canvas. You, then, get to paint it in yourself with a set
of paints (up to 24 colors, based on your photo) that the company delivers with
your blank canvas. You’ll also get two brushes and an enlarged 24 x 32-inch
print of the unpainted canvas for reference.
Then, it’s up to you and your painting skills (or, rather, your number-
reading skills). The service costs $40 per photo. Personally, while we wouldn’t
necessarily recommend this for creating a mantle-worthy canvas (unless your
artistic skills are exceptional), we did find it to be a great activity for children’s
photos.
CanvasPop: It’s safe to say that Instagram has taken the photo world by
storm. This app, with its vintage filters, makes it easy to snap and share images
but they’ve mostly been confined to the virtual world.
CanvasPop, a fine art printer, can transform your Instagram pics into a
canvas print. You can create a 12 x 12-inch Instagram canvas for about $40 or a
20 x 20-inch for around $60. You can go larger if you want, but then you’d
need to step outside the customary Instagram ordering process and upload an
original file from your iPhone to CanvasPop. There is a 100% money back
guarantee so that should provide some reassurance.
Incidentally, CanvasPop can produce traditional—and great looking—
photo canvas prints as well.
Chapter Four: Your Photos On… Anything!
Science is a wonderful thing; it has allowed us to unlock miracle drugs,
create industries and, best of all, figure out ways to put photographs on just
about anything. The range of products capable of displaying your images has
grown exponentially, while the cost of doing so has dropped. The bottom line
—you can personalize a greater range of objects, from household items like
mugs and notepads to more luxurious goods like purses and upholstery.
Rather than scroll through images on a computer or smartphone display,
you can bring them into your everyday life by slapping them onto everyday
items. The list includes:
Personalized photo notebooks: Whether it’s for back-to-school or just to
spruce up the daily to-do list, personalized photo notebooks are an inexpensive
way to bring a cherished image from the virtual to the real world. Services like
Snapily not only imprint photos onto notebooks but can render them in 3D, so
the image “ pops” as the book cover is tilted. The notebook can be further
personalized with text and background designs. Prices start at around $10 for a
5.5 x 8.5-inch notebook with 75 sheets of lined paper.
Image credit - Horizon Worldwide
Photo Bags, Purses and Totes: E-book readers and tablets haven’t (yet)
made the good ol’ fashion book bag obsolete. You can create a photo back pack
that will display a large image on the back of the bag (but please, for wedgie-free
schooling, no baby pics allowed).
For adults, photo tote bags, purses and messenger bags are also available
from companies like SnapTote. These items aren’t cheap, most bags start close
to $100, but they are sturdy and guaranteed to turn heads. Braggables also offers
several unique photo-themed accessories although, unlike SnapTote, the images
aren’t infused into the fabric of the bag but are showcased through transparent,
stitched-in photo frames (dubbed “ photo windows”). The nice thing about the
photo window approach is that it allows you to inexpensively swap out photos
as you tire of them (or if you want to go seasonal). Prices range from just under
$30 to around $70, depending on size and style.
Photos can also be applied to gift bags. The aptly named service Picture
Gift Bags can deliver a personalized bag for any occasion (although it will crimp
the style of those of us who “ re-gift” the bland, standard gift bags—you know
who you are). The Picture Gift Bags program features hundreds of templates
with over 5,000 possible design combinations and an infinite number of
possibilities when you create your own product from your personal photo
collection. The bags are available in four sizes consisting of small, medium,
large and wine, which are sure to accommodate just about all of your gifting
needs. Prices are in the $6 per-bag range.
Photo Pencil Holder: Sure, many of us spend our days hammering away
at a keyboard (or texting) and not scribbling away with a pencil, but pens and
pencils still need a place to call home. Photo pencil holders are great for office
dwellers. These products usually integrate a small photo frame into a wooden
pen holder, so photos can be easily swapped as needed. We like the offering
from RitzPix which features an elegant wood design which can display a 4.25 x
4.25-inch photo. It costs roughly $30.
You could also just make a photo mug explicitly for this purpose as
they’re cheaper, usually around $10-$15.
Image credit - Ritz
Photo Mouse Pad: Another staple of our modern, computer-centric life—
the mouse pad—can also be personalized. Starting at $8 from Walmart, you can
create your own photo mouse pad with just a few mouse clicks (oh, the irony).
Also check out ArtsCow for some different shapes including circular and heartshaped pads. Both services print your image directly onto the fabric itself, so the
reproduction won’t be as sharp as a traditional photo print.
If you don’t want a photo imprinted permanently into the pad, you can
purchase mouse pads with vinyl pockets that can display photo prints. The
benefit here is both a sharper quality image and the ability to change out images
as newer ones strike your fancy. Plus, the vinyl pocket protects photos from the
inevitable wear and fading that occurs on pads that have the images printed
directly on the fabric.
Photo Sculptures: While we’re used to thinking of printing as a two
dimensional process, it’s actually possible to print 3D objects. Sculpteo, a
French-based service, can turn your photo into a three dimensional sculpture.
You upload a couple of images (full frontal/profile), choose a specific
figurine style, add a few accessories and submit your order. Shipping takes a
little over a week and from what we’ve seen they do a terrific job with the
likenesses. Prices start at around $75 and figurine sizes range from around three
to 10 inches. While you won’t be memorializing yourself in Roman Empireesque vanity statuary, you will be an action figure (or Barbie doll).
Lenticular Prints: If photo sculptures sound a bit too grandiose for your
taste, you can always create lenticular images. These are photos that appear to
move as your perspective changes. You see this technique frequently in posters
and “ tilt cards” that kids collect. Tracer Imaging can take three separate photos
and merge them into a single lenticular image. This is ideal for any sequence of
photos (think: children running during a game, swinging a bat or swinging on a
swing). Prints are available in two sizes: 3.5 x 5-inch, and 5 x 7-inch sizes
priced at around $5 to$7 per print. The company recently sold this technology
to Target and the service to create these unique prints is now available at
http://targetphoto.tracerpix.com.
If you don’t have three photos that would work in a nice sequence, the
service can also transform 45 frames of video into a print or they can take a
single photo and create a “ zoom effect” in which a portion of the image is
magnified as you tilt the photo.
Photo Rugs: No one wants to be walked on… but if you do, your photos
can also be printed on a rug. Not the wall-to-wall kind, mind you, but a service
called Vision Bedding has a selection of personalized rugs starting at 20 x 30
inches for $49 up to a 48 x 72-inch rug for $159.
Vision Bedding can also slap a photo onto bedding, pillows, tapestries
and animal bedding as well. They’re machine washable too, so your images
should stay pristine through the wear and tear of normal use. This may not be
the ideal showcase for photos of people (kind of odd to sleep with your face on a
photo pillow featuring another person’s face—or maybe not, if it’s of someone
with whom you want to snuggle) but it’s great for nature and art photographs.
Photo Luggage Tags: Anyone who travels is familiar with the post-flight
ritual of searching desperately for your bags among a sea of similar-looking
luggage rolling around the conveyor belt. You could, of course, tie some gaudy
ribbon around your luggage, but why not mark it with a better identifier; photo
luggage tags? Photo luggage tags usually cost around $7 each and are printed
and encased in a durable plastic shell with a hole for hooking the tag to your
luggage. Snappy Photo Gifts offers a variety of photo luggage tags starting at
under $8. Also check out the aptly-named Your Bag Tag for a selection of
custom and photo luggage tags.
Chapter Five: Digital Sharing and Social Networking
While turning pixels into physical objects is a great way to cherish your
photos, millions of images never materialize into the real world. Instead, they’re
passed around via email, posted to Facebook walls, viewed in Instagram
streams or scrolled through on tablets, digital frames and smartphones. Digital
photos and videos are pouring in on us from all directions, but fortunately, there
have never been more products and services to help us manage this digital flood.
Social Networks
Chances are you’ve heard of Facebook. Chances are, you’re on Facebook.
Perhaps you’re even secretly addicted to Facebook. Whatever the extent of your
relationship with the world’s largest social network, there’s no question that
Facebook’s rise to global prominence is due in no small part to the ease with
which it helps us share our digital photos and videos. Facebook is now home to
the largest photo collection on Earth and the number of images uploaded to the
company’s servers grows exponentially every day.
Of course, Facebook isn’t the only game in town. There’s Google+,
Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest; even MySpace is making a comeback of sorts.
While social networks are a great way of sharing photos, there are some
important aspects to them that many people may not realize.
Social networks aren’t a place to store your photos for the long term:
Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are communications platforms, not online
storage services. They are not in the business of keeping your photos for you.
Nor, frankly, should you trust them. Why is that?
Social networks own your photos: Oh, you thought those were your
family photos? Not if they’re on Facebook. Once you have an account with the
service, you grant ownership rights or a license to use those images (such as in
ads) to Facebook. You still retain a copyright on the image and if you delete
your account, Facebook won’t claim a right to them, but while they’re on the
company’s servers they’re not fully yours. Other social networks make similar
claims on your images. In practical terms, this lack of ownership is likely not
going to materially harm you or even inconvenience you, but if you’re the type
of person that cares about such matters, it’s good to know.
Do More With Your Facebook Photos
There’s more to do with Facebook photos than just viewing and tagging
them. Just as there’s a universe of apps on smartphones for your images,
Facebook hosts its own selection of photo apps that will help you preserve
some of your more treasured Facebook images in physical form or do interesting
things with them while they’re virtual.
We’ve reviewed a number of them and think these are worth your time:
LifeBlinx: LifeBlinx promises to transform your Facebook photo
collection into a good old fashioned scrapbook. The app connects to your
Facebook accounts and pulls your photos into a scrapbook template. You can
choose which photos, comments and statuses go into the final book and the app
will arrange those items in chronological order in the book. You’ll get a
preview PDF to review before you buy.
DHL’s “ Social Memories”: Another quick way to transform your
Facebook images into tangible, long-lasting photo books is with DHL’s Social
Memories Facebook app. The “ Social Memories” application studies your
Facebook data—your statuses, photos, most active friends, most commonly
used words—and creates a book full of those photos and of infographics
highlighting your online activity.
The book is 28 pages and bound with a hard cover. You can customize
the colors, choose a time frame to be covered as well as choose which photos
can be included (or excluded). For the app to work, you’ll need to have
uploaded a minimum of ten photos to Facebook and have been somewhat active
as far as status updates and commenting activity goes.
Due to privacy concerns, you can only order a Social Memories book
from your own profile. You can, however, give a voucher as a gift so the
recipient can make his or her own.
Image credit - DHL
Fotobabble: A picture, as the old saying goes, is worth a thousand words.
Fotobabble makes this literally true: its technology lets you put audio captions
on photos you upload to Facebook. You can also make an entire talking-photo
slideshow if you wish. The app is available free for use with Facebook. There’s
also a free app for iPhones.
Print Facebook Photos from Retailers: Many of your favorite local
retailers (CVS, Walmart, Walgreens, Target etc.) offer Facebook apps that allow
you to order prints from your Facebook images and pick them up in store—
sometimes in as little as an hour.
How to Keep Your Photos Private in a Digital Age
While Facebook has liberated the exhibitionists among us, it has also
generated a good deal of discomfort for those want to participate in growing
online communities but who worry about their privacy.
There’s a basic truth that governs any free online service—Facebook,
Twitter, Google, and the like: if something costs money, it’s the product. If
something is free, you’re the product. Facebook and other social networks exist
for one purpose only—to gather as much information about you as they can and
sell that information to the highest bidder. They have a very explicit incentive
to strip you (with your consent, of course) of your privacy. The photos you’re
dumping into Facebook are one way they learn about you.
What many people don’t always recognize is that photos say a lot more
about you than what’s in their visible contents. Buried in the data of those
photos you’re posting online is something called “ metadata.” This metadata
provides information like the type of camera you used, the time you took your
photo and other camera settings. If you use a smartphone or a camera with a
built-in GPS, chances are this metadata contains the location where the photo
was taken, too.
Taken together, this metadata presents a hidden but important record of
your location and activities. For most (usually all) of your online audience, this
information is either irrelevant or benign. But if you have concerns about
predators, stalkers or assorted creeps, this information is exploitable.
However, while there are legitimate concerns about posting your images
online, we don’t want to sound overly alarmist here. The chances that any
single image you post online will be stolen or used in a manner you don’t
approve of are vanishingly small, but it has happened.
Nonetheless, here are some suggestions to help ensure your digital
privacy.
1. Don’t put them online: We know, we know—what kind of advice is
that? But the truth is, once you’ve uploaded your images to a third party’s
servers, no matter how reputable, they’re at risk. If you’re very concerned about
your privacy, then emailing images directly to those whom you wish to view
your photos is ultimately the best way to share them. Any image uploaded to
the Internet is fundamentally out of your control, forever. Use proper discretion
before uploading.
2. When you do put them online, read the fine print: Chances are,
you’re not going to heed point one (and that’s fine, we’re not offended). But
when you do select a website to upload photos to, be sure to read the fine print
(okay, you’re probably going to ignore this too, but hear us out). Yes, it’s
tedious, awful lawyer-speak, but it contains important information about how
your photos are treated and what rights you have should you feel your privacy
has been violated. It will also indicate—often, again, in lawyer-ese—whether a
particular service claims ownership of your images for use in arenas such as
advertising. Odds are slim that you’d ever appear in an ad, but if you’re
adamant about not being used to hawk something, read the fine print.
If you can’t bear to read the terms yourself, our website Your-DigitalLife.com, collects terms of services from photo-centric websites and distills the
critical facts for you.
3. Disable Geo-Tags: Geo-tags are pieces of information inside your
photograph that tell people where you were when you snapped the picture.
Combined with time and date stamps, geo-tags can help snoopers discover
where you live and your daily patterns. If you shoot a lot of photos with a
smartphone, like the iPhone or an Android phone, geotags are automatically
added to your images. Eye Fi memory cards can also add geographical
coordinates to images and some cameras offer built-in GPS chips for geo-tagging
purposes. In all three cases, you’ll have the option to disable geo-tagging if
privacy is a concern.
Image credit - Apple
While you probably don’t want to disable geo-tags for your big European
vacation, it’s a good idea to disable them if you’re shooting around the house
or in your neighborhood. Alternatively, you can strip the location data from
your photos before posting them online. An app called deGeo does just that.
4. Strip the metadata from your photo before you post it online: A
more comprehensive solution than just purging GPS data from your images is
removing all the metadata from your images before uploading them. Free
software such as JNG will do this for you, ensuring that the photos you upload
to Facebook and other social networking sites will have no identifying markers
hidden in them (besides, of course, your beautiful face).
5. Remember your audience: Depending on your photo-sharing site of
choice, you may be posting images for public consumption or on invite-only
galleries. If you’re sending them to Facebook, your friends will see them and if
your privacy settings aren’t set to maximize your privacy, there’s a chance
others can see those images as well. So, common sense rules—if there are
people out there that hold a grudge or are of questionable ethics (none of your
friends, of course) keep galleries private and keep the photos off Facebook.
The social network Google+, while not as popular as Facebook, does a
much better job of distinguishing among various groups of people in a given
social network. It allows you to group people into “ circles” (friends, family,
coworkers, or acquaintances). As you add photos to Google+, you can designate
which circle gets to see the photos. (Google is not necessarily more ethical with
its own terms of service however.)
Digital Frames
Digital frames have lost a bit of their wow factor now that tablets like the
iPad have become so popular. But a digital frame still has something to
recommend itself and millions fly off store shelves around the holidays.
Image credit - Sony
There are a few good reasons to consider a digital frame. First, it can store
thousands of photos. What’s more, frames that connect to the Internet can
display photo streams from sites like National Geographic or Facebook, so you
can spruce up your living room with more than the family photo album (not
that the fam is not worth looking at, of course). Unlike a tablet, it won’t get
fingerprints on it and can serve as long-term decor in a room. In fact, while
tablets are certainly catchy, there are plenty of digital frames with very elegant or
modern designs that work well to accent a room.
If you’re looking for a frame, here are some things to keep in mind:
Size Matters: Despite what we might tell ourselves, size does, indeed,
matter—at least when it comes to digital frames. There’s no point in buying a
frame only to have to stand up close to it to view the images. Frames that are
10 inches or bigger are large enough to see across an average room without any
trouble. You can get away with a smaller, 8-inch frame in a bedroom or tighter
quarters, but 10 inches or larger is preferred.
Resolution: The resolution of a frame refers to how many pixels it will
display. The more pixels, the higher the image quality. When looking at frame
resolution, it’s important to keep in mind that frame resolutions are impacted
by the overall size of the screen. So if you have a 10-inch screen that offers a
resolution of 800 x 600 and an 8-inch screen with the same resolution, photos
on the 8-inch screen will be slightly sharper, because you’ve packed more pixels
into a tighter space.
Avoid Widescreen (If You Can): Digital frames come in various screen
sizes but only two basic aspect ratios: 16:9 (or “ widescreen”) and 4:3. When
shopping for an HDTV, you want widescreen because it mimics the dimensions
of a movie. But for digital frames, widescreen is not as good because your
photos are shot in an aspect ratio that’s a lot closer to 4:3.
So to fit a 4:3 photo into a 16:9 widescreen frame involves some tradeoffs. Usually this means that the photo will either be stretched to fit or else
black bars will occupy the unused space, a lot like the “ letterbox” effect you get
by watching a widescreen movie on a standard-sized TV. However, a digital
frame’s bars run vertically, not horizontally as in the movies.
To ensure the best presentation, we recommend a frame that has a 4:3
aspect ratio.
Wi-Fi: Digital frames with wireless Internet access tend to cost more than
frames without, but they do offer several big benefits and we definitely
recommend a frame with Wi-Fi over those without.
First, many Wi-Fi frames can be networked to your home computer with
a moderate degree of ease. That means you won’t have to worry about
transferring images to the frame with a memory card; the frame will simply pull
down images from your networked computer, or you can transfer them to the
frame’s internal memory wirelessly.
Second, these frames can also access websites like Facebook and Flickr,
so you can be connected to a steady stream of fresh images from your friends and
family as well. More advanced frames will also support RSS feeds, allowing
you to subscribe to photographic websites like National Geographic. These
feeds provide new photos to your frame on a regular basis to complement the
ones you’ve already taken.
Wi-Fi frames can also access other Internet services such as Internet radio,
turning them into multimedia devices. Some also offer email addresses, so
friends and family can email photos directly to the display. While these added
features are cool, they do add some complexity to the frame.
Energy Savers: There’s very little point paying for electricity to keep a
frame on that no one’s watching. Frames with light sensors or programmable
timers help you cut costs by powering down the frame when everyone’s asleep.
These energy-saving features don’t add much, if anything, to a frame’s cost but
not every model has them so be sure to read the fine print.
Multimedia: If you’re addicted to your iPod, iPhone or portable media
device, it makes sense to have a digital frame that can get in on the fun. Some
models will offer docking to iPods and iPhones or offer inputs for playing back
music and even video files stored on digital music players or camcorders. These
models typically offer better than average built-in speakers to accommodate
music lovers.
Internal Storage: Most digital frames on the market offer internal
memory. They will not only play back your digital photos stored on a memory
card, but can hold the photos themselves so you can free up the card for more
picture taking. Frames usually have internal memories between 256MB and
2GB, enough to store hundreds of photos and videos. You might be tempted to
buy a frame with a lot of internal memory, but keep in mind that the more
photos you dump into the frame, the harder and harder it gets to organize those
photos and/or find the ones you want.
Four Tips to Get the Most from Your Frame
Many digital frames land on mantles and bookshelves and go dark forever.
Others are quietly returned because the recipient didn’t understand what to do
with it.
We own an atypical number of digital photo frames, so, we know firsthand how they can quickly fall out of favor. If this is the case with your digital
frame and it is sitting on a shelf, deserted, dark and dusty—don’t lose heart.
The four tips that follow will help you kindle a love affair with your old (or
new) frame.
Image credit - Parrot
1. Don’t use the frame’s internal memory, dedicate a memory card to
the frame instead: Many frames boast of 1GB or more of internal memory,
enough to store hundreds or even thousands of photos. The idea is that you can
transfer photos to the frame and free up your memory card to go back into your
camera. But guess what? Even hundreds of photos get boring after several weeks
of daily viewing. But once those images are on the frame’s internal memory,
it’s more of a hassle to remove them.
To avoid this, we’ve stopped loading photos onto the frame’s internal
memory and use a memory card devoted strictly to the frame instead. Memory
cards are inexpensive and store thousands of photos. They’re a lot easier to
move around than the frame itself.
2. Keep the frame low and accessible: One early mistake we made with
a digital frame was placing it on top of a bookshelf—mainly to keep it out of the
grasping hands of the kids (who had already broken one frame). While keeping
the frame up high kept it away from agenda-driven offspring and flying toys, it
also made it a chore to reach—either to turn on or adjust any controls. Once we
switched the frame to table level and were able to reach it, we found ourselves
using it a lot more.
3. Wherever possible, get it connected to a wireless network. Many
digital frames either offer built-in wireless networking out of the box or they can
work with a wireless adapter (which plugs into the frame’s USB port). If you
have either one, you should definitely get your frame connected to your home
network. It’s not the easiest process in the world, since typing in a passcode for
a Wi-Fi network on a frame is a chore, but we’ve found the setup on most
wireless frames to be very straightforward.
Why would you want to network your frame? Two reasons. First, it
makes managing the images on the frame very easy. You can skip the memory
card altogether and simply drag and drop images from your desktop to your
frame, or upload them via an online interface. Second, it gives you other photos
to look at besides your own. Let’s face it, as much as you love looking at your
friends and family, even thousands of photos of them can get old after a while.
Our wireless frame can accept images from the Web from Flickr, National
Geographic and many other sites. These photos are interspersed randomly with
our own and refreshed regularly; they’re a nice way to add variety to spice up
our digital life.
4. Program your on/off times: This one probably requires breaking out
the manual, but if your frame has programmable on and off times, they’re worth
setting up. We always turned off our frames at night to save energy and then,
after a while, never turned them back on (unless company was coming over and
we wanted to show off). Programmable on and off modes can keep the frame
powered down when no one’s watching. Alternatively, your frame may have a
motion sensor which can shut itself down when no one is lurking about. Either
way, if your frame has some eco-friendly options, it’s best to activate them.
Chapter Six: Your Videos
Whether you’re a camcorder owner or an avid smartphone videographer,
videos (or “ home movies” as they used to be called) are another component of
our digital lives that is undergoing a major evolution.
Just as with photographs, videos tend to linger on memory cards or hard
drives without proper protection. Unlike photos, there’s not as much to do with
your videos once you’ve taken them, but there are some things to do outside of
viewing them on your computer or television.
Multimedia Shows
It used to be that any video editing was a labor of love—or just labor.
True video fans would import footage into a computer and carefully edit out
scenes they didn’t care for and splice in special effects, captions and the like.
While there are still plenty of high-powered video programs capable of
slicing and dicing your video footage and transforming it into wonderfully
edited movies, there’s a new wave of software that we love that does almost all
of the hard work for you. These programs take advantage of the fact that the era
of the hours-long video is slowly coming to an end. Today, many of us shoot
video clips that are a minute or under in length. Now these clips can be easily
digested into software programs that, with a few simple clicks, can transform
them into cool multimedia videos by adding captions, transition effects, music
and more. We can’t stress this enough; you can make multimedia video and
photo shows with very, very little effort.
The finished product can be uploaded to video sharing sites like
YouTube, sent via email, posted to Facebook or simply stored on a computer.
There are several programs we like:
Animoto Magic: If you like the idea of creating short, engaging videos
and multimedia slideshows with your photos and videos, but don’t like the
idea of doing all that much work, you have to check out Animoto.
Unlike other movie-making software that you download to your
computer, Animoto’s tools are accessed through a web browser on a
subscription-based model. You can make a 30-second clip that includes your
uploaded stills/videos for free, but to be able to create unlimited full-length
videos, you’ll pay a monthly or yearly fee based on the quality and length of
movies you want to create.
You can create an online video in about five clicks, if you forgo any
customization. The service adds effects, custom titles and blends in music—all
on your desktop. The finished product can be downloaded to your computer or
posted to Facebook, YouTube or Twitter.
muvee Reveal Express: Unlike Animoto, muvee’s Reveal Express is
desktop software that you pay for once and download to your computer. Like
Animoto, it’s an extremely easy way to create shareable video presentations that
blend styles, effects, and your own digital content. Express boasts of a three-step
process to take you from importing a video to a finished presentation, but we
like how you can easily add customizations without getting lost in a fog of
menus and options. In our tests, it literally took one minute to hastily assemble
a presentation. If you really invested your time, you can create an engaging
montage in under ten minutes—at most.
It’s a $20 program, so it won’t break the bank, but if you want to add
additional transition themes and video styles to your presentation, you’ll have
to buy more.
Photodex ProShow Web: Like Animoto, ProShow Web is web-based,
meaning there’s no software to download—everything is managed through a
web browser. You can pick a theme such as wedding or birthday party, and then
upload your photos and videos. From there, you can choose from a library of
600 effects and drag-and-drop them into place. When you’re done, you can
upload them to YouTube, download them to your computer or embed them
into a blog.
So here’s the catch: ProShow Web is free to use if you only want to
upload a total of 15 photos or videos and don’t want to download them to your
computer. So it’s a useful tool if you want to create a short recap of a vacation
or special event on your blog or to email someone, but it’s going to cost you to
do more.
You can upgrade to a “ Plus” account for $30 a year. A Plus account lets
upload an unlimited number of photos and videos (although slideshows are
capped to 12 minutes) and gives you the ability to download a standard
definition version of the slideshow. If you want to enjoy high definition
slideshow downloads and additional functionality, you can opt for a Premium
membership for $25 per month or $150 a year.
Project Them
While the best way to view your digital videos is typically on a high
definition television or monitor, sometimes that’s not always an option. If
you’re interested in a more portable solution, consider a Pico Projector. These
are tiny projectors about the size of a fingernail that are either standalone gadgets
or built directly into the body of some cameras and camcorders.
Image credit - 3M
Rather than crowd around the camera’s tiny display, you can use these
built-in projectors to display your videos movie-theater style, bringing us back
to the day when relatives forced you to sit through a slide carousel of their trip
to Bermuda. Pico Projectors typically connect directly to a camera or camcorder
via HDMI or video-out cable and run on batteries, so portability isn’t an issue.
Bring Old Videos Back from the Grave
Aside from relishing the videos you’ve captured with a digital camcorder,
camera or smartphone, one question that’s on many people’s minds is what to
do with older, analog video or movies trapped on obsolete memory formats. Oh
yes, before the iPhone and YouTube made video recording a national pastime,
parents would have to lug out the shoulder-fired cannon of a camcorder to
capture precious moving memories. That meant tapes, and lots of them, stored
in closets, attics and basements. Unlike our shoeboxes full of photos, a box full
of camcorder tape is essentially useless without a camcorder or player on which
to view them. As technology marches on, many of the older camcorder formats
have been relegated to history.
Fortunately, you can still bring those videos into the 21st century, where
they can be viewed on your TV or computer, and shared with friends and
family. So, pop open that box of tapes and ask yourself: what do I have in
there?
I Dunno, Some Tape-Like Things? The common tape formats include
VHS, VHS-C, MiniDV, Super8, and Digital8. How do you view them today?
Well, you can drag out the camcorder (if you have it) and connect it to the TV
(good luck finding the proper cables) but that’s an imperfect solution at best.
Far better is to take your tape formats and convert them to digital. Here’s how:
The Easy Way: The simplest way to tackle this is to let someone else
do it. Video scanning services will take your tapes or film and create DVD
movies out of them. These services can provide you with a DVD divided into
chapters (for easier searching) as well as covers with images on them so you can
get a better sense of what the DVD contains.
YesVideo, for instance, has partnered with numerous major retailers like
Costco and Walmart to offer just such a service. Hand over your tapes and in
two weeks you’ll get DVD movies back. Other services include iMemories,
ScanMyPhotos, ScanCafe and MyMovieTransfer. Your local photo retailer can
also provide these scanning services.
The downside is that having someone else digitize your videos is more
expensive than doing it yourself. Scanning services can run $20 per two hours of
video footage burned. If you have a lot of footage, the price can quickly add up.
Many scanning services include some basic color correction, but for more
extensive fixes, you’ll pay a lot more.
Image credit - YesVideo
Services like YesVideo will break up long videos into chapters, but your
ability to customize your final product is fairly limited. Once you get your DVD
(and original tapes) back, chances are you can’t simply transfer the video from
the DVD disc to your computer to view and edit on your computer or upload to
YouTube—at least, not without a lot of effort. The videos you get back on
DVD are primarily meant to be viewed on a TV through a DVD player. That’s
a great solution for someone who’s not tech-savvy, but it limits what you can
do with those videos as far as online sharing or emailing is concerned.
If the ability to view your videos on your computer and share them online
is important to you, ScanDigital offers a unique service: they will transfer your
video to a hard drive. You can purchase a 500GB Western Digital drive from
them for $120 or mail in your own drive with your videos. This is a great
solution, since it brings your videos into the digital age in a format that, unlike
DVD, will be around for a long while. It’s pricey but chances are that a hard
drive will survive much longer than a DVD, so it’s the way to go if you want a
more future-proof solution.
Alternatively, we also suggest finding scanning services that integrate
with a “ cloud” data storage service. We’ll get into cloud services in the next
chapter, but suffice it to say that some video scanners can send your digitized
video to online servers where you can view them and securely house them for
the long term. You can also download the files to your own computer too, so
they’re locally available.
The Hard Way: If the thought of handing over your videos (and money)
to a third party doesn’t sit well with you, there are ways to get that older video
into the digital era yourself.
If you still have your old, tape-based camcorder: You’re ahead of the
game. All you’ll need is a cable to connect the camcorder to your PC. Products
like Roxio’s Easy VHS-to-DVD ($60) combine the hardware to connect your
old camcorder (or even a VCR) to your PC or Mac via USB along with software
to convert that video into a file. That file can be burned to DVD or saved in a
format suitable for viewing on a computer or mobile device.
Image credit - Roxio
While this method isn’t all that difficult, it is time consuming. Videos
are usually transferred in real time – which means one hour of footage takes one
hour to transfer.
I have the tapes, but no camcorder: Well, now you’re in a pickle,
aren’t you? If you have a form of VHS tape (like VHS-C, a smaller version of
the full-sized tape format), you can use your VCR with products like Roxio’s.
Simply plug the tape into the VCR and the VCR via the cables supplied with
Easy VHS-to-DVD to your computer. But you don’t have a VCR, do you?
Congratulations, you’ve now chosen the easy way. (See above.)
What if I Used a DVD Camcorder: So you have the discs, but the
camcorder’s long gone? Well, you’re in better shape than you would be if you
were only sitting on tape. Software such as DVDx, available to download
online, can transform your DVD footage into editable files that are stored on
your computer’s hard drive. From there, you can use programs like Corel’s
VideoStudio or Adobe Premiere Elements to edit and share that footage. With a
digital file in an editable file format, you’ve got a nice “ digital negative” copy
that can be saved to an external hard drive for longer term storage.
Chapter Seven: How to Protect Your Images
It may be hard to believe, but it’s true: the digital photos you’re
capturing with the latest and greatest technology may not last as long as the old
film photos you or your parents snapped a generation ago. The reason is simple
—in the old days, the only way you’d lose your photos is if some massive
catastrophe struck—a fire, or flood or any event that would physically destroy
those prints.
Today, in the digital world, your images and videos can disappear in the
blink of an eye thanks to a hard drive crash. And, unlike fires, floods and
tornadoes, a hard drive crash is a very common occurrence. Hard drives last on
average about five years. Hard drive crashes are not a matter of “ if” but
“ when”—and when your hard drive goes, it could very well take all your digital
photos and videos – your digital memories—with it. Imagine the photos of
your child’s birth and first steps wiped out forever. Yikes!
Your digital memories can also be lost to the relentless march of changing
technology. If I held up a 3.5-inch floppy disk how many of you would
recognize it or even know what it is? For those who do recall the days of the
floppy disc, how many of you would have the first idea how to view the
information stored on that disk? Now imagine a similar look of bewilderment
when you hold a compact disc or DVD up to the face of a grandchild.
So it’s very important that you devise a photo protection plan to ensure
your digital photos will last as long as your film prints. The good news is that
it’s relatively simple to do. The bad news is that it will take a bit of upkeep:
you won’t simply be able to dump your photos into a digital shoebox and
forget about them for a few years. But it’s vital absolutely vital for you to think
carefully about how to protect your digital photos.
To help, we’ve devised a five-point plan that can save your digital
memories.
Step 1: Stay Organized: Before you can protect your photos and videos,
you need to know where they all are. This means you need to have your digital
files organized (see chapter one). Organization is a bit like exercise—it’s hard to
start, especially if you’ve never exercised before, but once you get into a routine
it’s easy to maintain.
Step Two: Make a Copy (or Two): To keep your digital photos and
videos safe what you need to do is make a copy of those digital files and store
them on something in addition to your computer hard drive. The idea is to
have multiple copies of the same photo on different storage media.
If this sounds confusing, don’t worry it’s pretty straightforward. The ideal
solution is to store your photos in three different places. In other words, have
three copies of the same file. First, on your computer’s hard drive; second, on
an external hard drive that stays disconnected and stored in a fireproof safe when
not in use; third, in a cloud storage service.
This ensures that when (not if) your computer drive fails, a copy of that
digital photo or video is securely stored elsewhere. While storing photos and
videos on both an external hard drive and a cloud service is a bit expensive, the
redundancy gives you the best of both storage formats.
Some of you may be thinking: but what about CDs or DVDs? Can’t I
store my photos on them? The short answer is: yes you can, but you shouldn’t.
CDs and DVDs are coated with chemicals and those chemicals can break down
over time, corrupting the data inside them. Gold-based or “ archival” discs avoid
this problem, but they can’t escape the more significant drawback to discs—
they are becoming obsolete.
Just like the floppy disk of old, CDs and DVDs can’t store all that much
data compared to hard drives and are on the march toward extinction. In fifteen
years, few if any computers will have optical disc drives. Storing your photos
on those discs will only create headaches for you down the road. If you’re
sitting on a pile of CDs and DVDs containing photos and videos, transfer those
images to a hard drive or cloud service as soon as you can.
Step Three: Print the Must Haves: It may sound ironic—even
unbelievable—but the truth is that when it comes to your digital photos there’s
no better way to store them for the future than to print them. Not all of them, of
course, or you’d go broke, but the keepers. We practice what we like to call
“ strategic printing”—that is, we identify photos in our collection that we could
not live without, and make prints of those.
Image credit - Epson
You have plenty of choices when it comes to making photo prints (see
chapter three): you can upload photos to online services, drop off a memory card
at a retailer, or use a kiosk to have prints made instantly. But to make a photo
print that will last generations, only one method can deliver the goods: a home
photo printer.
Sounds strange, right? But according to print permanence expert Henry
Wilhelm, it’s true. Wilhelm wrote the book (literally) on print permanence and
runs an independent testing service where he subjects all manner of photo prints
to tests to simulate various real-world conditions. Based on this extensive
research, Wilhelm has concluded that prints produced on inkjet photo printers
produce the longest-lasting photos—longer than store prints.
But it’s not just any home printer using any old ink and paper. You need
an inkjet printer, not a dye-sublimation printer. Most home printers use inkjet
technology for printing, but many snapshot printers (i.e. those that print out
photos that are 4 x 6 inches in size, like Canon’s Selphy line or Epson’s
PictureMate) use dye-sublimation instead.
Printer makers like dye-based inks because they produce great looking
color photos, Wilhelm told us. But dye inks simply don’t last as long as
pigmented inks. That’s not to say dye inks fade quickly, some will last for 100
years, but if you want the longest lasting photo possible, you’ll need to find a
printer that uses pigmented inks. Unfortunately, it’s not always clear whether a
certain ink is pigmented or not—even in the fine print. And some
manufacturers, like Canon or Lexmark, will include both dye and pigment inks
in a single printer, although they tend to use the dyes for photo printing and the
pigment for black text.
Whether you have a dye or pigment-based system, to get the longestlasting prints, it’s important to only buy the paper and ink made by the same
company that manufactured your printer, Wilhelm told us. Consumers may be
tempted by lower cost paper and inks (or may want to try to refill existing
inkjet cartridges with third party inks) but in testing these products, Wilhelm
found a sharp decrease in longevity. “ If there’s one categorical piece of advice I
would give, it would be to avoid those products,” he said. In some cases,
yellowing of photos exposed to air occurred within weeks.
Staying within the manufacturer’s brand also gives you a few simple ways
to get higher quality photos too, Wilhelm said. Printer manufacturers load what
are called paper “ profiles” into their software. If you go into your printer’s
menu, you’ll usually see this as the options to choose a paper type, usually a
specific brand name. When you make that selection, you’re telling the printer to
behave in a certain way to better match the ink output to the kind of paper used.
How you store your photo print is as important, if not more, as how you
print. Photos stored in the open air with some exposure to sunlight will fade the
fastest. Take an example from Wilhelm’s published work: Kodak’s C310
printer. A print made with the C310 on Kodak’s Studio Gloss paper stored in
the open air would resist fading for 34 years; stored under glass and it survives
148 years; placed in an album, over 300 years. Moral of the story: put them in
an album with acid free paper in a room with relatively low humidity and out of
direct sunlight. Simple enough.
If you’re not interested in home printing, don’t despair: store bought
prints can still last in excess of 25 years. That’s much longer than the average
hard drive and longer than Google’s been in business.
Step Four: Make it a Habit: You’ll need to be sure you’re regularly
transferring any new images to whatever device(s) you have chosen to use. If you
use an external drive or online service, this can sometimes be done for you
automatically; every time you load a new photo onto your hard drive, it will be
automatically copied to an external drive or online server. But if you don’t have
this automated option, you’ll have to get into a routine whenever you load new
photos onto your computer to also back them up on another storage medium.
Treat it like bills and your banking: not something you do daily, but
something you attend to weekly.
Step Five: Stay Informed: The trickiest part of any photo protection
plan is keeping up with different storage and file formats. Today, all computers
come with DVD drives. In 10 years, chances are, they won’t. If you’re sitting
on a pile of DVDs with photos on them, you’re going to have to move them
onto another storage format as DVDs become obsolete. If you’re at least
somewhat aware of changing technology trends, you’ll be able to stay ahead of
this curve and move your images onto updated storage formats as times change.
That’s why we suggest external hard drives and cloud storage as both are
destined to be with us for far longer than DVDs and both are capable of storing
your entire photo and video collection, which makes it easier to migrate down
the road instead of having it scattered on multiple discs.
File formats (i.e. the kind of digital file created by your camera,
smartphone or camcorder) are trickier still. Once file formats change, the old
ones get harder to “ read” (by software, computers and other gadgets) as the years
progress. The good news is that these technologies change very slowly (a matter
of decades, not years) and chances are even if a new image or video file format
emerges, the older files (i.e. the ones you have) will still be readable by
software. However, there may come a time when file formats do change and that
today’s digital photo files won’t be recognizable by future devices.
This is where paying attention comes in: at the point where old image
and video files are going obsolete, you will need (if possible) to “ transcode”
those files into a format that’s recognizable by the software and displays of the
time. Transcode is just a fancy word for changing the kind of file you have.
Don’t worry—given the trillions of digital photo and videos files out there, it’s
safe to say that solutions will exist to migrate old formats into new ones, but
you’ll need to be on the lookout for them.
Your Two Storage Options In Depth: The Cloud and Ex ternal
Hard Drives
Above we recommended two principle methods for storing your photos
and videos—an external hard drive and the cloud. Let’s explore the cloud first.
Image credit - Seagate
Photos in the Cloud
Put simply, the cloud is online storage, or servers, you access via the
Internet. These servers are used to store digital content—photos, videos, music,
documents—as well as software applications. With the cloud, your content is
not stored on your computer’s hard drive, but on the servers of a third party—
companies like Google, Apple and Amazon, among others.
Maybe the easiest way to picture the cloud is to think of email services
like AOL, Gmail or Yahoo Mail. You access them through a Web browser and
your messages—your data—are stored online, on Google or Yahoo servers.
Now simply swap “ email” for “ photos” and you get an idea of what cloud
photo storage is all about.
Benefits of Cloud Storage: Anywhere Access, Off-Site Security
Storing your photos and videos using a cloud-based service does offer
several major benefits. First, your files can be accessed from most any Internetconnected device such as a computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone. If you’re on
the road and want to pull up photos of your kids on your smartphone to show a
friend, cloud services can make that happen. Most have apps for just such an
occasion. If you change computers, you can rest assured all your photos are
secure.
This remote access also means that you can easily back up photos and
videos you’re taking with a mobile phone. It also means that should an
unexpected disaster strike your home and your computer hard drive, your photos
are safely stored “ off-site.” Even if your house burned to the ground taking
everything with it, every digital file in the cloud would still be secure. It’s like
storing money in a bank as opposed to under your mattress.
Cloud Storage Cons: Privacy and Security
Like banking, depositing your photos in the cloud is a bit of a leap of
faith. Unlike banking, there is no federal deposit insurance on hand to recoup
your lost images in the event your cloud provider goes out of business.
Then there are privacy concerns. Nearly every day we read of privacy
violations at major institutions where hackers penetrate and steal sensitive
information—user names, passwords and even credit card information. This is a
risk, albeit a small one today, of depositing images in the cloud.
Is the cloud secure? The answer is yes—and no. Any online transaction
that involves transferring your personal information, such as credit card numbers
or other sensitive data, to a third party involves the risk of theft. That’s just a
fact of modern life. But there’s no reason to think that your images are uniquely
vulnerable in the cloud.
Perhaps a more significant danger, especially in the short term, is that
many cloud services popping up today may not be in business in five years.
Much like the Internet bubble created hundreds of failed Internet companies in
the 1990s, the tech market is undergoing a somewhat similar bubble today with
numerous companies sprouting up to offer online digital storage. Unlike the
initial dot-com bust, today’s new cloud companies at least have a plausible
business model. Money does change hands, but scale is important. So, if a
company offering a cloud can’t attract thousands of individuals to buy its
service, it is not long for this world.
The Cloud vs. Online Photo Sites
The major difference between photo sites, such as Shutterfly and Snapfish,
and cloud storage services like Dropbox or Amazon, is that a cloud service is
built to store any kind of digital file—word documents, PDFs, videos, music,
etc. Cloud data sites do a much better job with automating the process of
backing up your data than a traditional photo site, which usually requires a
manual upload.
Photo sites, obviously, are tailor-made just for images. That means that
in addition to long-term photo storage, you’ll find printing services and
merchandise offerings.
Cloud services tend to be more expensive for storage than your typical
photo site. However, the cost has to be weighed against the versatility: if you’re
looking to back up more than just photos, you really have no choice but to opt
for cloud storage. Moreover, cloud backup sites allow much easier access to
your full resolution image files than most print-oriented photo websites. The
downside, though, is that you can’t print out the family holiday card from a
cloud service.
Zonerama: The Best of Both Worlds
Think of Zonerama as something of the sweet spot between a pure cloud
storage service and an online photo gallery. Zonerama can host your photos in
public galleries that anyone can view or in password-protected private galleries
for a more exclusive experience. You can also assign personalized URLs to
galleries you create on Zonerama, giving you easy-to-share links when it's time
to share images with friends and family. Unlike other photo sites that cap the
number of images you can upload for free, Zonerama offers unlimited photo
storage free of charge.
You can access photos stored on Zonerama through your desktop or on
your Android phone with a free app. Zoner's Photo Studio editing software is
also tightly integrated with Zonerama. You can view your Zonerama's online
galleries directly in Photo Studio, which means you can use all of the software's
powerful editing tools on images stored in the cloud without having to work
through a separate web browser. Plus, unlike the venture capital-funded startups
we warned about above, you can be confident that Zonerama is here to stay—
they've been in business for 20 years and are one of the biggest domain registrars
in Europe. Your photos will be in good (virtual) hands.
Make Your Own Cloud
If you like the idea of having remote access to your photos and videos but
aren’t sure about the security and privacy issues around the cloud, you can make
your own. Some devices, like the Pogo, create a “ personal cloud” using a hard
drive and Internet router. Once it’s connected to both, all your content is
accessible from a mobile device or other computers.
Image credit - Seagate
“ Networked” hard drives can also deliver the same functions. These hard
drives connect to an Internet router and have unique IP address allowing users to
access the drive’s contents from any web browser. Apps for smartphones and
tablets also allow you to view this content on the go.
The beauty of the “ build your own” cloud is that you only pay once.
You’ll need to ensure you buy a large enough hard drive to store all of your
files, but once that expense has been met, you’re cost-free. By contrast, cloud
services require a monthly or yearly fee. As far as security, an external drive can
fail and can get infected with viruses, but it’s less likely that someone could
find and hack into your drive. That said, your own personal cloud won’t have
the same data redundancies built-in that a service like, say, Amazon, will. If an
Amazon server crashes, data is almost always backed up safely on other servers.
Before Your Choose a Cloud Provider
There are certain things you need to be mindful of before choosing a cloud
service to store your digital photos, videos or other data. Here are three
questions to ask yourself before taking the plunge:
1. Is the back-up seamless? The last thing you want to do when paying
for storage is any work. A good cloud provider should be able to monitor select
folders on your computer and automatically upload any new content that it
discovers. For instance, if you add new photos into your “ My Pictures” folder,
the service should automatically recognize that new photos have been added and
upload them instantly with no interaction with you. Alternatively, it should
allow you to create “ cloud” folders on your desktop. Load any data into these
cloud folders and it is automatically uploaded to the cloud and, therefore, secure.
2. Do I understand the terms of service? Whenever you transfer images
from your possession to that of a business, you agree to abide by the company’s
terms of service. Many of you probably check off the terms of service button
without reading it (and who can blame you, they’re awful to read). However, for
something as important as your digital photos and videos, reading these terms
is a must. You can skip some of the lawyer-ese and instead look for the answers
to two basic questions: 1. Does the service claim any ownership of your images
that could result in their use in advertisements? 2. In the event that the
company goes out of business, does it provide for the transfer of your data to
another cloud service?
3. Will this company survive? Choosing a cloud service provider is a
bit like choosing stocks—you’re not only weighing the costs and feature
benefits, but you’re placing a bet on the viability of the business itself.
In the early 2000s, many photo dot coms sprang up for photo hosting and
photo printing and quickly disappeared when the bubble burst. Some of these
failed companies allowed their customers relatively easy access to the images
they had stored online, others made it a costly hassle.
There’s no question that cloud storage itself is here to stay. As you shop
for a provider, the question you need to answer as best as you can is, “ Will this
particular cloud storage provider be here to stay?”
Ex ternal Hard Drives
Next to your digital camera, an external hard drive is probably the single
most important thing you can buy to preserve digital memories. Unlike online
or cloud storage services that allow you to upload files to remote servers,
external hard drives can’t be hacked into and can’t go out of business because
they don’t turn a profit. While your hard drive will eventually fail, it will tend
to outlast the drive in your PC or Mac, if only because it’s used less frequently.
While buying an external hard drive sounds simple enough, there are a
few things you need to keep in mind before purchasing:
Image credit - LaCie
1. Buy More Storage Than You Think You Need: If you have about
20GB worth of photos sitting on your computer, you might think that 120GB
worth of storage is plenty. But chances are, it’s not. First, over the life of your
external drive you may trade in your current camera for a new one that takes
higher resolution pictures, which create bigger files and take up more room on
your drive.
Second, if you plan on purchasing a high definition camcorder (or a
camera/smartphone that records high definition movies), you’ll quickly find
yourself gobbling up hard disk space. Then there are all the other pieces of your
digital life—music, games, documents and the like, that take up hard drive
space too.
At a minimum, you’d like to purchase an external hard drive that’s the
same size as your computer’s hard drive. This way, you can create a one-to-one
back-up of all your digital contents.
2. Portable vs. Ex ternal: All external hard drives are portable in the
sense that they’re pretty easy to carry around, but there are some drives that are
specifically tailored to a mobile lifestyle and other drives that are designed to
stay more or less stationary. A portable drive is usually thinner and capable of
drawing power from a USB port, not a wall socket. Portable drives can also be
found with rugged, weatherproof exteriors. They also tend to be a bit more
expensive than a traditional external drive.
If you don’t expect to do much travelling with your external drive, you
can avoid a portable drive, as you’ll just be paying more for features that you
won’t really need, such as a tough exterior and slim profile.
3. Network Drives: Your basic external hard drive connects to a PC or
Mac via a USB cord. It’s a pretty limited connection that allows data to pass
between the drive and your computer. However a networked hard drive (also
called a Network Attached Storage Device or NAS) is more functional. A NAS
can plug into an Internet router via an Ethernet cable to offer storage to every
device on your home network such as laptops, tablets, and media players.
The nice thing about a NAS drive is that you can back up photos and
videos from a variety of devices like smartphones and tablets, not just your
computer. Most NAS drives will offer software that constantly monitors folders
on your computer. Whenever that folder changes—say, if you added new photos
or videos—the NAS drive will automatically make copies of those files on its
own drive. This way, you’re backing up your files without doing a thing.
Apple’s Time Capsule drive functions in this manner and is very convenient.
Many NAS drives allow you to access their contents from any computer
or web browser, no matter where you are, as long as you have Internet access.
So if you’re on the road with your iPhone or tablet and want to share some
photos and videos with your friends, you can tap directly into your drive
through a password-protected connection.
The downside to an NAS drive is that it’s always on—that means that in
general it will run down faster than an external drive that’s used less frequently.
Since an NAS is attached to your network, it’s also more vulnerable to viruses
and other cyber-security problems. NAS drives also cost more than similar-sized
external drives without network capabilities. Still, they’re a good option to
consider if you have a home network and want a perpetual back-up solution.
4. USB 2.0 vs. USB 3.0: An increasing number of external drives are
being sold with USB 3.0 connections. These 3.0 connections make data
transfers much faster—usually between three to 10 times faster than they would
be using a USB 2.0 drive. Yet they’re also more expensive than similarlyequipped USB 2.0 drives.
So, do you really need to pay for this speed boost?
If you’re a casual photographer/video taker, the answer is: not really. After
your first initial data transfer—where you copy over your current digital library
from your computer to your external drive—this extra speed boost isn’t all that
important. Plus, keep in mind that you can only enjoy USB 3.0 speeds if both
your PC and your external drive offer USB 3.0. It doesn’t make sense to buy a
USB 3.0 external drive unless your computer supports it or you plan on
upgrading soon.
That said, most new computers come with a USB 3.0 port and almost all
external drives shipping today have USB 3.0 connectivity so eventually the
choice is going to be made for you.
Software Considerations
Simply buying a drive isn’t enough. It helps to have a piece of software
that can help you regularly back up the contents of your computer. Some drives
will ship with software that can synchronize folders, meaning that your “ My
Pictures” folder on your computer is identical to a “ My Pictures” folder on your
external drive. As you add photos to your computer, copies are automatically
made on your hard drive when it’s attached.
If your drive didn’t ship with any form of back-up software, you can
always download your own. One free program we like is Allway Sync.
Drive Storage
While it’s important to regularly back up your data, and thus, regularly
use your external drive, it’s important to remember that that drive is the vehicle
that will transport photos and videos to the next generation. In other words, it
needs to be stored securely when not in use. We put ours in a
waterproof/fireproof safe where we store other important household documents.
In the event of a natural disaster that destroys the computer—and even our home
—the external hard drive should still be secure in that safe.
If it sounds paranoid, you’re right. It is! But these are invaluable family
memories. If that’s not worth treating with care, and even a bit of paranoia, than
nothing is.
Conclusion: Your Digital Life
The world of digital photography is changing rapidly and one e-book
alone can’t keep pace or wrap its virtual arms around every topic. That’s why
we encourage you to visit your-digital-life.com for the latest news, reviews and
tips on all the subjects touched on in this volume (and more).
Unlike other photography and technology sites on the web, your-digitallife.com isn’t concerned with the best cameras or how to take the best picture—
we’re exclusively focused on what happens after your press the shutter button.
We are constantly on the lookout for the best products, services, apps and more
that will help you organize, share, preserve and enjoy all of your digital
memories. Whether you shoot with a smartphone or expensive d-SLR, yourdigital-life.com has you covered.
Image credit - Kodak
If you take anything away from this book, let it be this: you’re living in a
golden age of photography. Every day, there are more and more creative options
for your images and videos. There’s no reason to let your photos languish in
hard drives, memory cards and smartphones. Set them free!