Digital Photo Storage

I print the fav's and store the rest on an external drive. Although I have never had it happen, but apparently CD's can lose data after time. Fav's from a trip, I print and make an album.

I used photobucket and shutterfly. I use a USB drive for external storage because I can take it anywhere I want to go and if the computer crashes I have them, the websites will work too... just remember to make your albums private. I put some pics that I want long distance friends to see on my facebook but I don't generally like people to just see my daughter... there are weird people out there lol

i think having them only on the hard drive is a problem if your computer dies. We have them on facebook, photobucket, and USB flash drives in our fireproof safe. We had my harddrive crash and we didnt want to risk losing any pictures if something were to happen to my husband's computer. We originally put our pictures on photobucket so we could share them with everyone, even the family not on facebook. and we do facebook for fun pictures we want to share.

i use an external hard drive to backup all pics & files from my pc & laptop. i got a 1terrabyte external hard drive for about $100, they might be even less now, I think i saw some that are like 2 terrabytes for a little over $100. i also use photobucket but think about what if something ever happened & the site was no longer in existence...if you back it up yourself on a thumb drive or external drive then at least you have a backup.

I have them in folders on my computer AND I have slideshows and CD's in safety deposit!

Since the photo reproduction of original photos are so excellent I try to keep a copy of every picture I like. We do have the files saved on the computer and I keep negatives, but I swear by the Kodak machines at FedEx (formerly Kinkos). Our pictures are stored on Kodak Easyshare (formerly ofoto) and our computer. I also think we have some burned to CD's. I used to worry about how to store the digital photos but I realized it just isn't that critical since I can make an excellent print on the Kodak machines.

I use Kodak Gallery. However, we are looking to get a photo editing program and my sister in law told us to check out adobe's website and look into light room. Apparently they have a photo storage program that is easy to use. I haven't looked into it yet, but she is a professional photographer, so I'm assuming she knows what she is talking about and this is a good program. I would definitely use something besides my hard drive just in case of a house fire or a computer crash.

Hi Page! We use iPhoto on our home computer, and then I also upload everything to our family's shared site on Shutterfly.com. (This is great. You set up a password so everyone in your family can access it, upload their own photos, etc, and then you can order copies of your photos and your family members' photos.) Creative Memories also offers a similar website, and they have Memory Manager software that I believe you can download for free.

Whatever you do, back them up in an "offsite" location. You know what they say: there are 2 categories of people in this world. Those who have lost all their pictures when their hard drive crashed, and those who are going to lose all their pictures when their hard drive crashes!

I use Smugmug - its the best in my opinion, but there is an annual fee. The free sites are fine, but you have less options. (For example, you can't download the pictures back in the original huge size). I believe smugmug lets you test drive their site for 30 days free. Also, there are lots of organization abilities on it which I find helpful. Friends get to see the pictures in larger sizes and better clarity than the free sites like shutterfly, etc.

An external hard drive is also a good back up too.

I love Shutterfly! I have all of my photos arranged in albums on there. I used to order prints, but now I am choosing a few favorite shots from each month and making a photo book of our year. You can also create a free share site if you want others to see your photos. I also have mine saved in my iphoto program, but it's good to know that if I ever lost them, Shutterfly would have me covered.

I set up files by date and event. For example 2009-12 Christmas, 2010-02 Cape Cod, etc. I have a few stored on my computer, a few loaded in snapfish.com to share, but all are on an external flash drive.

You really should have them stored on some type of external device just in case your computer crashes. It's also a good idea to have a copy stored somewhere like a relative's house or a safety deposit box in case of a disaster. It sounds extreme, but you never know.

I'm a professional photographer (www.umberstudio.com) and I have to store and organize an amazing volume of images, now all digital. I use Western Digital Hard Drives. I get the 1.5 Terabite size. Online storage through a company that does online information storage NOT facebook or a social networking site or any sort, one that stores for you and you pay by volume is a safe solution, too, but it can be costly. CDs or DVDs are a bad choice as they break down and can be damaged.

I always keep two copies of each hard drive, one that is easy to access and one in a firesafe or safe deposit box. I don't take chances with people's memories.

It's a good quesiton, and one that I've invested a lot of thought into. If I could afford online storage, I might do that, but for the sheer volume of my portfolio it would be insane. So I like the hard drive option.

Good luck.

If you keep the hard drive option, be sure you have a back up method! My daughter knocked our external drive with ALL our pictures, and it was very costly to recover them. We were very lucky that they could be recovered at all. My friends all swear by Picassa.

Facebook and Photobucket are photo SHARING websites, a hard drive is a STORAGE device. We try our best to back up our computer regularly and have 2 hard drives (with our photos and documents both), one somewhere else (ie, a safe is what my husband wants to put it in.) and one with what's on the computer.

We did have the experience a couple years ago of having our computer fail, and after realizing just how much we had on there ... our correspondence from when we were courting/newly weds, our photos!!!!, and some other documents... we decided to bite the bullet and take it to a computer recovery place and they recovered the files from the hard drive for $1200. We promised ourselves we wouldn't have to do this again but that means we have to be better about backing everything up *regularly*

Manage - when I download the pictures off the camera, I will save it to a folder named something like 2010 June (date) Grand Canyon Camp Trip. Or if it's a bunch of miscellaneous around the home shots, then just 2010 May-June (maybe a descriptive of what's in here so I can find it when I'm looking for a certain photo/event)

And as for scrapbooking them, I absolutely love Studio J (go to wenonah.myctmh.com and on the left side, select SJ, and see for yourself what it's about)
I love it because it allows me to scrapbook and print my photos at one time - no having to decide which photos to print out, which sizes to print them in, etc etc. It's free, you only pay for the pages you actually complete and print. Starting Sept, there'll be a subscription plan where you get discounted pages and other perks.