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Never lose photos or videos again

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  1. #1

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    Thumbs up Never lose photos or videos again

    Public Service Announcement! - Never lose photos or videos again

    This won't be new to all of you, but it probably is to some.

    Google have a great function whereby you can have your photos automatically backed up to your Google Account (they are private to you by default)

    No Limits - What's even better is these backups do not count against your Google Storage Quota (as long as you choose the "High Quality" backup option, which limits the individual photo size to 16 megapixels (if it's bigger than 16, it will be downsized, if it's less than 16 it will be uploaded at it's original resolution))
    Video backup is up to 1080p.

    No Data - Don't worry about using up your mobile plan data allowance either, you can have uploads restricted to happening on wi-fi

    Most devices - Google supports automatic uploading from Android, iPhone and Windows
    Go here to install the app: https://photos.google.com/apps

    Privacy concerns? Don't use the product (and don't complain about it here please)

    Fresh from the horse's mouth: Official Google Blog: Picture this: A fresh approach to Photos

    dumbdonkey likes this.

  2. #2

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    Couple of addenda:
    There are other similar services, which all have slightly different rules and conditions - but everyone should be using at least one... I hate seeing the "Help, I lost my phone, all my photos of my kids are gone!" messages you still see sometimes. Facebook, Dropbox, Flickr, Onedrive, Amazon, probably something limited and less-featured from Apple - they still don't do cloud very well - pick at least one!

    Also, just for the record, even if your original photos are less than 16MP, the uploads are at original resolution, but they are lossily compressed - that is, they don't keep the exact original file, just something which looks very similar. If you care, use the original file option.

    Oh, and that's "Windows", not "Windows Phone", since Google is continuing their very successful policy of pretending that doesn't exist

    Last edited by vmlinuz; 29-05-2015 at 10:18 AM.

  3. #3

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    vm - exactly, the "help I lost my stuff" plea is something we shouldn't be hearing any more

    Windows Phone? what's that?


  4. #4

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    Quote Originally Posted by vmlinuz:
    Also, just for the record, even if your original photos are less than 16MP, the uploads are at original resolution, but they are lossily compressed - that is, they don't keep the exact original file, just something which looks very similar. If you care, use the original file option.
    Not so accurate there.

    I just did a test, took a photo using my Samsung S6, original file size 3944662 bytes with a resolution of 5312x2988 (16 megapixels)
    I compared the checksum from the phone and what I downloaded on my PC from photos.google.com and they were the same - meaning the file was the exact same file, not a re-sampled/lossy version

  5. #5

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    I will support any technology that makes public access to private celebrity porn easier!

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  6. #6

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    Quote Originally Posted by Rob2020:
    Not so accurate there.

    I just did a test, took a photo using my Samsung S6, original file size 3944662 bytes with a resolution of 5312x2988 (16 megapixels)
    I compared the checksum from the phone and what I downloaded on my PC from photos.google.com and they were the same - meaning the file was the exact same file, not a re-sampled/lossy version
    Hmm, saw multiple people on the G+ this morning saying they were using something lossy - but I will bow to your superior experience

    I've got so much Drive/Photos/etc storage available, mostly from promotional stuff, that I just throw everything up there in original format, even though I don't have a 16MP shooter...
    Rob2020 likes this.

  7. #7

    Should probably add Dropbox, Onedrive, Amazon are all good alternatives to store your, non-phone, camera photos too. More than a few people will have just downloaded them to their PC / laptop leaving them on a single drive.


  8. #8

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    It just so happens in the last few weeks, I've uploaded all the photos the missus and I had up onto online storages. Used Google, Dropbox, Flickr and Photobucket. 2 accounts dumping gazillions of photos, with my crappy 6mb PCCW broadband line......it was painful indeed. Had to make sure it was all done via wifi only, so I took advantage of my work's much faster wifi upload speeds.

    My parents had millions of black and white photos of their family and friends which I scanned in about a decade ago. I was lucky I did that, as no sooner had I had finished doing the job, a marine fish tank I had leaked and flooded the room, ruining the photos.


    And trust me, at work I hear about 'I have no backups of my photos' on a daily (if not hourly) basis. I felt really sorry for a lady once, she brought in her laptop which had somehow got soaked on a beach with sea water. She had no backups of the photos, and the most cherished ones were time lapse photos she took a few months back of the Northern Lights, a trip she had saved for years to take her disabled daughter. I took it upon myself as a person crusade to get those photos back to her, cue endless nights researching how to fiddle and replace parts of a hard disk, and then all sorts of data recovery program, then naming the photos AND get the time lapse photos into the right order.

    Other people who are lazy, or arrogant about their data, I have no sympathy for.

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  9. #9

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    Photos on the computer hard drive, backed up onto two external drives. One of which is kept offsite. No worries.

    Mat and bookblogger like this.

  10. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by Proplus:
    And trust me, at work I hear about 'I have no backups of my photos' on a daily (if not hourly) basis. I felt really sorry for a lady once, she brought in her laptop which had somehow got soaked on a beach with sea water. She had no backups of the photos, and the most cherished ones were time lapse photos she took a few months back of the Northern Lights, a trip she had saved for years to take her disabled daughter. I took it upon myself as a person crusade to get those photos back to her, cue endless nights researching how to fiddle and replace parts of a hard disk, and then all sorts of data recovery program, then naming the photos AND get the time lapse photos into the right order.
    Cool that you managed to recover the photos for her, also curious why you didn't just send her off to Kroll or a company like that- spendy, but specialised in this kind of thing.

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