Backing Up Photos.

Parenting and the dynamics and paradigms behind them have consistently changed of the course of humanity.  Do we bottle feed or breast feed?  Do we sleep on a stomachs or on our backs?  Do we smoke cigarettes in the car with the windows rolled up on our trips to Walmart to get beer with our 4 kids unbuckled in the back seat, or do we buckle them in?  All good questions, and all worthy of their own blog post, but the one change I'd like to post about today is how to backup and store all of your photos and keep them safe for free.

Yes, this is supposed to be a blog about my kids, but since kids are the one thing many of us take the most pictures of why not share here?

Photo storage and management was a little different when I was a kid.  My mom would load a roll of 35mm film into her camera, wind it up, and put it in her camera.  Then she would wait until I did something adorable, which never took long, then she would get her camera out, frame things up and snap a few pictures.... about 24 of them because that was about as many as you could get on a standard roll of film.  Wednesday would come around and she'd drop the roll off at Drug Mart (Wednesdays were free doubles) and 8 months later the sales clerk would recognize the name on the check she was writing and remind her that she forgot to pick up her pictures, neatly packed in a paper envelope, complete with the photo negatives that nobody used for anything.  She'd take the pictures home, flip through them, put the 3 best into a photo album and stick the rest in a shoe box to be saved until 2038 when one of them will be selected to embarrass me on the invitation for my surprise 60th birthday party.  (Sorry Teri, but I already know about it)

Now, in the age of digital cameras and SD cards that can hold enough pictures to fill the National Archives the methodology is a little different.  Wake up, pick up your phone or camera, and hold the shutter button down.  15 hours later, release the shutter, then sit at your computer for the next 9 hours sifting through the 27,354 pictures you just took, delete the 3 that didn't turn out right, run them all through filters to make them look like you took a picture of your 6 month old in 1972  and then share them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, CNN, and 17 "cutest baby" contests with the #NoFilter hashtag.  Then, move all of those pictures off of your SD card, save them on your computer, and wait 4 months for your hard drive to die losing all of them.

So.... what's the easiest and cheapest way to manage all of this?  That would be Google+.  For those of you reading this that know me personally, lets face it, you knew this post was inevitable.  If you think you have a better way to do it, you're wrong.  Trust me, I come from the Internet.  Why is it the best?  Because it gives you an easy and FREE way to store all of your pictures online is a safe and easy to access location that makes them easy to share with those people who want to see them.  Plus it provides a full suite of editing tools that can auto enhance any image you share, straighten, crop, or apply Instagram like filters.

First thing we need to do is get a Google+ account.  If you have a Google log in, you probably already have one.  If you don't already have one, I'm just going to assume that you are smart enough to figure it out on your own.  The second thing you will need to do is to install the Google+ Auto Backup application. This is all you really need, but you will probably want to also install the Google+ app for your phone, you do want to backup and share your phone pictures too, right?

Now, we just need to get all of your photos uploaded.

After installing the Google+ Auto Backup application to your computer you will see a new icon in your task tray.

Select the icon (It will probably be gray because you haven't signed in yet) and sign in.

Once logged in you will be presented with the this screen.

Here you are able to tell Google+ which folders on your computer to watch for new images (and videos).  It will upload every thing from those folders and sub folders automatically and will continue to do so when you put new photos in those folders.  Also, something that is pretty important is the "Photo Size" section.  Google+ provides you with unlimited storage of photos and videos, HOWEVER, those photos must be less than 2048 pixels in resolution and the videos must be shorter than 15 minutes in length.  Here you will probably want to specify "standard size".  If you go above 2048px or 15 minutes, it will deduct space from the 15GB of free cloud storage you get with your Google account..  "But I have a 700MP camera!!!! What if I want to print them out?"  Well, a 2048 pixel image equates to a 3.1MP image.  A 3.1MP image will print out a photo quality 8x10" print.  If you regularly print out images larger than 8x10... you're going to need to save the original files elsewhere.  But if you are like 99% of people who have never printed a 30x40" print out, you have nothing to worry about.  The standard quality will suit you just fine.

For the desktop app, that's all there is too it.

Its also easy to use Google+ Auto Backup from your mobile device.  This works equally with Android and iOS.  First launch the Google+ app, tap the "Everything" bar towards the top and select "Photos" from the bottom

The hit the menu options button and select "Settings"

From this screen you can turn on your Auto Backup.  Google will automatically backup from your default Gallery album.  Again, make sure you select to upload at standard size, and you probably also want to specify that you only backup when on WiFi.... it can eat you data plan.  Also, if there are other folders in your gallery you want to backup, you can specify which ones with the "Backup Local Folders" option.

And that pretty much covers the backing up of your photos.  All of your photos will be available from any computer at https://plus.google.com/photos or from your mobile Google+ app.   From here there is a multitude of things you can do with you images, edit them, crop them, and share them with your friends (even if they aren't on Google+).  My favoritte thing about Google+ is how easy it is to share what you want with who you want.  Some other nifty things that Google+ does is what they call "Auto Awesome".  Google analyzes the photos you have and will do various things to them.  For example, if you take a bunch of pictures of a bunch of your friends, it'll automatically go through them and pick out the best smile from each person and put them all in the same shot.  It may also stitch a bunch of sequentially taken images and make an animated gif of of them. But even if you don't do any of that, you at least have all of your photos saved and backed up securely.