Online photography storage

Usually, upon returning from a trip, you will have hundreds of photos that you need to save.  You can simply store them on your computer (risking a computer crash), or you can store them, and then back them up to somewhere else.  If you want to share your pictures, an online photo storage site is definitely worth considering.  This particular post looks at a couple of the top places for photo storage, and provides a little compare and contrast.

For my purposes, I'm mainly concerned with storage capability, file size limitations, and ability to download the originals when I'm done.  Although many of the sites offer other abilities (such as the ability to edit photos, or to share with friends, etc.), I have photo editing software, and am not particularly interested in the social aspects of the sites.  That said, your preferences may differ - but I am mainly interested in whether I can store all of my photos, whether I can store the full photo (full resolution photos can easily top 5MB nowadays), and whether the site stores the original file, and if I can get it back without too much effort.

Flickr (www.flickr.com) is one of top photo sites, and with good reason - a free terabyte of storage, no limit on file sizes for uploads, and you can download your original photos at any time.  You can set your account to only be accessible to you, your friends, or everyone, and there are further privacy options available if you only want to share select photos, for example.  Flickr has mobile apps as well, so you can upload from your phone or email, and you have the ability to tag or otherwise categorize photos.  The one downside that I can see is that you can only download one photo at a time, although there may be user created programs which have a way around this.

Shutterfly (www.shutterfly.com) is another popular option.  I don't like it as much as Flickr, for reasons that will become clear shortly.  It wins on the storage front, as they offer unlimited storage.  They also do not restrict file size, so that's easy, and they also offer multiple ways for uploading.  The point which concerns me most is that you can't download your original photos, you have to pay Shutterfly to burn a disc and send them to you.  You can share for free, and you have the ability to put photos into albums, but the fact that I have to pay to get my own photos back is a bit of a deal-killer, especially when compared to Flickr.  As full disclosure, they do allow you to download compressed versions which should still be suitable for printing in sizes up to 8 x 10, but at this juncture, I'm simply more concerned with the ability to restore.  You may consider it worthwhile, as the rest of the options are free.

Picasa is the Google entrant to the field, and it may very well be worth a spin.  I was initially put off by the insistence that Picasa be part of the Google+ experience, and in the end, surprisingly, it may be the lack of clarity in the interface and how exactly the whole thing works that ends up being the biggest negative. I say surprisingly, because Google, of all companies, ought to know better, but seems determined to make your photo storage a social experience.  From what I can tell, Google allows you to upload the original file at full size and download at full size, but only provides 15 GB of free storage, after which you have to pay.  In this day and age, that's peanuts.

For the time being, I'm voting for Flickr.