Save Digital Photos

SKILL LEVEL 1

by Dayna Del Val

Long gone are the days of shooting a roll of photos and waiting a week for them to come back from the lab, only to be disappointed by the blurry, finger-in-the-way, “who took that?” pictures. Thanks to digital cameras, now you can instantly view every shot and either save or delete it (not to mention splicing your head onto Taylor Swift's body). That’s great, but now the question is how to save digital photos for future generations?

Freelance writer Dayna Del Val does not fancy herself to be particularly technically or photographically savvy, but she is interested in preserving the few decent shots she has taken over the years.

1 Skill level
1 out of 5
4 Steps
8 Materials

Step 1 Back up

Don’t trust your camera to hold the photos you love most. At the very least, copy them onto your computer's hard drive. Remember, however, that computers can crash, and the information on the hard drive can be lost forever. Viruses can also infect your folder of photos.
For those reasons, it's best to have an external hard drive where you periodically save your digital photos. That way, if your computer dies or is stolen, you have every photo on file. Because external hard drives can also break down, leaving you with nothing to show for all your responsible backing-up, have two external hard drives so you can back up your backup. They're not very expensive and hold an amazing number of photos. The likelihood of both hard drives going at the same time is almost nil.
Step 2 Burn copies

Burn multiple CDs or DVDs of your digital photos. Beyond being a physical copy of your photos, they also make great gifts and are a slim storage device. Store them in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight. They don’t have a permanent shelf life, however; humidity, extreme temperatures and time can damage them.
Step 3 Store online
Save digital photos online at a site like Snapfish, Kodak,or SugarSync. But bear these points in mind:
- On-line services can be accessed from any computer, but if you have a large number of photos or large files to upload, the process can be quite slow.
- If the company goes under, you might lose access to your account.
Step 4 Make prints

Granted, prints take up space and are subject to deterioration. But printing special photos is one more way to preserve them for posterity. Store them in an acid-free album or box.