Cloud Storage for Photographers

In this article, I will explain cloud computing in very simple terms and talk about cloud storage for photographers – what it can offer to us now and in the future, and whether we should be taking advantage of it today.

What is Cloud Computing?

Here is an oversimplified explanation of cloud computing. Imagine a large company that employs many contractors, ready and available to work for you any time you want them to. You can hire only one contractor if you are not busy, or you could hire many contractors at once during your peak season, without having to employ them on a permanent basis. Just like your electricity bill, your costs stay low when your business is slow and increase on demand automatically when you get busy, so you only pay for the contractors you actually use. The contractor that you release from work goes to work for somebody else, so his time is not wasted doing nothing. A single contractor could work on several jobs for you and other companies simultaneously and his employer takes care of him, making sure that other contractors help him out if he is overloaded. The company is happy, because it uses their staff efficiently through resource sharing and you as a customer is also happy, because you only pay for what you actually use. You do not know or care about how those contractors are employed, what their shifts and schedules are and how much the company is paying them. All you know is that they are available for you any time you need them at a flat rate. If the demand for contractors grows, the company that employs them can get many more on their payroll to match the demand. So if you are successful and your business expands very rapidly, the company will be able to provide enough resources to match your growth.

Cloud Storage

As I pointed out in the beginning of this article, local backup storage comes with many potential problems. It is expensive to buy and maintain, requires your availability to take care of problems when they occur and is prone to misuse, theft, accidents and natural disasters. It also requires some technical know-how to set up, operate and automate it for backup purposes. Lastly, backup storage needs to be properly sized and should have enough capacity for growth. What if you had the ability to backup your data to an offsite location, had unlimited storage and never had to worry about backing up that storage or maintaining it when it fails? That’s when cloud storage comes into play – it can virtually provide unlimited storage with a very low risk of potential failure.

Cloud Storage Problems and Limitations

Before I talk about my backup strategy and how I use cloud storage, let me first talk about cloud storage problems and limitations. First of all, forget about using cloud storage as your only storage – meaning cloud storage cannot replace your computer hard drive, at least not yet. If you are running out of space and need more storage for your photographs, your have two choices: either expand your hard drive space by buying larger internal hard drives, or buy expensive external storage solutions from companies like QNAP and Drobo that can be attached to your computer via network or USB/firewire cable. Cloud storage at this point should only be used for backup purposes, mainly due to speed limitations between you and the cloud. Unfortunately, many photographers do not understand the fact that their upload bandwidth is often capped below 1 Mbit by their ISP, which is very low for uploading massive amounts of data. I have seen cases where photographers moved large numbers of files into their Dropbox folder, then reformatted their computers without letting Dropbox fully synchronize the folder with the cloud. Obviously, the majority of their files were lost forever due to their own stupidity and ignorance. So here is a summary of problems and limitations of cloud storage:

1. Cloud storage cannot be used as primary storage for your photographs today, so it should only be used for backup purposes.
2. Cloud storage requires good upload bandwidth to back up a many large files. If you want to back up your RAW and TIFF files, consider upgrading your bandwidth to allow for larger uploads, or back up your data to an external drive and store it in a different location. The situation you do not want to be in, is synchronization not being able to complete before you dump more data into your working folder.
3. Restoring your files from cloud storage will also require good download bandwidth if you want to do it quick.
4. Although there is a very low risk of data loss on the cloud, I highly recommend against using it as primary backup. Hard drives are cheap, so you should back up your data locally first. There were cases where people lost their Flickr accounts due to operator error without the ability to restore their photographs.
5. Cloud storage is typically much more expensive than local storage for large amounts of data. If your photo library is over 500 GB, it will probably be cheaper to keep it offsite locally.
6. Some cloud storage providers limit the maximum size of files you can upload to their system. For example, Flickr limits image sizes to 20 MB for Pro accounts.
7. Access to files is sometimes restricted to a certain web page. If you use public/community cloud storage, you can only access your files through their website. Because of this, you will probably see ads and the company can change photo presentation format any time they want.

Conclusion

Without a doubt, cloud computing is the future. But is it the future for photographers? Will it ever replace your hard drives and become your primary storage with automated backups? Until bandwidth issues are eliminated (which will take many years), I do not see how it will. In a perfect world, I would love to have fast gigabit access to the Internet for downloads and uploads from home. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a cloud version of Lightroom or Aperture that you could launch directly from the Internet and all your files were stored on the cloud? The speed of your computer would not matter and you could work on your images from a device like the iPad, because you would not need local processing power or storage. Perhaps I am looking too much into the future, but the possibilities with cloud computing are endless.

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