Storage and Sharing: The Digital Album
Pixels in the Clouds are a storage and sharing solution for digital albums. Once, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the photo album was a memory holder for households and families. A traditional photo album had pages of plastic sleeves that held printed photographs. Album after album, they were filled with pictures of life events, new babies, vacations, graduations, engagement parties, weddings, anniversaries, everyday barbeques, parties, and other days worth photographing.
Unlike this age of smartphones, a photo was an investment, taking one was a decision-based expense. Traditional picture-taking required a camera (not everyone had one), film, development, and time. Film cost varied depending on the quality of the camera, and the number of exposures (pictures) on a roll. Developing (also called processing) was slightly more than the cost of the film with different levels of service.
The Hard Drive Album to The Cloud
The photo album was a practical way to organize, store, and share photos. The evolution was cosmetic rather than innovative. Digital photo storage has kept pace with the innovations of digital cameras and smartphones.
As the cost of the digital camera decreased, their popularity increased. The only way to continue the photo album concept digital memories would have to be printed. For every problem, a solution. Software became available to store, sort, and share digital photos. The virtual photo album took center stage in the world of digital photography. Digital pictures could be stored and shared on computer hard drives, removable disks, and thumb drives. The photo album had a virtual home.
Each innovation in digital photography led to the next generation of storage and sharing solutions. The smartphone with a built-in camera caused an explosion of digital photos. Thumb drives, removable drives, and hard drive storage solutions are limited and cumbersome to share. The advent of the space age requires cloud storage, a “limitless” virtual photo storage system with ease of access and shareability.
Where to Share
Traditional photo albums required physical presence to share cherished memories with others. The cloud storage of the digital age comes complete with virtual photo albums that can be shared anywhere. The cloud storage of digital photos can instantly be accessed by social media accounts. It is a practical solution for the explosion of digital photos.
The Digital Photograph Does Not Fade
The digital photography solution has also solved a problem that the film manufacturers either weren’t aware of or just failed to tell consumers that physical photographs fade. The memories may be forever, but physical photos degrade, the color fades, the paper disintegrates and of course, they are susceptible to being lost in floods, fires, and any number of disasters.
Digital cameras are evolving with new technologies. Keeping pace with the innovations of digital photography is storage and sharing platforms. The home television monitor can rotate digital photos accessed from cloud storage. Individual digital photos can be loaded to picture frames or TV monitors on demand.
The storage and sharing of photos have expanded exponentially from hard-bound albums to cloud storage. It is only the beginning of the innovations in the digital photo space as AR, VR, and AI become a fixture of everyday life.