The One Place to NEVER Store Your Digital Photos

It’s very alluring.

What may seem like a convenient and free solution for storing unlimited numbers of your photos will in reality turn out to be a big hot mess and a significant source of stress.

Please…never, ever rely on a photo printing company to store or back up your photo library. You know the one, with the distinctive orange packaging that promises “free, unlimited secure photo storage”, where they’ll never delete your photos. That old adage about something sounding too good to be true is right yet again – here’s why.

Shutterfly is usually the first company that comes to mind for printing photo products, including everything from the traditional photo books, calendars, and cards, to the more unique products like custom photo socks. Yes, I have purchased from them in the past and still do for some items, including labels and calendars. (Not their photo books.) This is not a post to bash their company or any similar service, but you need to understand what happens to your photos when you upload them to their site. It is a very clever marketing tactic – you are far more likely to order from them if your photos are conveniently already in their system!

1. Your metadata is stripped.

What’s that? Metadata is all the identifying information in your photo – the date and time stamp, camera info, file name, and sometimes GPS or location data, to name a few. When you upload your photos to Shutterfly (also true for Facebook, Instagram, and many other sites), all this information is removed from your photo – at least it is when you retrieve it. Yes, you’re still able to sort by some dates within their system, but it does not stay with the photos. Why does this matter? See number 3.

2. It is an absolute nightmare to retrieve your photos.

The whole point of a backup system is to not only ensure that your photos are saved and secure, but also accessible and retrievable when you need them – all of them. It’s not a huge hassle to download one or two images, but it’s a very different story if you want to extract your entire photo collection. 

According to their website, “You can download photos one at a time or in batches of 500.” The default is high resolution, but full resolution (still without metadata) requires a separate request and is just complicated. These batches will be sent to your email as separate zip folders, then you’ll need to extract the individual files. Repeat, repeat, repeat…get the picture?

3. The result of numbers 1 and 2 is that your original photo files are gone, at least from this source. (Yes, the photos will “look” the same, but organizing them will be very difficult.)

You will never be able to restore your original images with all their important identifying information, BUT hopefully you have your photos saved in another location.