Picture perfect: how to take, store and print photos from your phone

theguardian.com:

Photos are precious records of our lives, and as the summer kicks off many of us will be adding to our collection as we enjoy holidays and celebrate special occasions.

For many of us, however, these pictures end up locked on our phones, taking up storage and at risk of loss.

Without proper and timely backups – or printed copies – a smashed, stolen or accidentally wiped phone could instantly wipe out snaps of your child’s first birthday, that once-in-a-lifetime trip or just that picture you love enough to make your wallpaper.

We’ve had a look at the best options for storage and printing, how much they cost and what you get for your money – and have a guide to how to take photos you will want to keep.

More than just ensuring treasured memories are safe, backing up your photos makes them much more accessible from computers, tablets and even digital photo frames. Also, it can free up space on your phone so that you no longer have to continually delete things to make it work.

It is extremely easy and there are many different options available from a range of companies, starting from the princely sum of free. The best will use an app to automatically upload your photos from your phone to secure cloud storage.

From there you can view them on apps and the web, meaning you can carry around access to every photo you have ever taken and relive memories at any time. However, there are other options if you would rather store them on your phone or device, or curate which ones are saved, or make some public or even sell them.

Four of the best cloud photo backup systems are made by the traditional tech firms, Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, most of which have a free tier and options to pay should you need more storage.

Backups from your