dotphoto

How do you preserve your digital photos?

How do we preserve our stuff in the digital world?

Stefan Thomas forgot the password to his $220 million of Bitcoin. James Howells is offering his city $70 million to allow him to find his old Bitcoin hard drive in the dump. Experts estimates that 3.8 million Bitcoins are lost forever – about $122 billion at today’s price.

Even with fortunes at stake, we lose digital assets. One of the open secrets of digital photography is that – despite our commitment to our “precious memories” – most of us have flimsy strategies for protecting them. I own two broken terabyte drives, and I have tapes, discs, diskettes and cartridges that are questionable. Like 35mm films, players are rare even now.

In this new year, it’s worth considering a strategy for preserving a family’s collective memories. At dotphoto, we advocate a three-pronged approach that ensures convenient access and security in even extreme situations: Cloud, Personal Off-Site Storage and Print.

1. Cloud Backup

Cloud backup is historically the most reliable storage. dotphoto enables our Club, Family and other paid members to upload file sizes up to 30MB each. Unlike other sites, dotphoto does not downsize photos, so you’re preserving your original files – not 100K downsized versions with little image detail.

What about a “free” service? Besides the problem of routine downsizing and distracting advertising, formerly free services are changing. Google has announced photo storage plans of $1.99, $2.99 and $9.99 a month. The dotphoto Club Plan is only $1.67 a month for unlimited storage – and dotphoto does not monitor your habits and sell them to advertisers.

2. Personal Off-Site Storage
At dotphoto, you control your photos. Club and paid plan members can download and backup photos at any time. Simply enter an album, click on Organize and choose Download. We encourage you to keep a copy of your favorite photos in a bank deposit box, fire-proof safe or other secure place. You can create backups yourself, or use dotphoto’s SD Card Service to create an account backup. We recommend SD cards because they are used in most phones and cameras.

3. Print
Print remains one of the easiest ways to backup photos and convey meaning to the next generation. 4×6 prints and photo books are the most popular and inexpensive print backup tools. In addition to the pictures themselves, you may want to annotate the photo titles so that family members can understand the photos in the future. To edit photo titles in dotphoto, enter an album, choose Organize, choose Edit Titles, and tap Save Changes. You can also print titles directly on the back of 4×6 photos by choosing Print Options in MyAccount

You can design dotphoto books in any configuration, but a 12″x12″ book with 60 pages and six 4″x6″ landscape photos per page holds 360 photos. 4″x3″ photos in the same book expands the number to 720 photos per book. How to make a dotphoto book

Why Should I Have My Photos Printed? Part 2

In our previous blog, we discussed some benefits of taking advantage of our professional photo printing services. These included preserving your original vision and having a tangible keepsake that will stand the test of time, various platform differentials, unforeseen file conversions, and other circumstances that may compromise the quality of your captured memory. Now, we’ll explore a few more:

Improve Your Skill Set

We love working with those looking to preserve their fond memories in ways that can be physically held and dispersed among friends and family. However, our customer base also includes photographers looking to hone their craft, refine their business, and, ultimately, make the most out of their time spent doing what they love. If these apply to you, you can consider photo printing as another way to do all of that!

Printed photos show details you might have missed on your screen – especially small screens. The larger you print, the easier it is to pick up on technical issues and nuances that might otherwise have flown under the radar. Getting proof prints are an economical way to review your shoot! Since our printing services never compromise your image quality, we can provide you with the tools you need to sharpen your skills.

Personal Fulfillment

Take it from our satisfied customers – there’s something deeply fulfilling about seeing your meticulously crafted image on a beautiful print. After all, it’s the physical manifestation of your effort and creativity! When your prints transform pixels on your screen to tangible pieces of art, you can display them in your home, give them to friends and family, or offer them to clients. It’s satisfying to create and present beautiful prints.

While other photo services may be happy to take your money for standard printing not tailored to your needs, our team keeps your goals in mind. And unlike those subpar resources that may see you as a one-off customer, dotphoto believes in cultivating relationships.

With a subscription service, you’ll set up an account, create a personalized gallery of your existing photos that is easily accessible, and even make money off your photos! Yes, you can sell your photos online with a dotphoto subscription as well! Simply upload your pictures with a watermark, and dotphoto will handle your transactions, shipping, customer service, and even the setup of your online store.

We encourage you to pull out your camera and capture something amazing – all while keeping in mind the benefits of printing your photos in any size and application you may desire. For more information about photo and greeting card printing services through our subscription service, contact dotphoto today!

How can I make a canvas triptych on dotphoto?

A triptych is a three-panel piece of wall art that gives a sense of space and design to a room. Triptychs are often printed on canvas that stand out from the wall. Forests and outdoor scenes are attractive and fashionable on large walls.

Let’s say that you want to take a wide photo and divide it into three standard-sized 24″ x 36″ inch panels to create something like this train bridge over a river for your wall.

You may start with a panoramic image like this:

Before you upload the three images to dotphoto, you may want to “slice” your panoramic into images that will provide room to wrap around the frame, which is 1.5″ deep with another .75″ tacked on the back of the frame. That is, the photo wraps around about 2.25″.

The longest side of a dotphoto image can be 6000 pixels, so you would want the vertical side to be 6000 pixels, which must cover 36″ tall plus 2.25″ wrap at the top and bottom, for a total of 40.5″. The dots per inch (DPI), then, will be 6000/40.5 or 148 dpi. Set the total width of the image you will “slice up” to (24″ x 3 panels) + (2.25″ x 2 wrap on each side of the three panels) or 72″ + 4.5″ = 76.5″ X 148 dpi for a total of 11,333 dots wide. The internal wrap areas don’t add into the width total because they will overlap.

Once the image is the correct width, you can cut it into three pieces for the right, left, and middle. Each piece is 6000 tall by 4222 pixels wide. Upload the images and create your 36″ x 24″ vertical canvas wraps like this:

Standard-sized canvases like 20 x 30 and 24 x 36 are the least expensive ways to produce a triptych, but dotphoto also offers custom-sized canvases up to 44″ in our custom frame store. The custom frame store also offers Museum Wrap canvases that display only the image on the front and deep black bars on the sides.

If this seems confusing, give us a call or send your large image to triptychs@dotphoto.com along with your account login, and we will help set up your order.

Share Your Holiday Memories Digitally With dotphoto

The best gift during the holiday season will be the memories that you make with your loved ones. Once you’ve captured these moments, you will need a way of keeping them preserved for years to come. Storing them on your phone or camera will do you no good, as they’ll just get buried among all the other pictures you take. The easiest way to store all of your photos and have them easily accessible is through an online file storage and sharing database, such as dotphoto!

With a dotphoto subscription, in addition to our photo printing services, you have unlimited storage space to keep all of your photos in one convenient location. Once you have them there, you can do whatever you please with them! You can share them with your loved ones, sell them to others online, and edit them as needed!

Watch this brief video to learn more about our online photo storage services:

Sharing photos online through us gives you creative options to display your memories however you want. We can put your images into a video or slideshow that can easily be shared through email, social media, and other platforms. You can even turn your pictures into memes in our photo editor! Best yet, you can customize your privacy options on all of your images – so the most special moments can either be kept between a few close members of your family or on display for the world to see.

While online file storage is the most convenient way to keep all of your pictures easily accessible, the one downside is the steep price that most websites charge you for their subscriptions. Most of the big-name platforms will put you out well over $100 per year just to keep your membership active. Comparatively, dotphoto’s services – including photo printing, sharing, storage, gifts, and even sales – are available to you for as low as only $19.99! With all the service options that come with a dotphoto subscription, you are getting a bargain price!

This holiday season, don’t let your memories get lost. Store your photos online with your dotphoto subscription, or give the gift of photos to a loved one by sharing your photos online with them or gifting them a subscription. To learn more about how to get started with your dotphoto subscription