Amazon adds unlimited cloud photo storage for Prime members
Subscribers to the $99-per-year Amazon Prime service can now back up their entire photo collection at full resolution, including iPhone photos via a dedicated iOS app.
Amazon Prime Photos, using the online retailer's Cloud Drive service, was officially launched on Tuesday. Cloud Drive offers secure online storage and automatic photo backup, allowing users to access their entire photo collection on any device.
With the accompanying Amazon Cloud Drive Photos application, users can enable automatic photo backup with the "Auto-Save" feature. The app also allows pictures to be shared on Facebook, through email and in other apps.
Amazon Prime Photos can also be added to and viewed via Android devices, Fire tablets and Fire phone, and Mac and Windows computers. Users can also view photo collections from Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and select LG and Samsung smart TVs.
Photos are stored to the Amazon Cloud Drive in their full, original version, meaning the images aren't compressed and no quality is lost.
"This time of year in particular, families are capturing thousands of photos of holiday parties, family gatherings and opening presents," said Greg Greeley, Vice President Amazon Prime. "With free unlimited photo storage, we're providing one more reason for members to use Prime every day. Prime has always allowed members to conveniently save time and save money, and now with Prime Photos they can save memories too."
The Amazon Cloud Drive Photos app also offers 5 gigabytes of free cloud storage space for users who are not Prime subscribers.
Amazon Prime Photos, using the online retailer's Cloud Drive service, was officially launched on Tuesday. Cloud Drive offers secure online storage and automatic photo backup, allowing users to access their entire photo collection on any device.
With the accompanying Amazon Cloud Drive Photos application, users can enable automatic photo backup with the "Auto-Save" feature. The app also allows pictures to be shared on Facebook, through email and in other apps.
Amazon Prime Photos can also be added to and viewed via Android devices, Fire tablets and Fire phone, and Mac and Windows computers. Users can also view photo collections from Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV Stick, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and select LG and Samsung smart TVs.
Photos are stored to the Amazon Cloud Drive in their full, original version, meaning the images aren't compressed and no quality is lost.
"This time of year in particular, families are capturing thousands of photos of holiday parties, family gatherings and opening presents," said Greg Greeley, Vice President Amazon Prime. "With free unlimited photo storage, we're providing one more reason for members to use Prime every day. Prime has always allowed members to conveniently save time and save money, and now with Prime Photos they can save memories too."
The Amazon Cloud Drive Photos app also offers 5 gigabytes of free cloud storage space for users who are not Prime subscribers.
Comments
Yay! Now I can have all my personal photos analyzed by a company that exists to whore me out!
Not true.... Amazon will save a cutie like you for themselves... And possibly a few friends... Googles the Mac daddy pimp.
Cloud storage is now a race to the bottom as far as prices go.
Maybe Google and Amazon will start paying us to upload stuff and fine us when we don't take enough pictures.
Like I said before, I would not want to be a small player in this field.
Yeah. I want to trust my precious memories to a company that cuts corners to the bone to barely eek out profit.
Laughable.
I don't think it'd be that hard to write an app that embeds any type of data in a jpeg format and store "infinite" data on their servers.
Even if they catch on and start filtering "acceptable" images, you can still embed the data at a reduced rate so their filters can't find it....
Is Amazon profitable (see the link or see the synopsis of the most recent quarterly "earnings" below)?
Amazon.com Announces Third Quarter Sales up 20% to $20.58 Billion
I am no financial wizard but Amazon doesn't seem profitable given the preceding statements.
I am very impressed by Amazon's ability to lose money. As exceptional as Amazon is at losing money they seem to be improving at losing money.
Disclosure: I am an Amazon Prime subscriber (not necessarily because I really want to be but because they have exclusive deals for a few television shows that I occasionally watch).
Great benefit for existing Prime members. Photo backup is very space consuming. I already have a local backup but having a remote cloud backup is more peace of mind. I think I have close to 100GB of photos, so this is a significant benefit if you are already a Prime member. I like the fact that they support so many sources, ios, Win, Mac, etc.
Amazon Cloud photos is not bad. Haven't been too impressed the Photo Library although it's in Beta so I'm reserving judgment.
Truth be told i'm looking to move off of Cloud Storage as primary or secondary storage. I view it as tertiary storage at best. When I can get 4TB drives for $130 I don't see the need for my photos to be all in the Cloud (locked down).
I'm keeping my eye on where Transporter series is going. They have a 5 Bay chassis coming and now is the time for a developer to deliver a great app that gives people the privacy and control they want.
The Cloud makes sense in many business context but for consumers it delivers increase latency, loss of control and a massive point of failure (internet) for access.
I laugh in the face of their 5GB free. Hahaha
It is very fast. I have 50 MB/s upload and I just popped up a bunch of 5K images and they went up ion the blink of an eye. They were already exported from Aperture as jpegs. These are 5.472 x 3.648 pixels. I tested a RAW image as Flickr now converts RAW to jpeg which is useless to me. Amazon doesn't , it retains the RAW data and displays it, however it is brutally slow and displays the RAW image's preview it generates . Amazon don't create a preview from the RAW and save it though for fast viewing. It recreates one each time you view. So transitioning from a jpeg to jpeg is fast but each time I hit my RAW test it takes ages as it obviously is generating a new preview. I also noticed the date was unreadable by Amazon on the RAW images so it tagged it as no date.
Given I have half a TB of RAW images this isn't the solution for my back up. However for jpegs it seems very nice especially for a Prime Member.
If just jpegs it seems very good. As easy to use as Flickr it seems.
Yep Free unlimited at Apple and support from within Aperture RAW or better yet Vaults would be nice. /sigh
Mostly RAW. Crash Plan does save versions indefinitely. Deleted files too. I will have to see if Amazon matches this.
I don't think it'd be that hard to write an app that embeds any type of data in a jpeg format and store "infinite" data on their servers.
Exactly. Any binary data can be encoded in to an image. They are effectively giving you free storage for whatever you want. Of course you can get a 4TB hd for under $200 anyway so most people probably wouldn't be bothered.
My test with RAW and Amazon was not good, very slow and recreates previews each and every visit to same image. You'd be there all day to look at ten images. These are only 25 MB images out of my 70D. I would not dare imagine using some HDR images I have a lot of that are >100MB. Yet they allow them up which is surprising. I would expect a system that converts RAW to jpeg and you'd be stuck with that.
Interestingly I was able to create a new folder and it happily uploaded a zipped RAW and didn't try to display it in the library and it was fast. I wonder what the file size limit is there?
EDIT: Holy Moly ... it happily uploads Aperture libraries and zips them on the fly!
I will be pointing my 16.2 Megapixel DSLR at a box of kittens.
I will set the camera to take a picture every 2 seconds and save it directly to my Amazon Cloud Drive.
Thanks Jeff!
I just tested a small Aperture Library. Only 2 GIGs. It uploaded in a few minutes. I am impressed. I can leave my 490 GIG one uploaded tonight. I just passed the 5 GIGs mark in a few tests.
You also don't want to be without device integration. At some point the cost of cloud storage will be subsidized by device sales. Cloud subscription prices will drop to zero, and only device makers can afford to offer 24/7 cloud services and perpetual storage for "free."
In other words: Dropbox had their chance to join Apple but that option is closed.