Picture-perfect ways to back up your photos

If you're over a certain age, you probably remember the traditional way of backing up photos — sticking them in a box and storing it in the closet. If you were really organized, you put them in an album.

Now we have to find excuses to actually print pictures since today's photos likely exist digitally.

But digital photos are a big responsibility. Your parents could find those boxes and show you old photos in less than five minutes. In 20 years, if your kids come over, where will they find your old digital pics?

Storing your photos with a company like Apple, Google or Amazon is a pretty safe bet. Most everyone takes pictures with their smartphones; for most people, it's their main camera.

Both Apple and Android (Google) offer online photo storage to back up your photos. iPhone users get 5 gigabytes of free storage when they sign up for an iCloud account. That storage can be used to back up photos from any iOS device or any photos uploaded from your computer.

Extra storage can be purchased. Bumping that storage to 50 gigabytes costs 99 cents per month; 200 Gb costs $2.99 per month and 2 terabytes costs $9.99 per month. The larger two plans can be shared if you have family sharing set up.

Google allows unlimited storage for Android users if they are willing to allow Google to downsize their largest photos. If users want to store their images at their original resolution, they'll get the first 15 Gb for free, but if they have more to store, they'll have to pay. A 100 Gb plan costs $1.99 per month, while one terabyte costs $9.99 per month.

Both Apple and Google offer apps to help upload images from all your devices.

If you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, one of the Prime benefits is free unlimited photo storage. In fact, you can share that unlimited storage with up to five other people in a family group.

Amazon has apps for iOS and Android devices. Windows and Mac users can use the Amazon Desktop App to upload their photos.

Of course, anything you do to back up your photos is better than nothing. Backing up your hard drive or copying the photos folder in your home directory to a flash drive and storing it somewhere safe is a good start.