If you’re a parent with a happy shutter finger, then you likely have more photos on your phone than you know what to do with. And if you’re like me, you’re probably running out of memory to keep them there.
Here’s what to do with all those photos taking up space on your phone.
Back them up in the cloud
Sure you could put the photos on your computer (and you should), but I want to have access to all of my photos at all times on my phone too. For that, I need a cloud service that offers an app for my phone.
There are two that I love – Dropbox and Amazon Cloud Drive. Both of them will back up your photos (and videos) automatically without you needing to do anything (just set it up once). And both give you access to all of your photos on your phone.
I use Amazon simply because they offer more options for adding additional space.
Dropbox gives you 2 GB free to start (plus another 3 GB when you start using camera upload). You can earn up to 16 GB for free by getting friends to join the service and doing a couple other things. But the cheapest paid option is $100/year for 100 GB.
Amazon Cloud Drive give you 5 GB free, but it has plans starting at just $10/year (for 20 GB). I’m on the 20 GB plan, but I know I can upgrade when I need more space.
Bonus: If you install the Google+ app and turn on “instant upload,” it will back up your photos to a private album in your Google+ account. I use this as a backup to my backup.
Share them
Photos are meant to be seen by other, not hidden on your phone.
There are plenty of places to share photos from your phone. I recommend Instagram. Just post the best of your photos. It’s not uncommon for someone to post several photos a day to Instagram, but one or two a day is ideal (here’s my feed). Use the tag #tbt (ThrowBack Thursday) on Thursdays and dig through your archives to share an old photo.
Other photo-sharing options include Flickr, Facebook, tumblr and Twitter.
The Shadow Puppet app lets you put together a slideshow of images along with voiceover to share with people via email. Picflow also makes a slideshow of your photos set to music (it’s made to work with Instagram’s 15-second video option).
Edit them
PicTapGo’s filter options.
There are dozens of great apps to edit photos. My current favorite is PicTapGo, which lets you easily crop and edit photos (using filters).
The app A Beautiful Mess lets you use filters, add fun fonts and hand drawn doodles to photos. I’m also a fan of Afterlight, iPhoto and Photoshop Express.
*See the bottom of this post for info on an app that gives you great options for taking and editing photos.
Combine them
Don’t like to overshare? Compile your photos into a monthly best-of photo using one of the many multi-photo apps available. My favorites are PicFrame (Apple and Android) and PicPlayPost. They both also allow videos.
I’ve also seen parents take a monthly photo of their kids and add text saying what the kid is into at that particular time in his/her life. I recommend the app Over for adding text to photos. The previously mentioned A Beautiful Mess allows you to add text too.
Print them
Photos printed using Printstagram.
I use Printstagram to print my favorites of my Instagram photos every few months. They also have an app to print photos directly from your phone.
You can print little books all the way up to posters. And my personal favorite: stickers.
*Bonus: My favorite photo app.
For iPhone users, if you’re still shooting using the Camera app, you’re really missing out. I’m a huge fan of the $2 ProCamera app.
It gives you tools such as vibration reduction, rapidfire burst, full-screen trigger, night mode and some really killer Photoshop-like editing tools.