Remember when you’d only take photos on a special occasion? Maybe you bought a disposable camera or a role of film (or even two!). Anyway, however many photos you took, it was easy to organize them in a physical photo album.
Fast forward 10 years or more and digital cameras (and more specifically smartphones) have completely revolutionized how we take photos in many ways, but in particular the number of photos. Now keeping thousands of photos organized is a tough business. Being able to quickly find that one photo from that great occasion or look at those events becomes more difficult the more photos that you have.
Step in Loom (and some good practices).
What Is Loom?
Loom is currently an Apple only solution (with more apps on the way for other platforms). Loom offers you 5GB of free space (and an extra 500mb for each person who signs up with a link you share like this one.) and low prices for 50GB and 250GB of space at 3.99 and 9.99 a month (on top of that Loom gives you 17% reduction for paying yearly).
Not only that, but Loom provides background uploading of all your photos so that you don’t have to even open the app to let it upload photos. However, Loom is clever in that this happens more often when you have it plugged in and or are connected to wifi rather than cellular signals.
All in all, this results in opening up space in your devices, especially your iPhone or iPad, but even your Mac as well. If you combine this with a pattern of organizing your photos regularly with albums for months and special events, then it becomes a lot easier to access any photo on any device at any time.
The Bad News
Yup, there is some bad news. Although you get 5GB free, after that you do have to pay. When you compare the prices to any alternative provider of standard cloud storage it’s far better, but there is still a cost if you are going to use it for large quantities of photos.
It is also an Apple only system with a web app.. This means if you have an iPhone or iPad and a PC then you can upload your photos no problem. Well, you have to use the web browser on your PC and it’s not an automatic upload service, but you can upload the photos you choose. If you have an Android device, then you’ll just have to wait for this service to come.
If you are still interested in signing up for Loom, then please consider using my link, so I can get more free space (or use this link if you don’t want me too and still want to sign up). 🙂
Gus says
I just don’t see how this is better than using Flickr?
Chris Wilson says
There are a few factors Gus, Flickr doesn’t offer automatic uploading from the mac unlike loom and it is primarily a social network focusing on sharing photos whereas loom is a closed system intended for only the user to view their photos. I’d agree that Flickr has some real advantages in some areas (1tb for free being the most notable) but generally I don’t like giving my data to social networks unless I am happy with them sharing it. No matter how private I think it is there’s always a risk they will turn around and change the rules. But that’s me.