UGREEN is becoming quite the force in the world of NAS drives. Now boasting two series of drives, the entry-level, budget-friendly, personal cloud DH series and the high-performance, prosumer DXP series, UGREEN offers a wide range of products to suit most types of users.

The UGREEN NASync DH2300 belongs in the DH series and is a super compact two-bay NAS that functions as a private cloud. This makes it a particularly attractive alternative to paying for monthly Google One or iCloud subscriptions.

It's also a fantastic entry-level NAS for photographers who want a cheap backup solution and the ability to quickly dump large shoots via high-speed USB-A and USB-C ports. Unfortunately, there's no built-in SD card slot though.

Its reliance on a standard Gigabit network port also means it's never going to be the ideal solution for streaming raw, multi-gigabyte image files directly off the server in real-time.

Its biggest strength for photographers and families alike is its intelligent built-in photo management app. Backed by a dedicated AI smart chip, the system automatically scans your catalog to recognize faces, objects, and scenes. Because all of this processing happens locally inside the box, your family photos and professional shoots are never uploaded to a corporate web server, which helps to guarantee privacy.

UGREEN NASync DH2300: Specifications

UGREEN NASync DH2300: Design & Handling

The UGREEN NASync DH2300 is a sleek, minimalist, and aesthetically pleasing unit. The design and color choices follow firmly in line with almost all other UGREEN devices, from power banks to chargers. The modern design sets it apart from many other NAS alternatives which are chunky, industrial, and purely functional.

In terms of materials, UGREEN has chosen a plastic chassis styled in a two-tone gray palette. There's no metal in sight, and you can tell that as soon as you pick it up. I'd count this as a positive in terms of weight but a negative in terms of robust build quality. It feels pretty cheap, but that's no surprise given the price.

The internal bay trays are hidden below the top removal 'hood' and are constructed of thin plastic, which meant I had to treat them with a lot of care when inserting the hard drives. If you weren't careful, then you could definitely snap something. The trays are able to house 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch drives, with the included screws providing stability.

Thermal management is built into the design with vent cutouts subtly integrated at the bottom of both the left and right sides, working alongside ventilation holes in the top panel and the base to maximize airflow and heat dissipation. I never experienced the unit getting too hot, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the design.

The front panel is kept pretty minimal with an on/off button, three light indicators, and a USB-C port. At the back there is an RJ45 port, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and the DC power port. All in, it's a really nice design that's only let down by the budget materials.

UGREEN NASync DH2300: Performance

This is my first experience of using a UGREEN NAS drive, and having experienced a number of other brands, I think UGREEN has absolutely nailed the setup and software experience, especially when we're considering users who are unfamiliar with NAS.

I was able to get the NAS setup in less than ten minutes simply by plugging it into a power source, connecting it to my router, inserting my hard drive, and navigating through the easy-to-follow user guide.

I loved the ability to discover the NAS device through a variety of different methods. I opted to download the dedicated client via the UGREEN downloads page, and after a few simple procedures I was up and running quickly. My experience fills me with confidence that beginners to NAS technology will be absolutely fine.

The NAS can also be discovered via a browser or even with NFC detection on an NFC-enabled phone. UGREEN really has done a good job of making the NAS work with a variety of different devices and operating systems to make it a genuine alternative to existing familiar media backup solutions.

The DH2300 is powered by an 8-core Rockchip RK3576 processor and 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM, which makes it both snappy and efficient. It also features a Mali-G52 GPU and dedicated 6 TOPS NPU which comes into its own when transcoding for H.264, H.265, and AV1, alongside smooth 4K output via HDMI 2.1.

We all care about transfer speeds, and the DH2300 maxes out its single 1 GbE network port, delivering consistent real-world transfer speeds of roughly 110 MB/s to 115 MB/s for sequential reads and writes. These speeds are okay for backup and retrieval, but I wouldn't rely on it to stream footage for video editing, especially if it's 4K in size. For that you'll want a device that can deliver around 300 MB/s to 400 MB/s.

The UGREEN NASync DH2300 features a native Photos app that uses a built-in NPU for local AI-driven image processing. As a result, users can take advantage of facial recognition, object detection, and OCR text extraction tools. It also includes an intelligent cleanup tool for identifying duplicate or blurry photos to optimize storage.

During operation, the NAS is incredibly quiet, so you'll hardly notice it's there. You could even put it in a space you use regularly, and it'll blend into the background. It also draws just 10 to 15 watts of power, which means it's economical to run too.

UGREEN NASync DH2300: Final Verdict

The UGREEN NASync DH2300 is a superb, budget-friendly entry-level NAS that serves as an excellent private cloud alternative to costly subscriptions. It features a sleek design and an incredibly easy setup process that takes less than ten minutes via app, browser, or NFC.

Its biggest strength for families and photographers is its local, AI-driven photo management app, which automatically sorts images while keeping your data entirely secure and private at home.

Unfortunately, its low price point comes with notable hardware compromises. The lightweight plastic chassis and internal trays feel cheap, and performance is bottlenecked by a standard 1GbE port that limits transfer speeds to around 115 MB/s. This makes it too slow for serious, real-time 4K video editing.

Lacking support for M.2 NVMe drives, Docker, and virtual machines, this NAS also offers very limited scalability, meaning power users and tech enthusiasts should look elsewhere.

AWS, Amazon's cloud computing business that powers around at third of the internet, announced last week that three of its facilities in the UAE and Bahrain were knocked out by drone strikes.

The strikes, a result of the US/Israel-led action against Iran, were initially described as the facilities being hit by 'objects' before a little more clarity emerged.

So what got hit, and why worry?

An AWS (Amazon Web Services) data center was hit, creating 'sparks and fire', while indirect damage in Bahrain still caused power outages. The fires were then treated ''in some cases, required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage'' according to a report by the BBC.

Why worry? Well I know that some family members have experienced some slower downloads this week, though I can't say for sure these things are connected, and other people I know have had to flee the region so internet problems seem a little less significant by comparison to attempting to get out of the path of missiles and the shrapnel scattered by even successful air defence systems.

But the fact weapons were targeting these facilities says a lot about AWS's significance to the modern world (and that some perceive it as a backbone of the Western world).

AWS acts as the backbone for major platforms like Netflix, Reddit, Twitch, and LinkedIn, meaning a significant amount of daily web traffic passes through its servers. It is estimated that they hold a total of 500 trillion files, in the order of 2 zetabytes.

That means that the cloud storage server you use to store your files – your photos and videos – might well just be a 'front' for AWS systems, that they buy and use as and when they need them.

Amongst the big names that use AWS for data storage are:

• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Dropbox (though most is on its own infrastructure)
• SmugMug
• Apple (though it also has many of its own data centers)
• NordLocker

Even companies that prefer to rely on their own infrastructure where possible tend to be, well, big. Google Cloud Platform – the equivalent system that Google use – would also seem a logical target to anyone shooting at

All of that is to say that there is still a lot to be said to being the master of your own data, especially at the moment.

But there are backups, right?

AWS do not publicly share the exact details, but estimates suggest that there are around 900 centers worldwide. Each center will have its own multiple backups (but of course all a vulnerable at once in an event like a missile strike).

Systems divide these into zones – a big city like London might have three – and each piece of data is automatically copied into at least three zones, so three places, to protect against a catastrophic failure.

Worldwide companies might get extra copies by having more than one location, each getting the three copies.

The upshot is that data gets around 99.999999999% (famously called 11 nines) durability, and the system can even self heal if multiple centers fail simultaneously, automatically copying fragments to remaining centers. Losing an entire zone is a difficult situation though, and data can take minutes or hours to rebuild as data is shunted around the world.

So perhaps I should store some of my own data?

There is always a lot ot be said for having some of the best SSDs and the best external hard disks for local storage – they are much faster for immediate working too.

The Black Friday camera deals have already started - but one of the best offers for photographers and videomakers is the Adobe Black Friday sale where you can get the full Creative Suite for half price. Wherever you live in the world, they are offering a huge sale on the full Adobe CC suite - giving you access to Photoshop, Lightroom, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and many more creative apps.

You can pick up a subscription to the industry-leading suite of creative software, as Adobe is offering 50% or more off a CC subscription.

The bargain subscription applies to the whole Adobe Creative Cloud suite, which includes everything you'd ever need to get creative with your photos and video.

The deal includes over 20 apps (see the full list below), from Adobe After Effects to Adobe XD. What's more, you'll be able to get creative with the recent tablet-based art apps Adobe Fresco, and Photoshop on iPad.

Black Friday Adobe deals in US

Black Friday Adobe deals in Canada

Black Friday Adobe deals in the UI

The full list of programs that come with Adobe Creative Cloud All Apps plan are: Acrobat Pro, After Effects, Animate, Audition, Bridge, Capture, Character Animator, Comp, Dimension, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Fonts, Fuse, Illustrator, Illustrator Draw, Illustrator Line, InCopy, InDesign, Lightroom Mobile, Media Encoder, Muse, PhoneGap Build, Photoshop, Photoshop Express, Photoshop Fix, Photoshop Lightroom Classic, Photoshop Mix, Photoshop Sketch, Portfolio Prelude, Premiere Clip, Premiere Pro, Premiere Rush, Preview, Scout, Spark, Stock, Story and XD.

All the apps are fully integrated, meaning you can switch between them easily, whether you're working in the studio, or on the move. What's more, the apps come with templates that'll aid you in getting started, and tutorials to help you to hone your creative skills.

I wanted to leave Adobe Creative Cloud because it's expensive. The thing is, I'd also started to save some of my files into the 100GB of cloud storage included with the deal. I needed to download my files first, and store them – more cheaply – on one of my own drives. The problem? Adobe made the whole experience incredibly frustrating and difficult, and it took me days!

Now, I can't say for sure that this system is designed on purpose to prevent me from leaving – but it sure feels like it, and I'm definitely not alone in feeling this way.

One Adobe Community member called the system a "convoluted, labyrinthine nightmare." Another, kglad, explains that part of the problem is that it isn't even one system, so it's best to think of it as four locations with nothing in common. "If you try to think of these as one Adobe CC file 'feature' yes, it's a nightmare."

I eventually found that there were libraries, files and Lightoom – so that's three locations, at least.

But because it is presented as a single file system, that's what I thought it was, and that's where Adobe Community user mbs expresses my suspicion, saying, "They do it like this on purpose so you struggle to download your content and keep paying ridiculous prices for their incompetent devs."

"I agree!" says nyr.studio. "The only reason I haven't switched to another provider is that I don't want to download my 19,000 documents one by one."

Can you not even download multiple documents on Adobe Cloud?

I also found that downloading multiple files from the Adobe Cloud was not consistently allowed once I started. There are two means of accessing the system: the Cloud app, and through a browser. Both offer a similar view of your files, with a thumbnail grid or list view that can be toggled.

When I hovered the mouse over, an ellipsis (three-dot) icon revealed a menu that includes a download icon – but a lot of the time this disappeared for me when I tried to do multiple files. At least some of the time.

Other times I found that I could select files – more than one at a time using the checkmark box – but the first few times I did that, the 'Download' option immediately vanished as soon as a second file was selected. Other times it came back.

Then my photos were hiding – in Lightroom – which had lost them

Originally, I thought that after I'd extracted the files I'd be ready to go. And, after a few painfully tedious individual downloads, an option magically appeared to let me do more than one at a time. This started to work more easily.

I thought once I had no files in the cloud, I'd be able to extricate myself from the subscription… nope, not a bit of it. In fact, the Adobe app was still telling me that I had more files stored in the cloud than I was allowed, even after I'd deleted every file and appeared to have no files. Crazy, right?

Certainly not a usability masterstroke!

Had I ever even used Lightroom (as opposed to 'proper Lightroom', as I think of it, or Lightroom Classic as Adobe insists on calling it)? Ah, yes, I did try that once… guess I'd better have a look, which meant loading that app.

There I found I had uploaded 44,021 of my photos – and confusingly for me, my past self had also managed to create an album called "Full Photography Archive" which contained 36,008 of them. So it looked quite full for a bit, but… well, it wasn't all of them.

How can I extract these? After a lot of fiddling I found that you can select all and choose File > Export.

Oh, except it didn't work.

Even though the computer seemed confident that the capacity of my external drive (to which I was aiming the files) was not under threat, the system gave up, creating folders to put them in but not moving a single file.

I ended up trying again, going to the 'By Date' sub-section of 'All Photos'. Here are automatically created (?) folders for each year in which you have a photo, and a total. Apparently in 2024, I created a more reasonable 4,675 images.

Okay, I selected that group, selected all the images and began an export. Some 20 minutes later it passed 10% (467 files) but at least something was happening. I now have a method that will, if I persevere, enable me to close my Adobe account by the end of the week without losing my files.

The many ways Lightroom ate my files

I can't even begin to describe the bugs and problems I found with Lightroom (not Classic) once I worked out that some of my files could be there.

The main one was that it had, well, lost my files. Or the RAW files, anyway. It still seemed capable of dealing with most of the images one at a time, from some kind of stored preview, but it would not perform a batch export without one of several errors.

Even weirder, it would batch export JPEGs but when I tried more than a few hundred at once – no matter how much disk space I cleared – the computer claimed there wasn't enough room. I exported a batch of about 2,500 files and the final size was under 4GB, but I was told 140GB wasn't enough space.

If I did it in smaller runs (a month at a time, or, in fact, up to 1,935 files) it 'worked'. By which I mean it created export JPEGs, but still gave me the error about the original file being lost at Adobe's end.

Will I ever save files on the cloud again?

It's certainly not made me want to do it as the only way I store files. Cloud systems might have a lot of failsafes (you have to hope, at least) but, even with high-speed internet access, Adobe's system seems to be grindingly slow. Perhaps it doesn't want to help me move a lot of files?

I used SpeedTest to find I have a connection of about 118Mbps, which, even allowing for problems, should have got 4,700 files down in 15 minutes. I allowed an hour and a half before I had to close up and get my train, but guess what? It wasn't even halfway.

That's really frustrating, as I had to unplug and disconnect the external drive I was moving files to – which computers don't really like, as a rule. Certainly they complain about it, and I don't really want to give this software any more reasons to slow things down! Adobe, on the other hand, probably wants me to at least cling on for one more billing cycle…

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My friends here at Digital Camera World do keep a guide to the best alternative to Adobe Lightroom, which I think I'll be reading very soon! I've also realised that I can fit so many images on the best portable hard drive that there is very little reason to pay recurring fees!

December tends to bring with it a host of technological tools to look back on the year, from Spotify’s popular Wrapped feature to Instagram’s now nearly defunct Top Nine. Google Photos is the latest to launch a feature to look back on the year. Google Photos Recap is now populating across the memories section of the image storage platform – and promises some unusual insights.

Google notes that the Recap feature will include not just images from the year but insight into the last 12 months as well. The tool will highlight your “year in color,” a feature that aims to show the most-used color palate across 2024’s photographs.

The app will even try to tell you who made you smile the most, at least, in pictures. The Year in Smiles part of the Google Photos Recap will count your number of smiles and note who you smiled the most with. Google didn’t specify how the feature works – I hope it doesn’t spark any marital spats over smiling more in photos with the dog than with your spouse.

The Recap feature will also “reveal your top three personas” as it lists your 2024 Vibes. Google notes that the feature will also list your longest photo streak and the top faces that appeared most often in your images.

Google is also offering an AI-powered take on the year’s memory, but the Gemini feature is only available by invite only to users that have turned on Gemini-powered memories inside the app. Google notes that it's an “experimental feature” that won’t always be correct.

While Google Photos may ping you with a notification when your Recap is ready, users can also find it themselves. (Users that haven't saved enough photos over the year won't see the feature at all.) Inside the Google Photos app, head to Photos then scroll to the memory carousel to look for the feature. After December ends, the year-in-review can still be found by navigating to the December section on the Photos tab.

Photo-based apps attempts to recap the previous year have often been well-received. The question is, will it be as shareable as Instagram’s popular Top Nine, which lost essential features in 2021?

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Read more with the best photography apps, the best apps for organizing photos, or explore our top-rated smartphones cameras.

Apple is being sued for £3bn (US$3.8bn/AU$4.6bn) by UK consumer rights group Which? after it alleged the company has been forcing its customers to use its iCloud services.

The lawsuit claims that Apple has breached competition law by effectively locking millions of UK customers into its iCloud service, forcing them to accept price hikes. Price plans range from 99p ($1.25) to £54.99 ($70), and were raised by 29% last year.

Apple has rejected the idea that its services are anti-competitive and claims that users are not forced to use iCloud; however, if the lawsuit succeeds, around 40 million Apple customers could be entitled to a payout of roughly £70 each ($88).

iCloud is built into every Apple device and acts as the company’s cloud service, which lets people store photos, files, and other data safely on the device and backs up files.

Apple phone owners only get 5GB of storage for free, and need to pay for monthly plans to get more.

Which? claims that Apple branched competition law “by giving its iCloud storage service preferential treatment, ‘trapping’ customers with Apple devices into using iCloud.”

It says that Apple’s iOS mobile operating system “has a monopoly…and it is incumbent on Apple not to use that dominance to gain an unfair advantage in related markets, like the cloud storage market.”

It added that Apple has been encouraging people to sign up to iCloud “while simultaneously making it difficult to use the alternative providers, including because Apple does not allow customers to store or back up all of their phone’s data with a third-party provider.”

The lawsuit also adds that due to a lack of competition being allowed through, customers have been overcharged.

In a statement Apple said: “Our users are not required to use iCloud, and many rely on a wide range of third-party alternatives for data storage.

“In addition, we work hard to make data transfer as easy as possible – whether it’s to iCloud or another service. We reject any suggestion that our iCloud practices are anti-competitive and will vigorously defend against any legal claim otherwise.”

This is the latest in a line of accusations against big tech companies like Apple, Google, and Samsung concerning anti-competitive practices.

Most famously a landmark case in the US earlier this year saw a judge rule that Google holds an illegal and unfair monopoly over the search engine market. The company is now facing another anti-trust lawsuit, and may be forced to break up parts of its business.

Check out our guides to the best photo organizing software, and the best cloud storage for photos.

At the IBC 2024 convention in Amsterdam, Atomos announced a free-of-charge firmware update that enables any connected Ninja or Shogun to send footage directly to Dropbox.

As part of the collaboration with the cloud storage service, Atomos is also offering a 40% discount off a Dropbox Business or Business Plus Plan with the purchase of any new monitor or monitor-recorder until November 30 2024. 

Both Dropbox plans only require an internet connection, so this offer is being extended to purchases of all Atomos monitors and monitor-recorders, irrespective of whether they are cloud-enabled or not.

"We are excited by the partnership with Atomos to bring cloud-based video workflows from the camera directly to Dropbox. It makes it so much easier to shoot, share, edit, review and deliver," said Andy Wilson, Dropbox's senior director of new business solutions. 

It's part of Atomos' wider camera to cloud improvements in the new firmware, which also adds the ability to upload directly to Frame.io V4, enabling Ninjas and Shoguns to streamline workflow by bypassing Atomos Studio Cloud.

Along similar lines to the Dropbox offer, Adobe will offer a three-month free trial of the Frame.io V4 beta with the purchase of any new Atomos Connect, Shogun, or Shogun Ultra. 

"Camera to cloud has been a game-changer for video production, and we've been at the forefront of it," said Jeromy Young, Atomos CEO. 

"We're delighted to be working with industry partners like Adobe and Dropbox to bring even greater productivity to our customers."

In addition, until November 30, the Ninja Ultra will be available for just $719 (or local equivalent) with the Shogun Ultra available for $1,107 (or local equivalent), excluding local sales taxes. 

Take a look at our guides to the best video editing monitor, the best laptops for video editing, and the best cameras for filmmaking.

First teased during the Nikon Z6 III announcment, Nikon Imaging Cloud excited viewers, offering a brand new and entirely free cloud service for Nikon creatives. Now officially unveiled by Nikon, we have more details about the service and it's certainly doing its best to make Nikon cool again! 

Nikon states that Nikon Imaging Cloud is 'your new creative partner', creating a connection between the cloud app and the best Nikon cameras. At present, this entails three main functions - cloud storage, firmware updates, and most anticipated, exclusive image recipes. 

Above: The Nikon Imaging Cloud announcement video

Nikon has been winning back fans of late with some fantastic award-winning releases, and appealing to the younger generation with its retro-inspired Zf line. This looks likely to continue with the inclusion of what Nikon calls 'exclusive image recipes', which are essentially custom LUTs or film recipes. 

Nikon Imaging Cloud enables users to recreate their favorite film stock, preset, or experiment with a library of existing recipes from Nikon Creators, and upload it to their camera as a color profile. Up to 9 recipes can be uploaded directly from the cloud to a Nikon camera, providing endless creative freedom and experimentation. 

This will be music to retro camera fans' ears, as similar film simulation features like those on Fujifilm cameras, emulate shooting analog without the expense and hassle of using film. With Nikon's great dynamic range performance, I can't wait to see a Kodak Tri-x-inspired recipe!

In addition to being used as film simulations, the image recipes can also be used as LUTs for previewing color-grading on video-dedicated cameras. We have seen a successful example of this in Panasonic's Lumix Lab app. After Nikon acquired RED, we may start to see improved video features in future camera releases, and the option for LUTs via Nikon Imaging Cloud would be a very welcome one.

The second feature of the Nikon Imaging Cloud service will enable the user to automatically upload images from the camera to the cloud over a Wi-Fi connection. This works in three ways. It can auto-upload to the cloud enabling safe storage of your images even if your equipment gets damaged or lost, secondly, it can act as a vault for storing images for up to 30 days in the cloud, and lastly, it enables direct upload to third-party platforms such as Lightroom and Dropbox via Wi-Fi. 

The third major feature of the cloud service is firmware updates. Users are given an option for automatic or manual firmware updates, but gone are the days of downloading to a storage device, as it can now all be updated directly to your camera via a Wi-Fi connection. If you do opt to manually update the firmware, you will be notified of an update with a small yellow dot next to the tool icon in the camera menu. 

The Nikon Imaging Cloud sounds like a fantastic addition for Nikon creatives, particularly the introduction of image recipes which will be a huge hit with the younger generation looking to emulate film. 

Nikon Imaging Cloud is available now for free, however, it is currently only available for the Nikon Z6 III. It is scheduled to be rolled out to other Nikon mirrorless cameras in due course, but no specific release date has been announced. 

You may also be interested in our guides to the best Nikon camera, the best Nikon lenses, and the best retro cameras.

The WD My Cloud Pro Series PR2100 is part of Western Digital's Pro series of NAS enclosures. It provides two key areas of functionality: centralised backup, that is accessible from anywhere.

The enclosure includes two bays, which allows for a maximum of 28 TB of storage across two 14 TB drives. The drives are easily removable thanks to the quick release mechanism. 

All that is required to facilitate easy sharing, wherever you are in the world, is an internet connection. This is an ideal solution not just for providing a centralised storage solution for one person but also for teams of people, even if they're working around the world.

Compatibility across both Mac and PC makes it perfect for users working across different operating systems.

This device offers one-touch copying functionality thanks to the integrated copy button. This provides an incredible, straight-forward solution for backing up files without requiring interaction with any software. Compatibility with exFAT also means you can plug in a camera or an external hard drive like the My Passport drive and automatically offload everything.

WD My Cloud Pro Series PR2100: Specifications

WD My Cloud Pro Series PR2100: Design & Handling

A sand-blasted metal case is very pleasing to both the eye and the touch. The slightly more premium materials are an upgrade from common plastic alternatives and demonstrate part of what sets WD's professional series apart. The unit itself is compact enough to sit neatly out of the way.

The case is able to accept two drives, enabling a maximum storage capacity of 28 TB. The bays are 100% quick-release, which makes it convenient to swap drives out. I wasn't overly impressed by the mechanism, though, which was rather clunky. The doors must be closed for the drives to click into place, and this required an unnecessary amount of force.

Four illuminated buttons inform users of what is happening under the hood. The power button illuminates when on, and the lights under each bay let you know when they're busy. The final light is for the USB 3.0 port, a great addition for transferring files from flash drives.

The rear of the unit has some additional ports, including a secondary USB 3.0 port, a power supply port, and two gigabit Ethernet ports.

WD My Cloud Pro Series PR2100: Performance

The My Cloud Pro Series PR2100 performs incredibly well, thanks to the Intel Pentium N3710 quad-core 1.6 GHz processor and 4GB of RAM. This hardware does a great job of keeping all file types and sizes moving along relatively quickly but you're not going to be blown away by the speeds. I had the 4 TB setup, which included 2 x 2TB WD20EFAX drives.

We didn't experience any drop-outs on longer transfers and found the device to be both stable and reliable. We were able to transfer around 3GB per minute or a little less if that's a large collection of smaller files.

Whenever I mention NAS drives to people, they often glaze over in confusion. After I explain what they are, there is further confusion about how they would set them up. There are no such problems with the My Cloud Pro Series PR2100. WD provides a super easy-to-use wizard that intuitively leads you through the whole process. 

The interface also does a great job of letting users manage permissions. This is ideal for working within a team environment, and I would imagine even those who are not tech-savvy could work this side of things out.

This NAS performs well and has a host of great features that serve creatives well. It also works great as a passive backup device.

WD My Cloud Pro Series PR2100: Final Verdict

The WD My Cloud Pro Series PR2100is a reliable, capable, and easy-to-use NAS device. Everything from the design to the software interface is designed to make it easy for non-technical people to use. This is a win for most creatives who really just want to focus on the work at hand.

The drive is relatively affordable compared to its competition and the fact that it is compatible with both Max and PC will make it appealing to a wide audience. The Intel Pentium N3710 processor and 4GB of RAM provide enough power to keep your files moving.

Current cameras are packed with wireless tech from NFC, to Bluetooth, to WiFi – yet somehow connecting wirelessly to get your images and videos off many cameras continues to be a chore, with a jumble of half-baked apps.

But Sony has just announced a solution for any photographer or filmmaker out in the field who wants a fast, convenient way to send their content to an FTP server or Sony's cloud services – the Sony PDT-FP1.

This new portable data transmitter can connect directly to a Sony camera and beam any captured content using 5G, with a maximum upload speed of 1.1 GB/s and download of 8.1 GB/s.

Sony says the transmitter supports a wide range of bands including "domestic and international 5G millimeter wave band, Sub6 communication, standalone 5G communication, local 5G", so it can be used nearly anywhere in the world. The transmitter can also take two SIM cards (one regular and one eSIM) and can switch between them for the best signal or different locations.

The PDT-FP1 comes equipped with ports for USB Type-C, LAN, and HDMI (Type A). There is also an additional USB-C charging port so it is possible to power the device separately while also transferring data, which will come in especially handy for any livestreaming. 

Finally, there is a 1/4-inch screw hole for mounting the transmitter to a rig, with the transmitter weighing approximately 308g.that

The case houses a cooling fan and heatsink to keep the temperature of the transmitter at a minimum, while transferring files and should be possible to use in temperatures of up to 104ºF / 40ºC. This fan can be tweaked depending on your needs, and set to silent if you are concerned about it being picked up on any audio.

Is this a Sony Xperia phone in a cool new case? Yes, but no. At the European launch, journalists were told that it "It looks like, smells like a phone - but its not a phone". But is it clear that Sony has learned a lot from its launch of phones such as the Xperia Pro-I that had some very similar functionality.

A key point, we are told, is that this doesn't work as a phone - so you don't get calls on your camera screen when on assignment. It works as a dedicated device - and this also means it can be thicker than a standard phone, allowing for a built-in fan (that will allow you to live stream for 6 hours or more), and a built-in ethernet port.

The device runs on Android with a SnapDragon 8 processor inside - so you can download your own apps, as well as using the suite of software Sony is making to go with the device.

The transmitter has a 6.1-inch screen that can be used to display content from the camera, as well as live waveforms of upload speeds. There is a 256GB internal memory, although this can be expanded to 1TB with a microSD card for transferring files from a camera to before transfer. The PDT-FP1 is powered by a 5,000mAh battery, which Sony claims with enable up to 4 hours total transfer time when using 5G, and 600 hours of standby.

Following its launch in Japan in January, the Sony PDT-FP1 will go on sale in America and Europe from May for $1,100 / £1,150.

For more on Sony check out our guide to the best Sony camera and the best Sony lenses

If you have large image libraries, multiple maxed-out cloud storage accounts, or endless hard drives full of folders to navigate through when browsing your portfolio, then Mylio Photos is the photo management solution for you, and now it's free!

What's so great about Mylio? Well for starters; it has AI SmartTags, one library for a lifetime of images, options for easy social media import, duplicate files are automatically removed, the DeClutter tool finds visually similar photos from the same time and shooting locations, and you can filter your gallery using metadata. 

• Take a look at our picks of the best cloud storage for photographers

There has to be some sort of catch. There's no way this new photo app offers essentially free unlimited storage across multiple devices, right? But alas, it does. What started out as a free trial of Mylio has now been relaunched into the forever free Mylio Photos app, totally accessible, and extremely useful. 

More than just 'cloud storage', Mylio Photos could well be one of the best photo organizing softwares for keeping photographers on track of images and shoots, with no internet connection required, and without the need for clogging up your phone storage or exporting images between the best external hard drives.

The relaunch of this flagship software will kick off in mid-May, with major updates said to be expected this summer, pitched as the ultimate photo management solution for photographers and content creators. It will be available cross-platform and on multiple operating systems including macOS, Windows, iOS, and Android. 

The key idea behind Mylio is that users will be able to access all of their photos on all of their devices, at all times. With compatibility across an array of social media apps, plug-ins for Lightroom, and other editing software, plus the ease of connecting external hard drives and local storage mean that all of your images really are brought together in one place. 

There is the option of a Mylio Photos+ premium service for added security of your photos in the event of device loss or failure, and unlimited device connections for a price of US$99 annually, or as a US$9.99 billed monthly option, but there's no pressure to upgrade to this service unless you need the added benefits that it brings.

Mylio Photos actually works independently from the cloud, too, and the optional paid service allows your higher-quality files to be fetched on demand from your main device or hard drives and then displayed on your other space-limited devices. In simple terms; 1TB photo libraries can be optimized to just 1-2 GB for convenient storage on other devices, accessed through the Mylio Photos app. 

Founder and CEO of Mylio, David Vaskevitch, has shared that “When your photos are organized, you no longer have to worry about losing track of your important memories."

He continues, "This sense of control and order is empowering and reduces the stress that often comes with disorganization. We want to help people around the world organize, enjoy, and share their lifetime of photos, so we are relaunching Mylio Photos as a free app accessible to everyone.”

Mylio Photos will also feature Vault devices that users can set up, offering backup spaces for full-quality original image files to be stored, and Mylio ensures that editing through the app will be non-destructive, and the app's own collection of essential editing tools can be used, and automatically synced across devices, with the option to add industry-standard IPTC metadata that other photo applications can read. 

The option to be editing original raw photos and what Mylio calls its own invention, "Smart Previews" on your mobile device is desirable to a lot of photographers, and catalogs can be created through the app to store your most often used albums in higher quality than others to save space - all offline too. Editing on public transport just got fifty times easier!

Has Mylio just solved the global photographer storage crisis? Not quite. As your photos still need to be uploaded into the app (we think) through a main device or computer, meaning the files would still need to be stored onto a drive. But at least they can be accessed and edited anywhere at anytime all offline for free. What more can we ask for?

• You might also be interested in the best NAS drives to keep your files safe for now, as well as the best portable hard drives for editing on the go. Bag one of the best digital photo frames too and display a slideshow of images in your home. 

• There's also the best website builders for photographers to keep your portfolio looking sharp, and not forgetting the best web hosting sites if you intend to build a site from scratch. If you're looking for more than just photo organization, see our tips on How to get started with your own photography portfolio.

Image.canon is a cloud storage service designed for Canon photographers to upload images, but it is also a handy short-term photo-trip back up service with 30 days of unlimited storage capacity. 

Below I'll show you how to connect your camera, transfer images and be clever moving photos to your computer and other services. You have up to 10GB of free long-term storage, and a 30-day short-term unlimited storage for all your files (including RAW files and video clips). 

Almost every Canon EOS camera with built-in Wi-Fi can be used with the service (see full list of image.canon compatible cameras). You’ll need a mobile device, the Canon app, and an internet or mobile data connection. In the setup, you create a Canon ID or login to an existing one, which will also add the camera to your CPS account if you have one.

Once you’re set up, photographs can be uploaded wherever you have an internet connection. Many recent cameras will upload images you choose from the playback screen directly to the Canon service automatically, others will need you to transfer them to an app on your phone, or computer, to upload.

30 days after being uploaded, images are automatically removed from your image.canon account unless you transfer them to your 10GB permanent storage. But be warned, if you don't access the service for a year, this back up will be deleted automatically

How to set up image.canon

Setting up your camera for image.canon before you embark on your travels is really simple and the mobile app guides you through the specific steps for your camera. Consider how much data you might need if you plan uploading via your mobile, especially if you’re shooting in Raw.

01 Set up your camera connection

You’ll need to download the image.canon mobile app from Google Play if you use Android or the Apple App Store if you use an iPhone or iPad. Start the app and select your camera, then follow the steps to create your account and configure your camera’s wireless settings. As part of the sign up process you’ll need an email and to sign up to Canon’s online system with a Canon ID.

02 Transfer your photos

There are several ways to transfer photos, so check your camera to see what method works for you. Options include transferring images to your phone using the Camera Connect App, then uploading with the image.canon app, transfer from your camera to the image.canon app, and a few models can upload directly, some even as you shoot.

03 Automatic sharing to online services

Photos you send to image.canon can be auto transferred to other services like Google Photos, Google Drive, Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, or Flickr. Imagine begin able to upload and share in one step direct from your camera. Or for more in-depth photo-editing use Adobe Photoshop Lightroom and edit on an iPad or laptop.

04 Auto download to your computer

Your computer can automatically download new images from your image.canon account whenever your computer is connected to the internet. You’ll need to install the image downloader on your PC or Mac and choose where to save the images. When you get back from your trip your images are ready to work with using your preferred software tools.

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Having been requested by photographers for years, it’s not surprising that an iCloud Shared Photo Library was one of the headlining features when Apple first showed off its latest operating system: iOS 16. 

We may have had to wait past the initial iOS 16 launch back in September, but today it finally launches along with iOS 16.1 – and here’s why we're seriously happy about it…

iCloud Shared Photo Library really does make sharing photos a lot quicker and easier, meaning you’re more likely to do so. Much better than the Shared Albums feature that’s been available for years, the iOS 16.1 feature lets you automatically, or manually, share your photo library – part of it or the whole lot. You can also directly share from your camera with a new toggle in your iPhone Camera app.

Collaborative iCloud library

Families and friendship groups are given a new way to share photos seamlessly with a separate iCloud library in iCloud Shared Photo Library, which facilitates six users working together on a library - collaborating, contributing, and enjoying. 

Users can choose to share existing photos from their personal libraries, or share based on a start date or people in the photos, which will come in really handy for photos of kids. 

As mentioned above, iCloud Shared Photo Library users can also choose to send photos to the Shared Library automatically using a new toggle in the Camera app. That’s not all either – Apple will send intelligent suggestions to share a photo that includes participants in the Shared Photo Library.

 As you’d expect, every user in a Shared Photo Library has access to add, delete, edit, or favorite shared photos or videos. They’ll all appear in each user’s Memories and Featured Photos too so that everyone can relive the best memories. 

Outside of iCloud Shared Photo Library really, iOS 16.1 brings a host of other headline features with it, including Live Activities, Clean Energy Charging, more detailed Screenshot UI, and the ability to delete Apple Wallet. 

How to use iCloud Shared Albums with iPhone

The great news is it's pretty simple to use iCloud Shared Albums with one of an iPhone for photography. There's a simple step-by-step on the Apple website, but we'll summarize it for you below.

First off, you'll need to Turn on Shared Albums:

1. Go to Settings  > [your name] > iCloud > Photos, then turn on Shared Albums.
2. Create a new shared album, by tapping Albums > New Shared Album.
3. Title the album, then tap Next.
4. Choose who you want to invite (with an email address or phone number), then hit Create.

You can also make an album public via an URL, by tapping it and then turning on Public Website.

How to get iOS 16.1 on your iPhone

Users can now install the iOS 16.1 update now by going to Settings > Software Update on a compatible iPhone or iPad. iOS 16.1 is a free software update that is available for iPhone 8 and later.

Discover our guide to the best iPhone for photography or if you're interested in a different model, check out the best camera phone.

Online digitization media service, Capture, is helping to bring your lifetime of memories and legacy to the cloud, by teaming up with Google Photos to make the process that much easier to share your old memories with loved ones. 

Capture says that billions of older images and home videos are at risk of potential loss as we move into a digital age – estimating that up to 90 million households could have treasured memories sitting in the closet, simply waiting to be digitized.

• Looking for the best VHS to DVD converters?

Having a spring clean, sorting the attic or moving to a new house anytime soon? It might be worth thinking about having your precious family photo albums and older media content digitized, and transferred into a Google Photos library for safekeeping and easily shareable content. This can be such a simple and hassle-free process with the help of Capture (by Yes Video). 

Capture is currently the only media transfer and digitization service that can now, as of today, save your older media content and memories directly to Google Photos. The digitization services offered by Capture usually involve receiving back your media, photos and files accessible via a free MemoryCloud 60-day account (included with the order), or additionally on a physical DVD or USB drive add-on.

The company has now teamed up with Google Photos to enable users a much smoother process in converting their VHS tapes, film slides, cassettes and printed photos to the ominous cloud, and in completing what Capture calls a person's life legacy timeline, being comprised of legacy-aged media that Capture affirms is prone to deterioration over time, losing both clarity and color. 

Physical media, while a great keepsake, can be easily lost and forgotten, left in dusty basements and closets, and let's not forget susceptible to loss in the event of natural disasters or fires. Content, no matter how treasured, loses its value when it’s inaccessible, that's why Capture and Google Photos are making efforts to simplify this process, and secure your memories with a cloud-based accessible format. 

Note that Google photos requires the creation of a Google account, internet access to view, and in some cases may require a pay-monthly storage quota.

Using Google Photos to store your images and files can be a great way of making media easy to view, accessible, and shareable with friends and family from any device at any time. 

“Providing high quality, publish-ready digitized content via the cloud with Google Photos is making everyone’s photo timeline accessible at the touch of a button.” shares Capture CEO, Lisa McCabe.

“Capture is on the leading edge of technology and holds over 16 patents that cover everything from processing, editing, and scene detection to scanning and composing,” She continued. The company and service has been active for more than 20 years, with 12 million happy customers entrusting Capture with the task of unlocking their memories. 

Capture currently offers two convenient options when sending away your legacy media items to be digitized. The first method is via a custom order that involves a customer choosing a combination of the items they wish to send, then shipping it to Capture (based in the US) using a UPS prepaid label, or a shipper of choice. 

The alternative involves ordering a simplified Time Capsule based on item quantity, for a flat fee, that includes packaging and prepaid shipping to return to Capture. 

Affiliations with multiple retailers across the US allows for convenient drop-off at trusted locations, or customers can ship their legacy media directly through UPS. Every single step of the process is tracked and tagged, processed by hand in the USA. Capture ensures the full security of each family's memories, and all orders are overseen by a leadership team with 12 years of service.

Have a look through your memory boxes and consider what Capture can do for you in preserving the most precious memories and making them accessible forever with Google Photos.

Especially for photographers with older catalogues, this service is a must for digitizing your extensive years of work. Start a custom order now and receive 50% off using Google Photos for a limited time.

You may also be interested in our guide to the best film scanners, or learning the process of Digitizing slides and prints at home using a DSLR or mirrorless camera, or perhaps you need to purchase one of the best slide viewers.

If you're looking for advice on how to back up your Google Photos account, read our quick tips below. Google Photos is now one of the world's biggest photo-sharing and storage services. It's been around since 2015, and today it serves as an incredibly easy way to organize your image library online.

With unlimited storage and a Wi-Fi auto-uploader for phones, there's a reason that Google Photos is in our guide to the best cloud storage for photos. We've already shared some smart tips on how to select all your photos in Google Photos, but now we're focusing on how to back up and sync your files to ensure you don't lose any precious memories when moving between different devices.

Canon cameras can now automatically back up to Google Photos, but what about your mobile devices? If you didn't already know, Google Photos can be used to back up and sync photos and videos automatically to your Google Account, making them accessible from any other device where you can log in to your account.

In theory, you could access your content while on holiday, when traveling, or simply moving from the office to home. Better still, the whole process goes on in the background without you having to do a thing after the quick initial setup.

While backing up photos and videos is very easy with Google Photos, there are a few things you need to know before you start...

How to backup Google Photos: before you start

To backup Google photos, you'll need to ensure you have a decent internet connection. If you don't want Google Photos to eat up a lot of your mobile data, then you'll also need to set it to only backup media when you're connected to WiFi. More on that below, though.

There are a few restrictions on the type of files that can be backed up – your photos can't be larger than 200 MB or 150 MP, and videos need to be under 10 GB. Helpfully, Google also lists the types of RAW files that you can backup, so if you're a photographer who shoots and stores RAW images, check that first.

Google updated its unlimited storage policy for Google Photos in June, and you now get 15 GB of Google account storage for free. Remember that Google's maximum account storage also includes services like Google Drive and Gmail as well as Google Photos, so if you've used up your storage elsewhere, any new files you add won't be backed up automatically.

Backup Google Photos on Android & iPhone

First off, you'll need to make sure that you're signed into your Google Account, and then you'll need to change the backup settings in the Google Photos app. It's actually a very similar process whether you're using an iPhone or Android device, although with Google Pixel devices, Google Photos is preloaded.

Backup Google Photos on computer

There are two ways to back up Google Photos on a computer: you can set up Google Drive for desktop or upload items directly to Google Photos from a web browser.

If you choose to download Google Drive to your desktop, simply sign in to your Google Account, select the images or folders you want to back up, and then click "Back up to Google Photos," followed by "Done" and "Save."

It's important to note that Google Drive and Google Photos operate separately. If you delete a photo from Google Photos, it will still remain in your Google Drive and on your computer, and vice versa. This feature is particularly handy for preventing accidental deletions!

You might also like to look at the best Google phones and the best cloud storage for photos. If you're someone who likes storing your photos on a hard drive, check out the best portable hard drives.

If you’re an iPhone user, chances are you’ve faced some confusion over iCloud. It’s caused me concern on more than one occasion but I think I might have finally cracked the relationship between the files stored on your phone and those stores on iCloud. I say I think because I'm still a little unsure...

I used to never delete anything from my iPhone 11 Pro out of fear of it being deleted forever. This obviously isn’t a viable solution as phones only have a finite amount of space. Even if you own the 256GB iPhone 13 Pro Max, if you take as many photos and videos as me one day you will eventually run out of space.

• These are the best iPhones for photography

It normally happens at the least convenient moment - like at a wedding or when you’re at a concert or as you try and record someone doing something funny. On more than one occasion I have tried to quickly go through my photos and videos, sifting the ones that I will happily lose forever should they be deleted from both my iPhone and iCloud but I’ve now got to the point where I've done that so much, I’m only left with the good stuff.

During lockdown last year I was so bored I decided it was time to get my head around it for good. I always keep iCloud sync on so that if the worst happens and I lose, break or have my phone stolen, I’ll at least have my photos saved because after all, I care about them more than the phone itself. However, if you want to delete photos from your phone but not iCloud, iCloud Photos has to be switched off beforehand.

If you do accidentally delete a bunch of photos and then realize iCloud sharing was still on, they do stay in a deleted folder for 40 days afterward and they can be restored. However, if you don’t realize within the 40 days they disappear for good and (like I’ve done before) getting those precious memories is nearly impossible. Even with the best recovery software, once they’ve been permanently deleted there is little chance you’ll ever see them again. 

One of the things I hate the most about apple products is how hard they’ve made it to simply transfer photos and videos from your iPhone to an external hard drive. At least with phones such as the Samsung Galaxy S22 and the Honor 50 you can just plug it into your computer (I'm using a mac) and then drag and drop files. With an iPhone it seems like you have to go into Photos, select the files you want to export, choose where you want them exported to and then let it do its thing - which can take hours and whenever I try to do it, I get error messages. It's not that it's impossible to transfer files it's just that I can't see my iPhone photos folder appear in finder in the same way I do when I connect my hard drive or SD card. 

I don't think what I want is too demanding - just the ability to be able to safely and secure photos and videos so I know I've got a backup of them on something I can hold - not just in a cloud. For a company that makes such intuitive products, iCloud is not intuitive at all and the worst part is Apple doesn't make it very clear. What's the point in paying for extra iCloud storage if you can't keep files on your iCloud and not on your phone?!

Perhaps I’m just more of a technophobe than I thought (which would be worrying considering I write for a camera magazine) but I’m sure I can’t be the only person who’s had that heart-sinking moment where you’ve realized you’ve deleted photos you shouldn’t have. It’s something I’ve learned from and something I hope I won't do again but truth be told, I’m still a bit confused by iCloud and I don't think I'm the only one. 

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Countless products will be affected by Western Digital (WD)'s announcement to no longer support prior generations of its My Cloud OS software. This means that affected devices will no longer be accessible remotely, and will only be able to transfer data locally.

Devices running My Cloud OS 5 will no longer support prior generations of the software after 15 January 2022, cutting off cloud access, security updates and technical support. Devices running anything other than My Cloud OS 5 will no longer be supported after 15 April 2022

• Read More: Best external hard drives 

The company has suggested that as security standards evolve, it is necessary to end support for the outdated generations of its cloud-based storage services. This means that critical security updates will only be available to My Cloud OS 5-compatible devices. 

This change will affect numerous products running older versions of the software – so if you've got an older drive with cloud support, you might want to check our buying guides for best portable hard drives  and best portable SSD drives to make sure you've got an up-to-date device. 

The full list of Western Digital hard drives affected by the end of My Cloud OS support is as follows: 

My Cloud PR2100
My Cloud PR4100
My Cloud EX2 Ultra
My Cloud EX4100
My Cloud EX2100
My Cloud DL2100
My Cloud DL4100
My Cloud Mirror Gen2
My Cloud (P/N: WDBCTLxxxxxxx-10)
WD Cloud
My Cloud Mirror
My Cloud EX2
My Cloud EX4
My Cloud (P/N: WDBCTLxxxxxxx-00)

Western Digital advises that customers owning affected devices should take action as soon as possible to ensure that their content is protected and stored safely. It is recommended that users back up their old devices, disconnect them from any internet supply and protect their device with a strong and unique password.

Further information, and an FAQ is available on the Western Digital website. 

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I think the biggest chore in photography is data storage and everything that goes along with it. I absolutely loathe it. I’ll admit to being a naturally untidy person (you should see my desk) and that has manifested itself digitally (you should see my desktop…). 

In hindsight, lockdown was the perfect opportunity to whip my data discipline into shape – and tidy my desk – but although I spent some time organizing the best portable hard drives, an incident that happened this month reminded me I’m not doing nearly enough to safeguard my photos.

• Read more: The best cloud storage for photos

If I’m handed a physical photo I’ll cradle it delicately in my hands, minding not to crease the edges or get fingerprints on the glossy finish. So why would I treat digital data any different? It’s not unusual to find an SD card or two rattling around in the bottom of my kit bag, and I have a bad habit of putting off backing up files – and sometimes never get around to it. Well, this month I experienced data loss on two separate occasions and they had two very different outcomes.

During the first instance I was working with another photographer who managed to accidentally delete some of their images (it’s easily done). Thankfully, they were backed up via a cloud storage service, so no harm done. But when the second instance happened to me only a few days later, I couldn’t help but think some higher photography power was trying to tell me something.

For the first time ever I connected an SD card to my computer only to find it was corrupt. It happens. But this SD card had a lot of files from a lot of shoots on it and none of them were backed up. Luckily I escaped relatively unscathed because the affected images weren’t of any great importance to me, but it could have been different. It was definitely a wake-up call. 

I started thinking about all the battered old SD cards I’ve been using for years. All the times I’ve yanked them from a device without properly ejecting them. And how many of them still contain images that aren’t backed up. I started this column moaning about data storage, but it’s never been easier for photographers to safeguard their work. 

Dual card slots, super-fast external (and internal) SSD drives, cloud storage, Wi-Fi file transfer and increasingly reliable memory card formats like CFexpress have all helped to vastly reduce data loss. I’m the weak link that needs to do better.

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LastPass is one of the best password managers around, offering great user features and excellent security policies. Investing in a password manager not only prevents you from having to remember every single variation of your passwords, but the super secure randomly generated passwords it creates are also a great way to help protect your data from being leaked.

LastPass is powered by LogMeIn, providing a strong performance across all of the features you would expect from a password manager. 

LastPass Key Features

LastPass features everything that you would expect from a password manager, including password sharing, password generation, biometric login, emergency access and the automatic syncing of data. However, LastPass doesn't just store and manage passwords, it also has a range of other exciting features as well. LastPass can also store credit cards (making online shopping even simpler), WiFi passwords and digital notes, making your digital life exponentially easier.

LastPass also offers adaptive authentication, which combines biometric and "contextual intelligence" to prove the user's identity. 

LastPass Interface and Performance

The LastPass interface works smoothly, with no noticeable lagging. We tested LastPass as a Chrome extension and were impressed with how easy it was to use. Setting up passwords within LastPass is simple – users have the choice between adding new passwords within the LastPass application itself, or simply logging into the desired website as normal and filling out the LastPass notification box that pops up. 

Usefully, you can separate your passwords into different folders (such as Social Media, Email, etc.). There are also different sections for credit cards, addresses and bank accounts, making it easy to efficiently compartmentalize your data.

LastPass Security

One of the most important aspects of a password manager is how secure it is – after all, storing all of your passwords in one place is no good if someone else can easily access it. However, LastPass is known as one of the most secure password managers available. LastPass encrypts all data from end-to-end using 256-bit AES encryption and uses advanced Transport Layer Security to prevent in-transit attacks.

If you're concerned about LastPass being able to access your data remotely, don't fear. The industry standard for password managers means that LastPass doesn't store users' master passwords or authentication keys locally or on its servers. This means that LastPass isn't able to access your encrypted data remotely. 

LastPass Verdict

LastPass is definitely one of the best password managers available. LastPass offers three different plans: Free, Premium and Family. While the the Free version of LastPass offers a great user experience, upgrading to the Premium version for $36 per year gains you access to some fantastic features, including dark web monitoring, priority tech support and 1GB of encrypted file storage. 

Alternatively, LastPass' Family option offers six LastPass Premium licenses, unlimited sharing folders and access to the LastPass family dashboard for just $48 per year. This is a great option for those who want to provide data protection and password management for multiple people. 

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If you’re looking to back up your photos, videos or any other files on your computer, you could check out one of the best external hard drives or best NAS drives. However, this still leaves your data vulnerable to hard drive failure or device theft, but backing up your files to the cloud avoids both potential problems. 

There are plenty of cloud storage providers out there, and it can be tempting to choose a big name in the industry like Apple iCloud or Google Drive, but iDrive is one of a growing number of storage providers that’s aiming to equal the heavy hitters on features while undercutting them on price. Let’s see how iDrive compares to the competition…

Features

iDrive offers an extensive backup and storage feature set. Not only can you use iDrive to back up your PC or Mac, there are also iOS and Android iDrive apps that let your back up your phone or tablet. Files stored on iDrive are synced across multiple devices in real time, and iDrive is smart enough to recognize modified parts of files and back these up automatically.

With autonomous file syncing and back-up, it could be possible to unwittingly overwrite a file you’d like to restore. But with iDrive this isn’t a problem, thanks to iDrive’s Snapshots feature that stores up to 30 previous versions of all files backed up to iDrive, so you can roll back to an older file or folder version whenever you need to. Files deleted to Trash can also be recovered for up to 30 days after deletion, and there’s no pressure to empty Trash sooner, as files in Trash don’t count towards your capacity limit.

Not only can individual files and folders be backed up, you can also use iDrive to store the contents of your entire computer, cloning its hard drive so you can perform a full system restore. Of course, backing up your whole computer is likely to use a serious amount of network bandwidth, and if your internet connection doesn’t have a particularly fast upload speed, backing up a full PC/Mac system could take days. iDrive has thought of this though, as iDrive Express allows you to request a physical storage drive in the post. You then back up your computer to the drive, send it to iDrive and they upload your data to their cloud servers. If you need to perform a full system restore, iDrive Express works in reverse, as you can then request a physical drive with your data saved on it. Express back-up is free once a year for iDrive Personal users, and Express restores are charged at $99.50 for US residents.

Security is always a concern with any cloud storage provider, so iDrive offers 256-bit AES encryption, secured by a user-chosen encrypting key that isn’t stored on iDrive’s servers. There’s also two-factor login authentication to protect you in the even that your account login details are compromised.

Files stored on iDrive can be uploaded and accessed via the iDrive website, but for full back-up and syncing functionality, download the iDrive app for Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android.

Ease of use

iDrive offers a free 5GB of storage, so you don’t need to enter any credit card details to try out the service and familiarize yourself with how it works. Once you’ve signed up, you can either upload files via your web account, or download the iDrive app for your computer/mobile device. This will automatically select commonly accessed files/folders on your system to back-up and automatically sync according to your preferred back-up schedule. It’s easy to modify the location of files you want to back up and the frequency of automatic back-ups, create custom back-up schedules to suit your work routine.

There are also advanced options for backing up and restoring SQL server data, Microsoft Office 365 mailbox/calendar/contact data, and much more. Once you’d defined your chosen back-up routing, you can leave the iDrive app to run in the background, automatically syncing and backing up new and modified files to the cloud.

We didn’t encounter any issues with the speed of backing up or restoring files, though this reviewer’s home-working internet connection is far from the fastest out there, so isn’t exactly the ultimate benchmark for file transfer speed.

Sharing files stored on iDrive is also simple – just click the sharing button and you’re taken to options for entering one or more recipient’s email address/s. The only catch is anyone you share files with must first create their own iDrive account in order to access shared files.

Both iDrive’s web and computer app’s interfaces are intuitive and easy to use. The local client isn’t blessed with the most modern interface design, but that’s a minor criticism as the app is still simple to learn and use. We also tested the Android mobile app, which is equally easy to get to grips with and lets you back up images and video, along with your contacts, SMS text message and calendar data.

Pricing

Not only does iDrive compare well with major storage solutions in terms of features, it does so while also significantly undercutting them on price. Our preferred pricing plan for individual users is iDrive’s Personal plan, which gets you 2TB of storage space for $79.50 – that’s less than a 2TB Google Drive plan, and substantially less than the price of a 2TB iCloud or Dropbox account. 

However, at the time of writing, the 2TB iDrive Personal account has been upped to 10TB, and the price dropped to $3.98 for your first year. This price for 10TB storage is simply sensational and demolishes the competition! Higher amounts of storage are available, which are also discounted for the first year.

If you’d like a cloud storage account that can be accessed by multiple users, iDrive’s Team account is the plan to go for, and there are also storage plans aimed at businesses.

Verdict

iDrive is a comprehensively featured cloud storage solution that offers plenty of storage capacity for a very reasonable outlay. It’s easy to use, compatible with multiplier devices and there are plenty of plans to suit your storage capacity requirements, usage scenario and budget. iDrive is squarely targeted at cloud storage and back-up, so inevitably you don’t get the same cloud computing ecosystem experience and cloud-based Office apps available with Apple, Microsoft and Google’s cloud storage offerings. But the flip side of this is iDrive isn’t cluttered with non-storage-related apps or features.

Considering how much storage space iDrive offers, even with its base paid plan, how easy it is to use, and how it undercuts all its major rivals on price, iDrive is an incredibly compelling cloud storage provider.

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If you've ever shot an important event, you'll understand the irrational fear of your memory cards being lost, broken or spontaneously corrupted in the time between the shoot itself and your first opportunity to back up your cards. Luckily, if you have one of a select list of Canon cameras, you now have a solution to this nail-biting issue.

There's now a new integration with Google Photos that allows for automatic image backups over Wi-Fi. Google and Canon have worked together to integrate Google Photos into the image.canon app that's currently available on both Android and iOS. 

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Google says, "If you own a DSLR or point-and-shoot camera, you know that getting your photos backed up can be a process. You often need cables or adapters to take them off of your camera or SD card and save them, and it might take a number of steps to get it all done.

"We've worked with Canon so you can easily upload the moments captured on your Canon devices directly to Google Photos over Wi-Fi – no plugging in your camera or taking our your SD card." 

While not all Canon cameras are compatible with this new function, all of the recent models do seem to be. You can find the full list here, but compatible cameras include the Canon EOS R5, Canon EOS R6, Canon EOS 5D Mark IV, Canon EOS M6 Mark II and Canon EOS 6D Mark II. 

To take advantage of this new feature, all you need to do is set up automatic transfers in the image.canon app. You will need a Google One subscription in order to use this cloud storage benefit, but Google is currently offering Canon users a free month of Google One to try out the service. 

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Synology has announced a new entry-level NAS (network-attached storage) designed for home and personal users to store and share their photos, videos and documents. This private cloud device will allow everyone in your household to back up their photos, videos and files on the DS220j. 

This cloud solution is powered by the award-winning DiskStation Manager (DSM) OS. This is designed to provide an intuitive user interface and safe data protection approaches for easy digital asset backups from both computers and mobile devices at no additional cost. 

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The DS220j has a 64-bit 4-core 1.4 GHz CPU (central processing unit) and is capable of more than 112MB/s for both reading and writing data. It also features RAID 1 protection to avoid sudden drive failure, which can help set your mind at ease that you won't have to worry about losing vital files. 

The DiskStation DS200j supports up to 32TB and MacOS Time Machine. It also backs up and synchronizes with other devices and public clouds as well. 

Interestingly, unlike subscription services such as Dropbox and iCloud, you won't have to pay public-cloud subscription fees to use the DS220j. This will certainly be an attractive option to those looking to shave some money of their monthly outgoings.

One of the most exciting features from the DS220j is that you can turn it into a home media hub and stream your digital content to computers, mobile devices, Samsung TV, Apple TV and more. Synology's comprehensive backup solutions are also designed to protect your digital assets on Windows and Mac computers and Android and iOS phones. This will help prevent the success of malicious attacks, including the rising threat from encryption-based ransomware.

The DiskStation DS220j also offers seamless integration with mobile devices, designed to give you quick and secure access to your data, no matter where you are. 

For more information on this product, you can visit Synology's website.

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Canon is closing down its cloud-based image storage service today, 31 January 2020. 

Irista was launched under its current name in 2014, but was originally unveiled as Project1709 back in 2012. Although you could get some storage for free, you paid to get more online back-up space for your pictures and video.

Canon sent out warnings about the closure well in advance, but if you've been putting off doing anything about it, January 31st is the last possible day.

Canon has provided a help page to talk users through the close-down of the service. To download your images you go to your account profile page and click on the link provided. Your images will be downloaded as a series of 4GB Zip files; the basic free Irista account gave you up to 15GB of storage, but the maximum $129.99 plan let you archive 10TB of pictures and videos, which will be a lot of Zip files!

Cloud-based storage systems are championed as a perfect way for photographers to archive, store and back-up their images in recent years. But this is not the first service to be withdrawn - leaving users with the headache of where to store their images next. Earlier this year, for instance, Flickr ended its free 1TB storage option following its acquisition by SmugMug.

As a way of saying thank you, however, Canon has been offering Irista members two months' complimentary subscription to Adobe's Creative Cloud Lightroom plan, with 1Tb storage. Canon's cloud dreams may be over for now, but Irista's users can at least sample Adobe's alternative.

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Remember that big family holiday you took last year? Where are all the photos? If your family is like everyone else’s, it’s likely that they exist across multiple smartphones, tablets and cameras, probably never to be united and archived despite good intentions. Cue Amber, ‘smart storage’ that promises to backup, collate and categorise photos and videos from multiple devices without ever going near the internet. Anyone in the family can then access all the photos taken on a specific trip at anytime on a phone, tablet or laptop.

Amber is a ’personal cloud’, an overhaul of the network attached storage (NAS) concept that means you can swerve services like Google Photos, but supposedly do it in an easy-to-use way. Why? Google Photos is free and backs-up phone photos to the cloud. It even allows you to share albums and individual files with others. That’s all true, but Google throttles the resolution of photos unless you pay fees. 

The search engine then also has your most personal data. As well as keeping all your photos in their original high resolution, part of Amber’s appeal is that it protects your private data while it shares it, using end-to-end encryption. Connected to a TV via HDMI (or wirelessly to ChromeCast or DLNA-compatible devices), Amber can also display photos and videos on a TV. 

Design

Setup

Installation is relatively easy – you just attach it to a router over Ethernet LAN and launch the Amber Manager smartphone app – though you do have to set-up an ID with the LatticeNest Cloud Service and digitally attach it to Amber, which takes a few minutes and adds an unwanted layer of administration. Camera roll auto-backup is obligatory, of course, and there’s also Amber LiFE software for iOS, Android and Windows/macOS desktops. A single, unified app would have been less confusing. Setup involves a ton of options (phone and PC folder backup to using Amber with macOS for TimeMachine backups), but in practice it’s no less long-winded than a NAS drive.

Every family member needs to install the Amber LiFE app on their phones, though one phone gets parental controls. As soon as you open the app, it backs up your camera roll to Amber, and it’s easy to use the app to look at, and share, any photos on Amber.

Performance

Amber backs-up your phone's photos really well. From your camera, it’s rather more manual, and limited, and requires a careful setup. Once that’s done it keeps everything secure and safe, but do the Amber apps let you access your treasure trove of photos on your phone when you’re away from base, perhaps to show a prospective client? Yes, but the apps are too slow to do that in any kind of impressive way. 

During our tests the app took a second or so to do anything – even show a photo – and it also crashed a few times during our test. Streaming videos from Amber to the smartphone app is also laggy, and finding photos backed-up from other phones is not easy. 

Nor can photos be sorted by the GPS location they were taken, which is a shame given its suggested use for holiday photos. It’s also supposed to use face recognition and detection, in our tests the 3,000+ photos we uploaded weren’t enough for it to work its magic. However, our review sample was an early unit, and Amber was keen to stress that new hardware was coming in early 2020.

Verdict

Does your family need a ‘personal cloud space’ for your photos? Amber is a private, secure cloud for a family; if every member syncs their phone with Amber, it can host a definitive collection of photos from, for example, a family holiday. It’s a nice idea and it works really well for backing-up the camera rolls of multiple phones, but it’s not as not as slick as it could be; it needs a faster, more reliable smartphone app.

All in all, Amber is a nice concept, but it loses its way in practice and isn’t the anti-NAS is pretends to be. That said, for families dead-set against using and/or paying Google Photos, as well as syncing-away their personal data to the cloud, Amber could well be worth revisiting very soon.  

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ON1 Photo RAW 2019 is already one of our favorite photo editing applications, and the new ON1 Photo RAW 2020 looks set to improve on it in a whole host of ways. That’s only one of the stories, though – ON1 is launching its own mobile app, a new cloud sync system AND a new video editor aimed at photographers.

These new products will not be available until ‘early’ 2020, but ON1 Photo RAW 2020 should arrive as a public beta this September with a full launch ‘this fall’.

What’s new in ON1 Photo RAW 2020

ON1 Photo RAW 2019 has earned a place in our list of best photo editing software for its organizing tools, layers-based image editing and vast range of preset image effects.

The new version will have AI-powered AI Match and AI Auto tools, together with four new Weather, Sun Flare, Color Balance and Channel Mixer filters.

Photo RAW’s filters can be used individually or collectively, and form the backbone of this program’s library of preset image effects. In ON1 Photo RAW 2020, this will be updated in its entirety, with new looks and styles ‘curated’ from the latest trends in photography.

ON1 Photo RAW will also integrate with the SmugMug online photo sharing service and will include a new Map view and Print module, together with Custom Camera Profiles in conjunction with X-Rite. ON1 says the software will also benefit from improved noise reduction and general speed and performance enhancements.

There’s no news yet on the final feature set or the pricing, as that will be revealed with the public beta in mid-September.  ON1 is committed to subscription-free software and prices its products very keenly, so we’re expecting it to be as affordable as ever.

ON1 Video… video editing for photographers!

ON1 Video is a brand new product which ON1 says is aimed at photographers who need to shoot video, with the kind of tools, sliders and techniques you’d get in a regular photographic workflow, rather than the complex jargon and terminology of even the best video editors.

This sounds an intriguing proposition, and it’s quite surprising no-one’s targeted this market before. We look forward to seeing what ON1 Video is like, but ON1 is already promising a range of editing features including trimming, enhancements, audio tracks, grading, time lapse videos, slideshows… and ‘seamless’ integration with the company’s own ON1 Photo RAW software.

We’ll have to wait until early 2020 for the finished version, but ON1 is promising a public beta version in the middle of November 2019.

ON1 Sync Service… Adobe watch out!

The even bigger news is that ON1 is developing both a mobile app and a cloud sync service to take on Adobe’s Creative Cloud ecosystem – but without the subscription (we hope) and without tying you in to a specific cloud service. In fact, ON1 says its new ON1 Sync Service will work with ‘any of the popular cloud services’.

You will be able to store your photos anywhere you like – on your desktop computer, laptop, or in a cloud storage system – and access them anywhere, on any device. You will also be able to synchronise albums and presets between devices together with your non-destructive edits.

The difference between this and Adobe’s Creative Cloud system and Lightroom CC, is that Adobe insists your photos live in the cloud, and on its own (expensive) servers.

ON1 is also keen to point out that your photos will remain private and it will not be allowed to analyse them for any marketing purposes.

ON1 Photo Mobile

The ON1 Sync Service will work alongside the new ON1 Photo Mobile 2020 app, also due in 2020.

This will incorporate both camera (capture) and editing tools, just like Lightroom mobile. ON1 says it will come with ‘pro-level’ camera controls and the ability to wirelessly send raw photos from the app directly to ON1 Photo RAW running on a desktop machine or a laptop, with non-destructive adjustments applied in the app transferred intact.

You’ll also be able to ‘push’ edits from the desktop software back to the ON1 Photo Mobile app.

We don’t yet know all of the features in the new app, but ON1 is promising color and tone adjustments, shadow enhancements, vignette effects and object/distraction removal.

ON1 Photo RAW 2020 sounds like a major update in its own right, and we’ll bring more news and a review just as soon as it’s available.

We’ll have to wait a little longer to see the new ON1 Video app, and the really exciting news is ON1’s plans for its cloud and mobile services in 2020. This is where Adobe has had the lead on all its rivals for a while now, with Lightroom CC and its Creative Cloud based image storage. If ON1 has its way, 2020 will be the year when that changes… 

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G-Technology has interviewed scores of world-class photo and video professionals on what’s most important in their work. Almost without exception, they talk about backing up data in terms of protecting their clients’ memories. Only Wilson Fox adds that he is also protecting his own memories.

“I go on all these crazy adventures,” he says, “but I don’t take selfies. I don’t have anything autographed. I get to live through those memories every time someone says, ‘Here, let me see your portfolio.’ And they’ll say, ‘You were in the same room with him?’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, for months. We’ve cried.” You can hear the wistful smile in Wilson’s voice. “We had big man-hug cries.”

Entering the Ring

Based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Wilson emerged from a decade in the six-figure corporate world with an interest in photography and enough budget to buy gear. He also practised jiu-jitsu, which dovetailed with the mixed martial arts (MMA) world that oddly thrived in Albuquerque. Wilson approached several of the most prominent MMA competitors in the city and volunteered to be their personal photographer.

“I basically said, ‘I want to learn. I’ll never charge you a dollar. You’ll never pay for a flight or a hotel room. The only thing I ever ask is that when somebody calls and asks about Will Fox, I just want you to say I’m a good person.”

Carlos Condit, who had won two championship titles at that point, accepted Wilson’s offer. That job opened the door to others. Soon, the largest MMA promotion company was contacting Wilson. Commercial gigs appeared from numerous top-level athletic brands. Throughout those years, Wilson learned to specialize in gritty, black-and-white locker-room shots. He knew that established photographers in the field had the fights amply covered, but he saw a niche available in telling the story of the fights – and the fighters – from behind the scenes and leapt at it.

Covering fights relies on nearly as much speed from the photographers as from the combatants. Tethered to a phone or tablet, Wilson would have 30 to 40 seconds to capture, preview, select, crop, edit, and upload a shot onto social media. He would rack up 2,000 or so RAW images per night and need to back up these shots to multiple drives before hopping on his next flight that evening.

The toll on Wilson’s health and private life was equally brutal. He recalls one November when he was on the road for 28 days straight, when the endless rotation of airports and hotel rooms became a blur. He has covered events from Austin to Australia. His girlfriend was understanding and only requested he behave responsibly while travelling. They survived those hard years, and recently they got married, but Wilson knew the pace would eventually crush him like a triangle choke. He needed to evolve his career.

Scaling into sales and sanity

Wilson needed to double his job rates and halve his travel time, and being “the gritty locker-room guy” wasn’t going to get him there. Those weren’t the shots showing up on magazine covers and commercials ads. In only a handful of years, the world had moved on.

“Clients know I can deliver images really fast, but this space is so competitive. They want to know if I can also do video, and then whether I can do multi-cam. I’m working with an agency right now, and we’re shooting on four RED cameras. And you know how it is – high-quality content means high-quality storage demands. I’m filming while also pulling and doing edits on the fly, all in a remote location. I don’t think I could have scaled into this without the G-SPEED Shuttle SSD.”

Sized for travel but protected with an eight-drive RAID and 16TB of total SSD capacity, Wilson acknowledges that the G-SPEED Shuttle SSD is overkill for his photo work. However, gritty black-and-white stills are no longer where he wants to live. Wilson wants to be a “full-blown video guy, with all the lights and high production value,” and he’s nearly there. 

Of course, that calibre of work requires maximum throughput combined with reliable data protection. He copies his G-SPEED Shuttle SSD to secondary NAS solutions at his home and office, but the mass of his heavy lifting – the quick-turn, top-quality video work he wants to stake his future on – depends on the G-Technology enclosure’s Thunderbolt 3-driven performance.

A knockout mission

However, it’s not about the money. If it were, Wilson never would have left that six-figure corporate job. He never would have volunteered his services for free at the beginning. As a jiu-jitsu enthusiast, Wilson was drawn to MMA and found himself fortuitously in one of the then-fledgling sport’s top cradles. MMA was rising in popularity, and fast. These athletes might someday be internationally known titans.

To reach that point, though, the athletes need to scale. MMA as a whole needs to scale. And in that pursuit, image means everything.

“I want to elevate my guys,” says Wilson. “They’ll say, ‘Now, Will Fox is going to take me from the locker room to that commercial look. He’s telling me to put on a shirt and tie, having me pose a little bit more.’ It’s about me helping my friends to the next level. I want to grow with them. I invested a lot of my personal time into these fighters. That’s why these archives have to be backed up and reliably stored. The sport isn’t where boxing is. It’s not legendary yet. But when these guys all join the hall of fame, I’m going to have the best archive around.”

Earlier on: Sam Fagan on the same road

Sam Fagan is 20 years old. He also competes in jiu-jitsu. Like Wilson, he started out by frequenting an MMA gym and worked to befriend the top coaches and players. Prominent Pacific Northwest fighter Bryan Nuro allowed Sam and his camera into one of his last amateur fights, and that was enough. Sam got hit – with the desire to make fight photography into a career.

He would usually show up at the weigh-in before fights. Again, that gritty locker room provided an easy entry point. But one night, a local event’s head photographer was out of town, and the backup photographer wasn’t shooting. Sam was introduced to the promoter, allowed in with a press pass, and he had his first shot at the big leagues. He did not disappoint.

Three years after that first amateur fight, Sam now covers sporting and commercial gigs regularly. He shoots 100GB of RAW files at each event, which immediately fills his laptop to capacity, thus requiring external storage. This is where his youth comes into play, though. Until recently, he has relied on USB 3.0 drives, which he complains were crippling in their slowness. He had one drive fail and another be dead out of the box.

He solved the threat to his files by investing in four hard drives and a low-end NAS enclosure, so at least he now enjoys RAID protection. However, Sam isn’t coming from a six-figure past career. He’s hardly out of high school and doesn’t have the money to invest in recommended gear. Yet. But such upgrades are, he confesses, at the top of his priority list.

“When it comes to making it further in sports and being more competitive as a photographer, it’s all about workflow: how efficient you are, how quick you can deliver images, especially if you’re working for a media outlet. You want to be able to drop your images, send them to an editor, or have an editor live picking out images. A quicker drive just helps you be better than your competition.”

Because right now, it’s a good thing he has the energy of a 20-year-old. He has to sit in hotel lobbies, watching files slowly transfer before he can start editing. The longer he waits, the more exhausted he gets.

“Yeah,” he says. “Having faster drives would be a life-changer.”