Google Photos is a web app, after all, so the software being tested here follows that same paradigm. We've deliberately ignored more desktop-focused apps like Adobe Lightroom, Darktable, and digiKam. This space is developing rapidly, and we'd advise making use of the demos most projects provide to evaluate the apps for yourself before proceeding. Trying out the following tools serves as a primer for the world of self-hosted photo management and exposes you to the most exciting Google Photos alternatives. You can also look at ditching Google Photos as an opportunity. But stringing a few apps together might result in a coherent workflow that makes leaving Google Photos less painful. At the time of writing, we think you're unlikely to find a magic 'one size fits all' option. For example, a professional photographer's needs are poles apart from those of people taking selfies on their cell phones.Įach app below has its pros and cons.

Photo management is a juggernaut of a topic, and it means different things to different people. Specifically, I've been thinking about self-hosted photo management alternatives-particularly those with web apps. I've been waiting for my requested data for seven days as of this writing.) (Exporting on Google Photos, by the way, means using Google Takeout. The service passed a billion users two years ago. For many day-to-day photo service users, though, that was all an academic thought experiment-most people use Google Photos. Pragmatists will argue that so long as the export tools are good enough, purity doesn't matter. Purists will argue that your photos are yours and you should own them forever, no matter what, in full resolution. Because of this, there are few categories of data that suit a free and open self-hosted solution better. They are irreplaceable and largely only exist digitally. Photos depict a special moment in time, a memory or event that can't be recreated. Video is much the same, with YouTube saying in recent years that about 500 hours of video are uploaded to the platform every minute.įinding a solution to organizing and safely storing these precious memories is more important than ever, and it's becoming an increasingly large problem to solve.

Growth in this segment is explosive, with over 1.4 trillion photos taken last year, according to InfoTrends. We take more photos now than ever before.

Google photos cloud backup