how to get your pictures off your phone

If you don't know how to get your pictures off your phone, that's the first thing to learn so that you can then preserve your photos.

It's wise to store them at least one way digitally, but {the best way to store photos is in print}.  Think of digital photo storage like old-time film negatives.  Negatives were good to save in case something happened to your printed photos.  But the printed photos were the important part because THEY were the things that got SEEN.  It's not so different today. 

But first you have to get your pictures off your phone, right?

UPDATE 2021:  With a (free) Forever account you can get the Forever mobile app and upload directly from your phone!  

This is the easiest way to get all your photos into one place if they're on multiple devices, too--read how to do it here.

METHOD #1
One way to get your photos from your phone to your computer is to e-mail them to yourself.  Just be sure to select "actual size" or "full size" or "full resolution" when you're asked what size you want to send them.  You don't want to receive them in lower resolution (lower quality) than you took them. 

Once you receive the e-mail from yourself with the photos in it, open the e-mail and then download (or save) the photos to your computer.

METHOD #2
Your phone should have come with a cable so that your phone can be plugged into your computer for backing it up, etc.  It should have a USB end and a phone end. 

If you have this cable, you can actually go onto your computer and open your phone, click on the photos on your phone, and copy and paste them onto your computer.

I have PC and an iPhone, so what that looks like for me is I find "This PC" then "my iPhone."  I double-click "my iPhone" and a window opens that says "internal storage."  I click that and see a folder called "DCIM."  I have videos and pictures inside that folder.  This is definitely not the simplest way to get your photos off your phone because after you open DCIM, each photo and video is in its own folder.  That means I have to double-click each folder individually, and when I see each photo (in jpeg form), I  right-click on the photo, choose "copy," and then go to the location on my computer where I want to save it and click "paste." 

As I said, this is not the simplest way to get your photos off your phone, but it does work.  This is a good method to get the VIDEOS off your phone and saved onto your computer, though!

And there you have it.  Three ways to get your photos off your camera so you can PRESERVE THEM by printing them!

Heirloom-quality digital photo-storybooks are a convenient and fantastic way to print your photos!  {Get started here!}