How to Get Your Pictures off Your Phone -- and Why!

Pictures are the focus of this month’s #familyhistoryfriday, and today we’ll look at one of the most basic photo obstacles:  getting them off your phone.  

In the last 10 years or so, photos taken on a phone have come a long way.  Back then, the grainy image was not really worth a second glance, but today I can take better quality photos with my phone than I could on the first digital camera I owned!  With increasing memory capabilities on phones and better quality, the phone is a common way to take photos these days.  And because phones are in our pockets, it’s easy to take a lot of photos with them.  But now what?

Why Do I Need to Get My Pictures off My Phone?

We’ve all heard a story of someone dropping their phone in a swimming pool, ocean, toilet, fish tank, etc.  In fact, about {36 million smartphones are ruined by water each year}.  (That’s about 11%.)  Shockingly, about {70 million smartphones are lost or stolen each year}.  (That’s about 20%.)  Combine those two numbers, and we’re talking about 1/3 of smartphone users who have an irreparable issue with their phones!  I don’t know about you, but I turn my old phone in for a new one every two years when my contract is up.  Theoretically, everything should transfer over from one phone to another, but it doesn’t always.  (Lost all my music that way once.)

This doesn’t mean your phone isn’t a good place to take a picture, it just means it isn’t a good place to store a picture.

Now, that second article I just referenced also says that a laptop is stolen every 53 seconds!  (gulp)  So although we are talking specifically today about how to get your pictures off your phone, remember getting them off your phone isn’t the end goal.  The real goal is to get them into printed form.

This is the method I use for making sure my phone photos are always safe and secure--by moving them to an offsite (outside my house) cloud storage location that guarantees their safety for my lifetime plus 100 years.  Experts recommend storing your photos 3 ways:  2 digitally and 1 in print.  This is one digital way, and we'll explore the next digital way next.  

Moving your jpeg digital photo files from being stored on your phone to being stored on your computer or flash drive is still storage.  Whatever {digital photo storage method} you have, those photos are only STORED, not seen. 

Storage, by definition, is putting something away–it’s not using it!  Seeing a photo is what makes it precious.  Remember that!  You don't actually WANT photo storage!  You took the picture so you could see it. {Digital photo storage is a backup, not a goal.}

How Do I Get My Pictures Off My Phone?

I can’t tell you how many people I have talked to who really want to preserve their pictures in high-quality completely customizable {digital books or scrap pages} but sheepishly admit that they don’t know how to get their photos off their phones.  

If that’s you, don’t worry!  I’m here to help with that today.

I just made a video for you!  This little 5-minute tutorial goes over the most basic method of getting your pictures from your phone to your computer.  I even show you my screen so you can see how it works.

If your pictures are on multiple devices (phone, camera, computer, external hard drive, etc.) be sure you read this easy and straightforward way to get them all in one place.

What Do I Do After I Get My Pictures Off My Phone?

As I mentioned earlier, getting pictures off your phone is important, but just hoarding them doesn’t do anything for us. Seeing the pictures is how they get appreciated and loved and remembered.  If you never see them, they can’t {increase your happiness}, or any number of other {benefits of memory-keeping}.

"The sheer volume and lack of organization of digital photos for personal memories discourages many people from accessing and reminiscing about them. In order to remember, we have to access and interact with the photos, rather than just amass them.” -Linda Henkel, psychological scientist

So once you’ve learned that all-important step of how to get your photos off your phone, make sure you do something more with them!  You can find some {great options here} that are higher quality than the typical "photo books" you see advertised and have a lot more perks.

Photo experts recommend storing photos two ways digitally (one on-site, at home, and one off-site, in the cloud) and one way in print.  This is the best off-site/cloud option I've ever seen, and this one-minute video is a wonderful analogy:

Whatever you do, #dontletyourbabiesgrowuptobejpegs 

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This post was originally published at www.livegrowgive.org on May 11, 2018, by Jennifer Wise.  It was updated in 2024.  Find more #familyhistoryfriday posts about pictures, memories, stories, connection, and family by clicking the hashtag below next to Labels.