Moving digital photos between people can be challenging. One or two photos can be sent simply via email, but email services have file size limitations and email is not practical when you need to send hundreds of megabytes of images. In the last year I’ve started to streamline things by taking advantage of two really useful services.
In the past, I used to get images to my clients primarily using CDs or DVDs shipped via UPS or FedEx. Some of my clients were happy to receive images sent to their FTP site, or downloaded from my own FTP site. Neither of these solutions were perfect. Not all clients had an FTP site or FTP software and shipping discs overnight was expensive and resource-wasting.
The easiest solution I’ve found is yousendit. To use yousendit, you establish an account, then follow their very simple directions to upload your files. Include the email address of the recipient as instructed and they will receive an email including a link to download your file. No additional software is necessary and the process could not be any simpler for the recipient.
Yousendit offers a free plan, but file sizes are limited to 100mb. The Pro plan ($9.99/month) and the Pro Plus plan ($14.99/month) offer larger file capacities.
There are other services similar to yousendit, such as transferbigfiles.com or dropsend.com.
Dropbox is another service that has become indispensable to me. DropBox can also be used to deliver images to clients. With Dropbox, the client will receive an email, linking them to the Dropbox site and a shared folder that they have access to. They can then download their images from the folder. While Dropbox is not quite as easy for the recipient as yousendit, it’s still pretty darn easy. Dropbox’s free service limits you to 2gb of storage, but their Pro 50(gigs) and Pro 100(gigs) are priced at $99 and $199 per year.
Where Dropbox really shines is the ability to share files between a single person’s, family’s or businesses’ devices. For example, I often have PDFs of documents that I have downloaded on my computer that I would rather read on my iPad. With Dropbox installed on my computer and iPad, anything downloaded to the Dropbox folder on my computer is automatically downloaded to the Dropbox folder on my iPad. This is a much easier way of transferring files to the iPad than by syncing via iTunes.
Michael A. Schwarz is a commercial and editorial photographer, digital photography consultant and photo workshop leader based in Atlanta, Georgia.
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