Amazon Expands Prime Perks with Prime Photos

Digital cameras and mobile devices have transformed the way we take, store, and share photos. Amazon wants to help you store, organize and share those photos with its new Prime Photos service.

I’m old enough to remember when you had to use more discretion about what was “photo worthy” because the roll of film in the camera only had 24 shots. With old-fashioned print photographs it was more or less normal operating procedure for me to get double prints when having the film processed so I could have an extra copy of the pictures to share with someone else.

That’s all changed now. Thanks to digital photography people can now take virtually unlimited photographs indiscriminately. You can always sift through and choose the ones you want after the fact. You can also store seemingly endless photos on your computer or in the cloud, and share them easily with anyone via email, SMS messaging or other methods.

The problem people face now is space. A single photo can occupy 5 MB or more of space. At that rate, 200 photos would fill a gigabyte. Your mileage may vary, but the reality is that it’s not that hard to fill a hard drive with photos. That’s why this new offering from Amazon is such a great deal.

The new Amazon Prime Photos offers the following features:

• Family and friend access to Prime Photos, at no additional cost: To ensure all the great moments and memories are preserved, regardless of who captured them, Prime members can now share their Prime Photos benefit of unlimited photo storage and 5 GB for videos and other files with up to five family members or friends.
• Simple, private sharing through the Family Vault: FamilyVault members can add their favorite photos and videos individually with a click or swipe, or set their account to automatically add all their photos and videos to the Family Vault.
• Smart search technology: Prime Photos’ new search technology makes finding photos based on people, places, or things a snap. Gone are the days of customers wading through thousands of photos to find a specific image. Looking for pictures from a vacation or wedding? Search for “sunset” or “wedding” and relevant photos will show up. Customers can also browse photos of individual family members and friends in the People view as well as search and filter by location or date.
• Photo printing with free delivery for Prime Members: Customers can now order photo books, cards, and prints directly on the web from their Prime Photos account. Offering a variety of ways to preserve memories, Amazon Print products start at just nine cents a print, and ships with free delivery for Prime members. Customers can learn more and order prints today by visiting www.amazon.com/printing.

Of course, the real benefit here is that this is yet another perk of being an Amazon Prime member. You can add Prime Photos to the free 2-day shipping on Amazon purchases, Prime Video, Prime Music, Prime Reading and more. As far as I’m concerned, Amazon Prime membership was already a no-brainer, and Prime Photos is just icing on the cake.