Online storage providers like Google Drive and Dropbox offer an easy way to house images and files for collaborating with other businesses, freelancers and coworkers. For our clients, it's a convenient way to share high-quality images without accidentally sending compressed, low-resolution versions of your images.
There are many options online that provide free storage space up to a certain amount, but we recommend Google Drive and Dropbox to our clients because of their ease of access and dependability. Google Drive, for example, provides up to 15 Gigabytes of free storage, and Dropbox offers 2 GB. These instructions will get you started in sharing images with Google Drive.
How to create a Google Drive Account
If you already have a Gmail account, you have a Drive already. To access it, click the menu in the top right of your screen (next to your profile picture) to find it. If you don’t have Gmail already, start by going to drive.google.com and clicking either the personal or business option, depending on whether your business uses Google Drive. Next, either create a new Google account or log in with an existing one. You’ll find yourself at the homepage of your Drive. From here, you can upload files by pressing the “New” button in the top left corner and selecting “File upload.” Once you have your file uploaded, you can move it within your Drive and create folders to organize files however you like.
Collaborating on Google Drive
You can share files by right-clicking the chosen file from your homepage, then selecting the “Share” button to determine recipients. Next, either copy the link or send an invitation directly to the recipient’s email. You can change their level of access by pressing the pencil next to the box for emails and selecting “can edit,” “can comment” or “can view.”
How to set up a Dropbox account
To set up a free Dropbox account, visit this site and follow the instructions. Once you hit your 2GB limit, you’ll be prompted to either purchase storage or to delete some of your files.
Sharing files with Dropbox
Most online storage options are very similar to Google Drive and are relatively simple to use. One major difference between Google Drive and Dropbox, however, is that you can share an entire Dropbox with other people instead of a single file. When you share an entire Dropbox with other people, you will want to make sure everything is organized so that others can find what they need within it. No one organizes their files quite the same way, but you should always make sure that the way you organize the files makes sense to everyone that uses it.
For example, you might use a Dropbox for several different projects that include photos, documents, etc. You wouldn’t want to have all of those documents sitting unorganized at the top level of your Dropbox; your collaborators wouldn’t be able to find what they need. In this instance, you could probably start by creating folders for each project. Within each project folder, you might create another folder for all your photos, and then more folders for different documents. If a folder you create only has one or two files in it, you could probably do without the folder entirely. Here’s an example of how the file structure could look:
Using online storage like Google Drive and Dropbox is a great solution to easily share and collaborate with others without the hassle of emails or flash drives. Now you’re all set to share, edit and collaborate with others!
