So if you're catching this article series midstream, you can start at the beginning here.
Continuing my review of photograph file data storage options for photographers with blockchain-based solutions, the following additional alternatives come up as well.
Storj Labs
Following a similar model to SUI, Storj Labs provides a blockchain approach to file storage as well as pays people to share their storage capacity with the Storj network to increase its capacity. The site doesn't go into a lot of detail about how Storj works for the typical photographer, but it does state the network provides competitive storage for photos, video, audio files and similar backup options at a price that's half the cost of Amazon Web Services or similar, but I have no detail that confirms that objectively. Since Storj didn't nicely provide any screenshots or better detail on how there platform works for the photographer, there's not much else to show in this review.
Storj Labs company website - https://storj.io/
Block Photos
Block photos puts itself out there with a much more consumer-friendly approach, which might work well for the phone-focused types and beginner photographers. Utilizing a phone app client interface, Block Photos emphasizes blockchain security as its big benefit for protection, and photos can be uploaded digitally as desired.
However, one of the big limitations right up front is that the image sizes cannot be bigger than 5MB. In my experience that's generally unreasonable. Many RAW images and post-processing files can be far bigger, easily as much as 10 or 20 MB in size. On the other hand, Block Photos does have a really nice interface and client UX design that is darn convenient and intuitive. It follows a similar photo album approach that is familiar to many folks from prior software tools as well.
All Images from Block Photos company website, 2021
Block Photos website - https://block-photos.com/
You Pic
Going further in the right direction for digital photographers, You Pic offers both placement as well as rights protection for photographers and their images. A big ongoing problem is the amount of piracy that occurs without attribution, credit or similar on images. High quality images are stolen all the time, and even file properties don't really stop this kind of activity. With You Pic, copyright notices and rights license are embedded by blockchain into stored images, which also allows tracking as well as logging of image use later. I'm not sure exactly how that works once someone has access to the image, but that's what's promised essentially. Interestingly, if one looks at the company team, a number of names come across as familiar and serving on rosters in other photo storage blockchain companies. So, there very well could be a lot of sharing of ideas, resources and offerings under different company names but really using the same network here. I will say, though, You Pic did a very nice front page display for their company seen below in the screenshot, giving them a very professional look for folks looking for storage.
All images from You Pic company website, 2021
Reference:
You Pic Website - https://youpic.com/blockchain
Okay, that's it for Part 2. I'm debating whether there is a Part 3 on this series as I'm finding there really not a lot of photography-specific players out there or I'm not looking in the right places. More to come in a day or two.
Cheers!
