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Mages; whisk them up into the safety of the cloud. Here we test six leading options to find the best cloud storage for photos.Backing up your photos is hardly a blast, and that was especially the case back when that meant spending time burning them to CDs.Fortunately, keeping your photos safe is now much easier thanks to the cloud. Put simply, 'the cloud' is just techno-jargon for online storage.

You can choose from numerous websites offering anywhere between 1GB and 1TB of free remote hard drive space.Backing up like this doesn't just eliminate the hassle of dealing with discs or hard drives, it also enables you to access your photos from anywhere with an internet connection.

The ability to share photos is another bonus, while websites like Flickr let you exhibit your images to the world, with scope for other users to leave feedback.

Of course, if you'd rather keep your photos private, most cloud storage providers make it easy to set restrictions to make images accessible only to your password-protected account, or to anyone with a private web link.

Dropbox

Dropbox is great for storing pretty much any digital file type. Organising files is a cinch thanks to the intuitive folder system, plus you can access your files on the go with apps for iOS and Android. All this and 2GB of storage is free with a Dropbox Basic account (you can get an extra 500MB of space for referring a friend up to 16GB). A Dropbox Plus account offers 1TB for $9.99 (£7.50) a month or $99 (£74) a year, and you can get 1GB per referral (up to 32GB) . You do get remote desktop wipe, 30-day version history and priority email upload. For its versatility and simplicity, Dropbox is superb, but ultimately Flickr's more attractive interface, social interaction and sheer value make it the better option.

Google Drive

Drive isn't just another cloud storage provider, it's also home to several free business-grade office apps (heck, we even use it in the office here). Like Dropbox, Drive is geared towards file sharing, with multiple users able to modify shared files. You can store photos on Drive, but it doesn't offer the same stylish setting as more photography-focused online storage.

Instead, use Google Photos which offers unlimited storage for high resolution photos which are up to 16-megapixel in size. 15GB of free storage comes with Drive, although this is shared by other Google apps like Gmail. Google uses AI and Machine Learning to automatically label people within pictures and uses metadata (date and place) to make searching easier. Google is in the process of launching Google One - a one sharable plan, so it might not yet be available in your region. You can increase the allocated space to 100GB for $1.99 (£1.5) per month, 200GB for $2.99 (£2.3) per month, 2TB costs $9.99 (£7.5) per month, while 10TB  costs $99.99 (£75.5) per month.

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