Amazon has added free “unlimitted” cloud storage of photos called Prime Photos as another benefit of it’s Amazon Prime subscription. The $99 a year subscription now includes free two day shipping, Prime Instant Video: unlimited streaming of movies and TV episodes, and expected by the end of the year, free 4K video streaming.
The terms of Amazon Photo limiot a single image to 2GB and a video to 20 minutes. A wide range of formats are supported. According to the Amazon website:
Supported File Types
For photos:
.bmp
.gif
.jpeg
.jpg
.png
.raw
.tif
.tiff
For videos:
.mp4 (including mov, 3gp, m4v)
.avi (including divx)
.mts (mpeg transport stream)
.mpg (mpeg program stream)
.asf/.wmv
.flv
.ogg
Note:
Supported RAW photo formats include: Adobe (dng), Canon (cr2, crw), Epson (erf), Fuji (raf), Kodak (dcr), Minolta (mrw), Nikon (nef, nrw), Panasonic (rw2), Pentax (pef), Sigma (x3f), and Sony (srf). Other RAW formats may be supported, but we cannot guarantee them fully.(emphasis added)
Supported video codecs include: h.264, mjpeg, mpeg4, mpeg2, mpeg1, h.263, Sorenson. Supported audio codecs include: aac, mpeg1/2, amr, wma, qcelp, pcm.
Photos or video file types that do not meet the above requirements can be found in Cloud Drive Files, but not viewed in Cloud Drive Photos & Videos. Unsupported photo file types are not covered under the Prime unlimited storage benefit and will count against your Cloud Drive storage limit.
Left unclear is wether RAW formats, generally used by advancewd amatures and pro photographers will count against the regular Cloud Drive Storage limit. (Lets test it). Assuming “may be supported” means RAW images are included makes this a valuable benefit to Amazon Prime members. OSX users will be limitted to using the web sintyrface to upload images until Amazon completes work on a Mac client.