Colourful arrows facing up and down - How long does photobox take to upload?

How long does photobox take to upload?

Sending
User Review
3 (1 vote)

In our modern day and age, we’re quite spoiled in many ways. Deliveries can take as little as one day to arrive, food arrives at our door within less than an hour, and things we research on the Internet can be found within seconds. That’s why many times it can be quite irritating that when it comes to creating photo books, things may take a little longer. This is most noticeable when it comes to uploading photos. That’s why we’re not surprised to have come across this frequently asked question from photo book enthusiasts: “How long does photobox take to upload?” In this article, we’ll look into the how and why of photo uploads and see whether Photobox actually stands out of the crowd – positively or negatively.

  1. What is an upload?

Not everyone is versed in technology matters. Even though the term “upload” is quite common nowadays, let’s have a quick look at what happens when you upload something. Essentially, you are transferring data from your computer to another. In this photo book case, we’re talking about a server that is used by a photo book company. In order to get your data from here to there, the Internet is needed. That means your router is needed to move the data away from you and towards that server. Both need good Internet speed and processing power to get this work done. The server saves your photos (temporarily) and ensures you can use them in the software Photobox offers you to create your photo book. So there is also time involved in making your photo available for editing and placement.

Servers in a dark room

All in all, an upload is taking a file and sending it to a server from which it can be used. If you were to take that image file from Photobox and store it as a copy on your computer, that would be a download, meaning you are transferring the file from the server to your computer using the Internet.

  1. How is speed determined?

One very important factor is your home Internet service. If your local network is not very strong or in high demand (you’re streaming a movie, someone is on the phone, another person is playing a live online game, and you’re downloading a very big file in the background, for example), there isn’t a lot of room for your upload to be processed quickly. It is queued or gets only a small portion of the available bandwidth. In this case, your upload could take quite a long time.

Another factor is, of course, the size of your upload. Each photo on your computer is stored in bytes. High-resolution images are large compared to smartphone snapshots. Uploading a couple of smartphone snapshots takes very little time. Uploading 30 professional photographs, on the other hand, is more time-consuming. It’s like carrying water: You’re much quicker walking with one bottle than walking with a crate in each hand.

Shape f a woman in flying or sprinting motion resembling speed

Lastly, there’s the other side: If there are Internet problems at Photobox’s servers, your upload may take longer. Also, the number of people using the service matters. Imagine a full bus, I mean packed: You’re still getting from A to B, but it’s much harder for people to enter and exit and thus it may take longer. You may have experienced as well that a website is temporarily unavailable. That’s what happens when a server is overloaded (this is one of the reasons) – it can’t handle the quantity of requests it receives.

  1. How long does Photobox take to upload?

Now, let’s have a look at Photobox in particular. While we know that other factors can influence the upload speed, is Photobox better or worse than other services? To give a good framework, let’s consider this: You have a folder with 20 images you’d like to upload. Each of those images has a file size of about 3MB. As we know, this is relevant to the speed of upload. Your Internet connection is strong and everyone is out, so you’re free to use its full upload power. This upload of 40MB should take about 20-30 seconds. According to Photobox, one file of about 2MB should take less than 5 seconds to process. In our own test, things went incredibly well and fast. We uploaded 20 photos of 25MB or more each and were good to go within 10 seconds.

Photobox logo

So while we can’t give you a specific answer to the question “How long does photobox take to upload?”, we hope this article helps you get a good idea of how things work and why they sometimes don’t. If you’re unsure, you can also test your Internet connection or try again at a later time to improve upload speeds.