Canon launches Irista cloud storage service for photos – Here’s the deal

Canon has launched its very own cloud storage service called Irista, now allowing photographers to keep all of their photos in the cloud.

This cloud storage solution joins a multitude of such services, including Flickr, Picasa, Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud, and so on. Unlike those services, however, Canon's new Irista will deal with photos, and photos only.

Irista users will be able to store, organize, and share images in the cloud, but not videos, documents, or other files. Canon's new cloud service will support JPGs and raw format photos and will not impose any limitations in regards to the file size. The service can also sync new photos to specific collections.

In addition to tagging their photos, users will also have various criteria to choose from when searching for a photo, including date, time, location, or even the type of lens used for the photo in question. Moreover, each image in Irista will also display the EXIF data such as the model of the camera used to take the photo, the aperture and ISO speed, exposure, and so on.

Irista will also allow users to share their favorite photographs via social networking sites such as Facebook and Flickr, and keep track of comments through the service's interface.

For those who don't really read the Terms and Conditions before jumping into the service, here's a small excerpt referring to the Copyright License part:

 "Canon will only use your Materials for the purpose of providing you with the irista Services. To do this, you grant Canon and those we may work with a free, non-exclusive, worldwide, sub-licensable right to do everything necessary to provide the irista Services, including (without limitation) to use, publish, reproduce, host and store your Materials (the "Licence"). The Licence continues for as long as you use the irista Services. The Licence comes to an end in respect of all your Materials when you delete them from the Website, and in respect of all of your materials when you close your account. In case if you have shared you content with other users through a third party website the rights of use of that content will be regulated by the third-party Ts and Cs. By uploading your Material to the Website, you are warranting that you have the right to grand Canon the Licence described above. If you are not in a position to grant the Licence to Canon, you must not upload the Material to the Website."

When it comes to pricing, the new Irista cloud storage service from Canon offers 10GB of storage for free. Users in the UK and select European countries can also get an additional 50GB of storage for £4.49/ €4.99 per month or £45.00/ €49.00 for a year. A heftier 100GB costs £9.99/ €10.99 per month or £99/ €109 for the whole year. For more information or to sign up, head over to the Irista website at this link.