Canon Launches Irista Cloud-Based Photo Storage Service

Canon has launched its own cloud-based photo storage service called Irista. The company is touting the service as an advanced, cloud-based image management platform that the company claims will allow users' to access, and manage photo libraries.

Notably, unlike other cloud-based storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, and Skydrive, the Irista only stores images. Canon's Irista service offers consumers up to 10GB of free storage, while up to 50GB storage is available for EUR 4.99 (roughly Rs. 400) per month or EUR 49 (roughly Rs. 4,000) for an year. Irista also offers up to 100GB cloud storage for EUR 10.99 (roughly Rs. 900) per month and EUR 109 (roughly Rs. 8,800) per year.

Irista was previously known in beta-form as Project1709 and allows users to save photos from cameras apart from Canon like Nikon, Olympus, Sony, Panasonic and Samsung.

Canon says the Irista service has been created around few consumer factors such as making it quick and easy to find a saved image in a photo library; social integration with Facebook and Flickr allowing users to publish images directly to these platforms, and all a user's images being stored at one place, which can be accessed anytime, and from anywhere.

The company also detailed that the Irista service supports multiple range of file types and has no file size limitations. The new cloud storage service from Canon automatically uploads new additions to photo collections.

Head of Consumer Imaging Group, Canon Europe, Alessandro Stanzani said on the launch of Irista, "People are taking more photos on more devices than ever before, but it can be difficult to enjoy your images when they're stored in different places. With Irista, we've created a platform that solves that problem. It's currently the only service of its type and is built entirely around the needs of the user - reflecting a lot of the feedback received during the beta phase. It's an invaluable resource for those who love their images, and will only get better as we add more and more features over time."