How much storage does a wedding photographer really need?

“Do I need 1 TB or is 200 GB enough?” — that’s one of the most common questions when choosing a gallery platform. The answer depends on four variables: number of weddings per year, file size per image, delivery in JPEG or RAW, and whether you also deliver video.

In this article: concrete numbers instead of marketing waffle.

Rule of thumb per wedding (JPEG delivery)

A typical 8-hour wedding:

1,500–2,500 images shot
600–1,000 images edited and delivered
Per JPEG (from full resolution of the current camera generation): 6–12 MB

That’s between 3.5 GB and 12 GB of data in the gallery per wedding. For planning, budget 8 GB per wedding — a realistic average.

With RAW delivery it’s considerably more

If you also store the RAW files in the gallery (e.g. because the couple wants their own edits later, or because you have editorial jobs):

Canon CR3: 30–50 MB per image
Sony ARW: 40–80 MB per image (depending on camera)
Nikon NEF: 30–60 MB per image

At 800 delivered RAW files you quickly land at 30–60 GB per wedding. That’s 5–8× compared with JPEG delivery.

Pragmatic suggestion: deliver JPEGs in the gallery, RAWs only on explicit request via a separate download. That keeps the galleries manageable and your storage needs reasonable.

With video it’s more again

A wedding film, depending on length and resolution:

4K, 10 minutes, H.265: ~3 GB
4K, 30 minutes, H.265: ~9 GB
1080p, 60 minutes: ~5 GB

If you also deliver highlight reels and behind-the-scenes, another 5–15 GB of video per wedding is added.

Storage budget per studio type

With the assumptions above — 8 GB JPEG per wedding, +10 GB for video if relevant — you can roughly project your storage budget:

Side business: 5–15 weddings per year

Gallery delivery only: 40–120 GB
With video: 90–270 GB
Recommendation: 100–250 GB

Full-time solo: 25–40 weddings per year

Gallery delivery only: 200–320 GB
With video: 450–720 GB
Recommendation: 500 GB – 1 TB

Studio with a team: 60–120 weddings per year

Gallery delivery only: 480 GB – 1 TB
With video: 1.1 TB – 2.4 TB
Recommendation: 1.5 TB – 3 TB

Archiving as a storage multiplier

An important question: how long does a gallery have to stay online?

Couples view their gallery often in the first 4 weeks, rarely afterward — and practically never after 6 months. Still, they expect the gallery to remain “somehow” accessible.

Solution: gallery archiving. Images stay stored but are no longer counted as “active” — so they don’t take a slot in your plan limit, but can be reactivated if needed.

At Lumio it works like this: per plan there’s a limit for active galleries (Solo 10, Studio 50, Pro unlimited), but archived galleries don’t count. So on the Solo plan you can easily have 10 weddings active in parallel and run several dozen archived galleries in the background, which only count against the limit again on reactivation.

Storage add-ons instead of a plan upgrade

If you need storage in isolation (e.g. after an unusually wedding-rich season), a storage add-on is often better than a plan upgrade:

Lumio: +€9/month per 50 GB extra, on top of the chosen plan
Plan change from Solo to Studio: +€20/month — only worth it from ~110 GB extra need

A concrete recommendation

If you’re currently evaluating Lumio: start with the plan that fits your current wedding count. You can top up storage anytime, plan upgrades are possible monthly, downgrades at the end of the month.

Rule of thumb for most:

≤ 15 weddings/year → Solo (50 GB) + 1–2 storage packs if needed
15–40 weddings/year → Studio (250 GB)
40 weddings/year → Pro (1 TB) or self-host

With self-hosting (see lumio-app.de) storage is usually cheaper — you only pay for the S3 bucket at a provider of your choice. With Hetzner Object Storage, for example, €5/month for 1 TB.