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camera card but don’t know if your laptop can hold them. Or perhaps, you’re someone who has seen a 128GB card fill up halfway through the wedding, and had three more bookings this month. But either way, what happens if you guess?

The solution: multiply your Photographs x your average Photo size, and then convert to GB.

Quick Answer: Total Storage (GB) = (Number of Photos × Average File Size in MB) / 1024. Resolution and format, as well as RAW or JPEG, will all affect the average file size.When you have the average file size, it’s not an educated guess, but simple multiplication. 

Why Do Photos Take Up So Much Space?There are four determinants for a 2MB or 45MB photo:

• Resolution (Megapixels): The higher the megapixels, the greater amount of data per shot.
• In RAW, they will store it all, in JPEG they will throw away what you don’t notice.
• Bit depth: The more bits the higher the bit depth and more color and tonal detail will be captured.
• Compression level: the higher the compression the smaller the file, but at the expense of some quality.

The size of the sensor also is important. With a larger sensor, you will also have more detail for each pixel, assuming the same number of megapixels ,  imagine two sponges taking up the same puddle. Even if the two appear the same size externally, the larger is the better. 

 

How Do You Calculate Storage Space for Photos?

Three steps and you’re done:

• Count your photos. Consider shoots or trips: 300 per wedding or 1,200 per week from daily phone use.
• Determine the average size of a file. Look at a couple of actual files using your formats and resolutions, or use the ranges below.
• Multiply, then convert. I have 20% of the photos and they are an average of 4MB each, so that’s 20 x 4MB = 80MB. Divide by 1024 for GB.

   

We’ve run this exact formula across dozens of real client shoots while building calculator tools at Techwole, and it holds up whether you’re planning for 50 photos or 50,000.

Typical File Sizes by Format and Resolution

Format	Typical Resolution	Average File Size
JPEG (compressed)	12–24 MP	2–6 MB
JPEG (compressed)	24–45 MP	6–12 MB
RAW (uncompressed)	12–24 MP	15–30 MB
RAW (uncompressed)	24–45 MP	30–60 MB
HEIC	12–48 MP	1.5–4 MB
PNG (lossless)	Any	5–20 MB

These are typical camera-review ranges, not fixed numbers. Scene complexity and settings shift the exact size.

RAW vs JPEG: Which One Should You Shoot?

Imagine RAW is the recipe with all the ingredients, and JPEG is the cooked dish , some ingredient is left out in the kitchen for it to be served quickly. RAW preserves all sensor information. It is compressed by JPEG and discards what your eye will not see.

• A RAW file could be 5-8 times the size of a JPEG that was taken at the same moment from the same scene.
• Take a series of RAW+JPEG images; count both the RAW and JPEG images, as they will be separately saved in your camera.
• JPEG is good for space, RAW is good for flexibility. 
• JPEG wins on space; RAW wins on editing flexibility

Worked Example: Storage for a Weekly Shoot Schedule

Say you shoot 400 photos a session, 3 sessions a week, all RAW at 35MB average.

• Weekly: 400 × 3 = 1,200 photos → 1,200 × 35MB = 42,000MB ≈ 41GB
• Monthly: 41GB × 4 ≈ 164GB
• Yearly: 164GB × 12 ≈ 1.97TB

That’s the gap between budgeting for a new drive ahead of time and scrambling for one mid-season.

How Much Storage Do You Need for a Trip or Event?

Let’s say you are going on a two week vacation and plan to take 500 pictures at 30MB each on average, in a .raw format.

500 × 30MB = 15,000MB = 14.65GB

To compensate for these factors, round up to 15-16GB. A similar math applies with weddings, product shoots, or any project you can foresee a number of pictures being taken in advance. 

Why Does a 128GB Card Only Show 119GB of Space?

Storage units stack like nesting boxes, each one holding roughly 1,000 of the size before it: bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes.

Here’s the wrinkle: camera makers use decimal units (1,000-based) for marketing, but your operating system reports binary units (1,024-based). That’s why a “128GB” card shows up as roughly 119GB on your device — same card, different math. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s guide to binary prefixes breaks down exactly how that gap happens.

Quick Fact: A single 45-megapixel RAW photo can be bigger than 100 pages of plain text.

How Many Photos Fit on a 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, or 1TB Card?

Storage Capacity	JPEG (avg 5MB)	RAW (avg 25MB)
64GB	~12,800 photos	~2,560 photos
128GB	~25,600 photos	~5,120 photos
256GB	~51,200 photos	~10,240 photos
1TB	~200,000 photos	~40,000 photos

These assume decimal capacity (1GB = 1,000MB), so real usable space runs slightly lower once formatting overhead is factored in.

Does Camera Sensor Size Change File Size?

Yes. With a full frame sensor, there is more information available for each pixel than the smaller APS-C sensor, even at the same megapixel count. The average file sizes of two “24 MP” cameras can be quite different. Rely on the actual number of megapixels in the sample files rather than the megapixel number. 

Does Video Eat Up More Storage Than Photos?

Of course, by a long shot. 4K video takes up the storage of 50 to 100 RAW shots. If you have both, work them out individually , video and photos together will never be as accurate as working them out individually. 

Should You Store Photos on the Cloud or a Physical Drive?

• Cloud storage (Google Photos, iCloud, Dropbox) comes in fixed sizes, typically 100GB, 200GB, 1TB or 2TB. You can get the same formula to show which tier fits out of it.
• Extra buffer required for physical storage (external drives, SD card). Don’t fill more than 90-95% of the disk, otherwise the read and write speed will be reduced.

The majority of photographers use both: local for active editing, cloud for long term backup storage , each with their own capacity. 

Why Does My Real Storage Need Bigger Than My Raw Capture Size?

Your raw capture size only gets you started. All of the edited exports, alternate crops, and backups are piled on top of it.

The general rule for working photographers is to double or triple your estimate for the raw file size when planning JPEG output, a local backup and an offsite or cloud storage backup. If you don’t include that multiplier, you’ll find yourself running out of room in a matter of months after you initially estimate. 

How Can You Shrink Photo File Sizes Without Losing Quality?

Convert to larger, higher quality JPEG files for photos that won’t require further editing.

• Use HEIC for regular shots instead of PNG.
• Resize at a lower resolution, but maintain the proper aspect ratio.
• Convert old raw files to JPEG in batch, retaining only the best shots as raw files 

Common Mistakes That Throw Off Storage Estimates

Estimating JPEG storage using JPEG averages, or the other way around

• Failing to make backup copies.
• Using decimal gigabytes along with binary gigabytes can result in a 5-7% error at scale.
• Skips over video files on the same card
• Assuming that all cameras have the same number of megapixels and thus have the same file size 

The Bottom Line

Three numbers decide your storage need: how many photos you have, how big each one is, and how many copies you keep. Lock those in, and the rest is just multiplication and unit conversion.

Once you’ve got your GB total, you can run it through Techwole’s unit converter tools to switch between MB, GB, and TB without doing the division by hand. Plan ahead with these numbers, and you won’t be stuck scrambling for space mid-shoot.

Frequently Asked Questions

What will be the required storage for 1000 photos? If the average size of a JPEG photo is 5MB, then 1,000 photos require approximately 5GB of space. 

 

Which is preferable for space saving: raw or jpg? JPEG is the preferred option for saving space, while RAW is a better choice if flexibility in editing is more important than file size.

 

What is the storage requirement for a full frame 45MP camera, for each photo taken? The full frame 45MP camera will capture RAW files of 45MB to 60MB in size, and JPEG files of 10MB to 15MB in size, though the actual size of the files will depend on different scenes and cameras.

 

Do I need to keep photos on my computer or in the cloud to free up disk space?  The best strategy is typically a combination of on-site storage for editing and a cloud tier for backup off-site; and then sizing by multiplying photo count x average photo size x GB.