We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time (tm) ). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
Is paper a more reliable way to store images than the cloud/drives?
I mean, paper can't really fail and lose everything like drives can, but a working drive will never lose the fidelity of the image. Paper and print can fade and stain. Only a flood or fire would truly destroy a paper copy.
As long as the data is properly backed up, I'd trust it better than paper copies.
It's worth learning from an organization that does the work of preservation of paper on a truly massive scale:
Paperbak?
When I get around to it I will have certain images printed out properly on optical paper.
This is the same technology used to make prints from negatives, the paper can be exposed to the negative or a digital image can be printed to it using a laser.
Fuji and Ilford offer it as archival type of printing. I'm sure many others do.
People wanting to print at home using inkjet can use archival paper and inks but I gave up inkjet years ago because unless you actually print then it just dries up.
I have a colour laser instead but I'd not consider that photo quality.
If you want the best archival quality look for companies that use Fuji's Crystal Archive paper. Same kind of stuff used with negatives thus same multi-decade stability.