I have to say I was a little more then jazzed to read that photo storage/sharing/printing/safe-keeping site SmugMug has created a new service call SmugVault.

SmugVault is a service that allows you to upload any type of file or document (RAW, PSD, Excel and/or Word) in addition to the current unlimited free uploading/storage of JPGs, PNGs and/or GIFs. Pricing for these new file types is 22 cents per gig per month with a $1 per month recurring charge. Data transfer in is 30 cents per gig. Data transfer out is 51 cents per gig. Like the rest of SmugMug, this service is built on top of Amazon’s S3 Web Service.

The announced came today on SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill’s blog (http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/).

At those prices my 40 gigs of most important RAW images (mostly pics of my feet while sitting on the sofa and my dog) will cost less then $10.00 per month to store with around $12.00 charge for uploading. For an additional $20.00 I can download the entire load…which I hope I’ll ever have a need.

Currently, I export every photo from Lightroom as a JPG and upload to SmugMug, but now I can send along the original RAW image files and sleep a little easier knowing they’re in good hands.