storing photos

[imamartian]

in the old days of film and prints, it was an album, or a cardboard box... these days, with the digital revolution, how do you store, or indeed view your snaps?

i suppose, there is plain storage.... then order, and then access..

i have most of my pics on my laptop, and the screen saver as a slide show of the top directory.... but i'd like to do it properly... do you copy photos into folders labelled "kids" "holiday" "artistic" etc? or do you rename every photo with keywords?

any thoughts?

 

[^woody^]

Use Google Picasa to catalogue, index and tweak your photos

Mine are stored in the standard Pictures library of win7 (My Pictures in XP) and I always use the import function of windows (connect your camera or card) to automatically put them into individual folders named on the 'taken' date - so they sort nicely in order

But I do everything else in Picasa

Don't keep these images solely on your laptop or any one computer. Back them up to any of the free online storage sites, and an external HD or two

 

[imamartian]

how do you back up? is it a simple copy and paste?

 

[^woody^]

Copy and paste is an unreliable chore for backing up, use proper synchronisation software

When I had XP, I used Sync toy which is free file synchronisation software from Microsoft

With win7 I now use GoodSync and Acronis

 

[Alarm]

I have all my pictures on USB and DVD as back up.
I keep the `pooter clean as possible.

 

[ericmark]

I transfer from camera to hard drive folder at a time the camera numbers the folder then under-slash and date. I then add behind the camera number a description so by default they are in order with date.

I have had loads of software which should organise the photos Lightroom it seems is most popular but I just use Bridge from Photoshop mainly as many can only read Jpeg and all originals are in RAW.

To view originally I just stuck them on a disk. Found the files too big so selected in Bridge and reduced size to W1280 H1024 with Photoshop so they will display quicker.

But in last few weeks been trying Pictures2exe and very pleased with it. The AV software will produce as well as an exe file as name suggests a MP4 file special for Iphone however turning into a DVD is like watching paint dry takes a real age.

I do put real important pictures on CD or DVD but most I just take a chance that my hard drive will not fail. Just takes up too much room to do them all.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

how do you back up? is it a simple copy and paste?

imamartian, I thought you were a programmer?

 

[imamartian]

how do you back up? is it a simple copy and paste?

imamartian, I thought you were a programmer?

yes i am, but very specialised... imagine a java programmer asked to code on a UNIX box !!!

what i meant was... is it as simple a copy and paste, or is there a piece of software i can use to manage the archiving?!!

 

[Monkeh]

how do you back up? is it a simple copy and paste?

imamartian, I thought you were a programmer?

yes i am, but very specialised... imagine a java programmer asked to code on a UNIX box !!!

Very specialised and apparently quite ignorant, seeing as Java is a high level language with JVMs for many operating systems including all Unices. And I think you'll find a keyboard is a keyboard.

 

[ericmark]

Most external hard drives come complete with software to allow back-up.
Some like the "Clickfree" are specials designed for back-up allowing you (maybe with a few mods to what is auto backed up) to just plug in and all is auto backed up.

However you also want I would assume to view the pictures and what we have to consider is how you will view them?

To me the best option is the TV this is the largest screen I have and is where we would entertain.

So next is how to show them on a TV and in my case there are many options. Blu-ray, DVD recorder/player, or laptop all connect to TV so CD, DVD, USB stick and local LAN can in my case all be used.

The LAN is good option through the Blu-ray using my 1TB hard drive but this is so big finding the photos is a problem. USB sticks are quite expensive compared with CD or DVD so likely CD or DVD is best option.

Again there is a limit to how long people will sit and watch photos so too options either use just a CD so you only show a few at a time or convert to an Audio Video display (An AV). By adding music and some animation it add interest to your boring pictures. I use Picture2exe but then the next question.

To archive do you just save the original in my case RAW file or do you save the final ready to display either reduced size Jpeg or AV? My pictures start as a 10Mb file and with processing can grow to 60Mb as images are combined but my TV is 1280 pixels by 1024 pixels so it just can't show all that detail so once finished the images are reduced to size for TV which means they will also load quicker.

With panorama images you really need the AV software so that it scrolls across the screen but the AV's are designed so you can't extract images so a screen print is only way to get it back into a still.

I have returned as my skills improve to old RAW images and re-processed them and been able to remove dust marks which were beyond my skill. Also CS5 has options which were not on CS4 and again if you have the RAW image you can improve your older photos.

So storing as RAW files must be best and in DNG format is likely the most lasting format for storage. But 10Mb takes up a lot of room and a DVD with RAW images likely has less photos than a CD with Jpeg so you have to decide what physical and what digital room you can afford to store you photos.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

imamartian, I think you're Special too.

 

[Sam Gangee]

I have all my pictures on USB and DVD as back up.

USB is a connection method, not a means of storage. Presumably you have a USB port connected to something that stores?

DVD is a very unreliable storage system for long term. I have had DVDs self-erase after only a year sitting in my office. At present I'm using Hard Drives until something better is invented.

 

[imamartian]

how do you back up? is it a simple copy and paste?

imamartian, I thought you were a programmer?

yes i am, but very specialised... imagine a java programmer asked to code on a UNIX box !!!

Very specialised and apparently quite ignorant, seeing as Java is a high level language with JVMs for many operating systems including all Unices. And I think you'll find a keyboard is a keyboard.

no, not ignorant. It was a badly made point late at night. My point is that a keyboard may be a keyboard, but a language is not any other. I speak English and a bit of French, but i'm far from fluent in French. Although i can work out a lot of words and sentences by knowing how words are constructed. Whereas, say, Japanese? or Russian? i haven't a clue.

 

[mikej2005]

do you copy photos into folders labelled "kids" "holiday" "artistic" etc? or do you rename every photo with keywords?

I let my camera software import photos from the camera and put them in folders automatically, named according to when they were taken. I'll often add a label for easier identification, eg. '2011_10_20 Alton Towers'

Rather than worrying too much about file names, the best option is to tag the photos with common keywords (holiday, names, locations etc). You can do this in Windows or Picasa (etc) but whichever you use, make sure the data is permanently embedded in case you change software in the future. (Some tag virtually and save the information to a database rather than the photo itself, which means that the tags will only be searchable by that bit of software)

Tagging enables you to quickly search and filter your photos, without the need for browsing folders. In Picasa, for example, selecting 'Holiday' and 'Bob' tags will instantly display all the photos with those tags - the more you specify, the narrower the search will become.

Also - DVDs can be used for back-ups, but make sure that they are not the only back-up. A friend of mine restored his music collection from DVD back-ups a while back and 20% of them were corrupted.