Digital Photo Management

I guess most of us are now using digital cameras.

In the old days, we could always put the negatives somewhere and know that short of a fire or something we will still have our pics.

With digital cameras, I have noticed a few people I have helped out with PC recoverys or whatever have sometimes lost their pics.
What concerns me is most people simply put all of their digital images in the ‘My pictures’ part of ‘My documents’. When the PC or HDD dies, there’s a good chance the images disappear also.

What is the best method to ensure secure images without too much effort?

I generally like to upload my images to a seperate HDD on the PC than the OS and then make a DVD backup of the folder. I have also got a portable HDD which I can dump a copy of the DVD on if I want. Then what I TRY and do is only modify copies of the images from the HDD…but with copies around the place that need to be kept also, it all starts getting out of hand.

I’m using picasa primarily as a location and management tool, and I find it brilliant.

What are some of the method you guys are using to make sure your images don’t get lost?

I useFlickr Pro, but even the free account’s not bad.

www.flickr.com

Firstly, I think it’s important to have some kind of software for data recovery. Just in case your photos do go. For os x I use date rescue x. PC would have something alond similar lines.

Secondly, the more mediums you store your photos on, the less grief you possibly could have. I regulary carbon copy my whole HD to an external firewire HD not just because l want to back up my photos, but data also. For os x, superduper is good for this. It also gives you a bootable HD should your HD die or become sick.

Finally, backing up photos to a decent branded dvd is important. I regularly do this and it’s a safe alternative is you haven’t purchased your ext HD yet.

[quote=“Poagao”]I useFlickr Pro, but even the free account’s not bad.

www.flickr.com[/quote]
what about your 8 megapixel images? You don’t upload them ‘as is’ do you?

I don’t, (I keep those on my hard drive and on DVDs), but I could if I liked upload those to Flickr, as there’s enough space on there to cope with them, and it resizes them automatically for viewing.

Backup is always a great idea. If you have another computer or HD, great. Another location is great too. I use Flickr for that. I keyword tag all the photos I haven’t yet uploaded from iPhoto.

[quote=“truant”]I’m using picasa primarily as a location and management tool, and I find it brilliant.

What are some of the method you guys are using to make sure your images don’t get lost?[/quote]

Yes, Picassa is fast.

If it had a photo file resizing option it would be closer to perfect.

Sometimes I want to upload a 2meg jpeg to flicka as a .2meg or so just for computer viewing.

I like to put pics down to:

CD
A spare external HDD
Another computer
Flicka
PDA.

Something should keep them short of an EMP event. That would be a bad thing.

[quote=“Ironman”]I like to put pics down to:

CD
A spare external HDD
Another computer
Flicka
PDA.

Something should keep them short of an EMP event. That would be a bad thing.[/quote]
Don’t worry, the CDs will survive.

You can also use something like GMail Drive for external backup. Just make another GMail account, and you’ll have over 2GB of storage space. You need a fast connection though.

[quote=“Ironman”]If it had a photo file resizing option it would be closer to perfect.

Sometimes I want to upload a 2meg jpeg to flicka as a .2meg or so just for computer viewing.[/quote]
It does.

Just select a bunch of pictures and hit the export button. Then you can change the demensions or quality (thus changing the size).

I shoot almost everything on slide, then get a CD made when the slides are developed. Then I choose the ones I like, put them through Picasa, and upload them to some of my Web sites.

I always have that CD with the ‘originals’, so problem solved for me.

35 mm rules! :uhhuh: :slight_smile:

I think Flickr rocks. I started out with the free account, was so impressed that I upgraded to pro, and now I’m even more impressed. Not only can I store my large photos (anything up to 10mb a file is ok), but I can share them online, e-mail new additions, blog from it, hotlink, etc, etc.

I tried Picassa but was unimpressed - it’s features are more limited than flickr, that’s for sure. And it was very difficult to completely uniinstall. There are still hidden Picassa files scattered around my computer that I’m finding… :fume:

You can

Harddrives and DVDs. All my photos have 4 backups. And I shoot only RAW.

Backup or Fuckup.