PC & Storage Options

[paf_uk]

Hi

Couple of quick questions I hope you can help with!!!

I have a wireless network with 2 laptops (vista) and 1 desktop (XP). The desktop is really used as a server/storage, but it is on its last legs. I am thinking of replacing this with an iMac and doing my photo editing on that rather than the laptop. I assume that any pic files saved by the iMac can be opened on the laptop - is that correct?

Also, at the moment I take pics in RAW and put them on my NAS drive and open them in Lightroom for processing deleting any that I don't look good from the library (but not the file) and then export them as tiffs or jpgs. So, on my NAS I keep EVERY RAW file, and in another folder on the same NAS the exported conversion from lightroom. This then backs up to a USB drive once per week.

Do other people keep ALL their raw files? I need a better way of organising myself I think as Lightoom only has those Images I have processed. Once the file has been processed is there any benefit in keeping the RAW? I need to keep the tiff or jog as I use the pics in other applications on the network.

I hope this ramble makes sense!!!

[Stefan A]

Jpg, raw, tiff are all standard file formats that a mac as well as a pc can open - so yes, you should be able to open your photos on both computers. However, I don't know if you can wirelessly network between a mac and pc - if that is what you meant. Actually, I would like to know because I also have an iMac and a pc laptop with a wireless network.

I also use lightroom and yes, I keep all my Raws. That's because I consider the Raw the main photo and all of my edits just an offshoot of the Raw. I keep all of my Raws on an external drive and have lightroom read them from there. But I never save (export on mac) my pictures unless I have something specific to do with it. Otherwise, all the edits just stay in lightroom.

Stefan

[paf_uk]

Hi Stefan

Thanks for your response.

The Mac & Laptop don't need to talk to each other, just read from the same NAS device, I understand what you mean about not bothering to export unless you need the image to print or use in a website, etc. but I though seeing as I might need to access from the mac or laptop it would be beneficial to have the images already exported with the adjustments in place, if you see what I mean.

Regards

[Steve Beck]

The mac can read from a drive formatted NTFS but can not write to it. If it is fat32 then they both can read/write to it.

I bought a airport extreme router and formatted a usb hd to fat32 and stuck it on the router so mac and pc can access common files. This is temporary till my other PC is gone this weekend )sold it to make total mac switch over).

For my picture storage I stuck a DROBO on my MAC with 4 x 1TB drives.