Storing Photos

[davo1979]

Hi. Just wondering what the best way to store photos. I have photos everywhere at the moment after my wedding and honeymoon.. there all in different folders etc. Im using Adobe Bridge to view the RAW files and its just becoming a night mare after I have converted to JPEG.

Any ideas ?

[sheawyatt]

Lightroom and Aperture are both very good image editors that also do a great job keeping things organized. There are demos for each that you can download from Adobe and Apple.

[IVIax]

I don't think there is a "best way", it's personal preference.

some people create a folder and store them by date, others by name, others by occasion, others by year, others just dump everything into one folder, others may have a dedicated hard drive, etc. etc. etc.

[ErikatSSI]

I tried bridge for a while then Lightroom, and while I found it slightly better for actual processing it left me wanting in the organization department.

Aperture is great for storage and light processing, I have a large vault on a Drobo Hard disk that has all the shots since we went digital.

Also I keep a second copy at a relative's house and when we go to their place I take the most current copy and bring back the last copy I left. Generally they get updated at Christmas, Easter, 4th of july, and Memorial day. If my whole house was demolished tomorrow I would only loose what few photos hadn't made it to the web or the relatives.

Erik

[davo1979]

Ok thanks. Storing on two HDD for extra back up is a good idea. Thanks for all your input on this and I just need to get myself organised I think. Also be harsh with the keepers and the not so good shots.

Thanks again.

[r.morales]

I save on computer and on 2 hard drives [ one in laptop ]
I save as jpeg and raw . The jpeg are for - "i want a copy of that " i PUT ON A SMALL CARD and say "that to costco or wall mart or target . It gets expensive if you start printing them out .

[alduin]

If you're storing on two different drives, just remember that you really don't have a good backup unless the drives are kept in two different physical locations. Tuck the backup drive in a desk drawer at work or at a relative's house for safe-keeping.

I use Lightroom to manage my directory structure, but it's pretty simple to use even without LR.

Photos
----2009
--------01 - January
------------2009-01-01 - New Year's Day at Bob's House
------------2009-01-13 - Football - Ice Bowl
------------2009-01-22 - Wedding - Joe and Sue
--------02 - February
--------...
--------11 - November
--------12 - December

I then use ChronoSync to mirror the directory structure from my laptop onto the backup drive, my time machine drive at work, an airport extreme drive at home, as well as to a ZFS pool on my home file server.

[IVIax]

I then use ChronoSync to mirror the directory structure from my laptop onto the backup drive, my time machine drive at work, an airport extreme drive at home, as well as to a ZFS pool on my home file server.
What happens if you erase something accidentally from the home computer, does it get erased on the other drives as well?

[alduin]

Everything but the ZFS pool is set up as a mirror, so yes. The ZFS pool is set up as a backup, which means it copies everything.

I typically keep the last 3-4 months of photos on the laptop with everything else on an external drive as my archive. As I move a month from the laptop to the external drive, I completely re-sync that directory with the copy in the ZFS pool to make it identical and remove any rejected photos that were backed up. I generally don't do any work on photos after two months or so, so that extra month or two of a buffer generally gives me time to catch any oopses and pull things back if necessary.

It's not fool-proof, but so far it's been completely me-proof. =)

[IVIax]

Interesting, thanks :lol:

[alduin]

There's more to the setup, but that's the basic jist.

Another thing for the OP: whatever backup you do, make sure it's automated. Otherwise, you'll forget to do it regularly. I highly recommend ChronoSync for Mac (not free, but worth every penny) and SyncBack for windows (free version available). Set them up to run on a schedule or whenever the backup drive gets mounted, and you'll be much, much safer.