Photo storage/backup philosophies?

elven

I'm starting to get to that stage where I've got too many photos to categorise them by a folder name for each trip, or the dates they were taken - and also far too many different edits: web sized, larger for flickr, largest for printing saved as psd, for printing saved as jopg, original RAW format, etc etc etc. As for backups, I've just been sticking a copy of the entire thing as the jumbled mess that it is just now, onto a DVD, every few weeks/couple of photo trips.

I recently watched a tutorial on the www.radiantvista.com site that explained how to use the adobe bridge to organise, rate and tag your pictures, and it's made me think about getting organised, setting up a better structure that will be able to grow and will be easy to maintain and also to backup incrementally, rather than backing up the whole amount over and over again as I add stuff to it.

Do you all have nice, organised picture libraries and sophisticated backup routines? Any recommendations/helpful suggestions? Does anyone actually use the bridge, or do you use windows explorer (or OS-specific file management) or some other bespoke software for the job?

Looks like it'll be a fun weekend, the photographic equivalent of a spring clean...

311

I always think canons zoombrowser dating method is grand .
I always use camera window to download photos into date directories.

Another method could be C:\2006\1st\area_event\
year ,first quarter, area or event ,
12 weeks would probably fill a dvd backup.:( ,just a thought

440Hz

Yeah this is something I have been meaning to do for a while as well. Right now my method is really crap.. download everything to a 'to process' folder, work on what I like, save to folders by topic or location, and then back the entire 'Pictures' folder up to an external HD every so often. When im in the mood I use a program called Graphics Convertor to go back and tag the folders. Got a lot of shots, and so far iv been able to keep track of them, but maybe better organization would pay off though.

davmigil

I use an external hard drive with this really good freeware backup program:

http://www.2brightsparks.com/freeware/freeware-hub.html

It looks a bit complicated at first, but is easy to set up all kinds of different backups.

If you combine this with this with off-site online storage (e.g. flickr) and off-site DVD storage for more fail-safes.

I tag my images in Photoshop Elements by location,persons in shot etc. as best I can. Give the ones I like best a star rating. Have 'to do' collections of ones that need work, but never get around to it I give the folders a name based on location/event, but don't worry about them after that (all saved under My Pictures on separate hard drive). Most precious pictures also get copied to Ipod in full format (have Photoshop Elements Collection called Ipod). Next plan is to copy over those to laptop too (never can have too many backups!).

On Mac I use http://www.silverkeeper.com

Roen

Just rely on memory for file management, DVDs and ghosting to a separate internal drive for my back ups. And I suppose Flickr for low res online management.
If you're willing to pay for online storage...If you have Photoshop cs2, go to Bridge and click Tools>Photoshop Services and make sure that Automatically check for services is ticked.
Then click Tools>Photoshop Services>Online Backup.
This is a handy means of backing up files directly from Adobe Bridge. You can upload your files directly from the Bridge to Iron Mountain storage.

elven

Brian - what's the zoombrowser? I tried to install the mimimum amount of stuff that I got with the camera... does that do the same as the bridge?

You should consider a

Wow, davmigil... thought there would be someone like you who's ultra organised I'm downloading that backup tool just now, thinking it would be quite handy to copy from the laptop to the PC at home (they are networked together) and hopefully that'll be fairly clean (hopefully less troublesome than veritas backup exec, hehe). It'll be handy if I can use that for DVD backups as well, then I've got everything on 2 computers plus a DVD that I'll keep at work.

I'm actually considering an extra flickr pro account to store all the full sized originals of my favourites - I only keep the smaller processed ones on my main account. For the money, it's pretty good I think.

Redundo

It can get bloody complicated, can't it?

I have 4 different cameras I use, 2 digital and 2 film and over the last few years (and several thousand shots) I have what appears to be a reasonably robust filing system.

On a partition on my internal HD I keep one folder for each camera; inside these folders I keep folders for each shooting date (thank you Canon Zoombrowser); and inside these are jpegs of everything i've shot that day.

Jpegs are excellent because you can easily flick through a folder containing several hundred thumbnails and pick out the shot you want. You don't really need a program to help you with it. As for knowing which shot is the one i'm looking for, I just resort to memory to pick out the better shots from the dross.

I also keep two entirely seperate folders for printing and projects. Every once in a while I back-up everything to an external HDD and make DVD hardcopies too.

So far my system hasn't let me down. I have never lost or accidentally deleted shots and I can organise every single shot i've taken. I've never deleted anything i've taken and that includes dSLR Raw files.

311

Elven zoombrowser comes with canon, I've been using it since around 2000 ,as soon as I put a memory card near my pc the images get put into a directory ,with a name of the date of the shots inside my picture directory.

I like using zoombrowser for looking for images because it's fast and a very intuitive way of finding images. The directories on the left of the screen let you know where to look when using PS.

davmigil

I heard about this online storage on a podcast, no idea how good they are, but pricing seems good:

http://www.jungledisk.com/pricing.shtml

Valentia

Elven, the first thing I would do is buy an external hard drive, 350 Gigs are reasonable now ( have a look at this one. I have bought lots from Komplett and as long as you pick the cheap postage the value is great)and you can use it with both the laptop and home PC. I have a few of them and keep a couple of backups.

That said I am very disorganised as far as taging stuff is concerned and I am not ruthless enough at deleting garbage.

I have used ACDSee for many years and I find it really good. They have started adding more and more bells and whistles lately and have bloated it a bit but if you got version 6 cheap (the prog is reasonable anyway) it would be worth a lash. Download a trial here and see what you think. It's fast, works with RAW and gives all the tagging and rating functionality you need.

I think I'll wait until the winter comes in but I have weeks of work ahead to get sorted too.

rymus

so I'm the only person using picassa then?

jlang

Picasa user here too, but only really for organisation/browsing through the collection which is mostly sorted in directories by year then by date (for digital) or by sequential roll number (film). I expect I'll have to upgrade the filing system for multiple cameras/RAW images/etc over time but for now I'm happy.

For backup, I upgraded the main HD to a 300GB drive a while back but left the old disk in the box too. I have things set up to mirror the photo collection (and other stuff) onto that on a reasonably regular basis so until I've 120Gb of photos, I'll have a live backup of everything. Might trade up that disk then too. Periodically I also back up to CD/DVD and many of the pictures also exist on my laptop.

(off topic - with two disks in the box, should I rearrange Photoshop to use the second disk for temporary files.)

Roen

jlang wrote:

(off topic - with two disks in the box, should I rearrange Photoshop to use the second disk for temporary files.)

Most definitely. Go to Edit>Preferences>Plug ins and scratch disks...Then set your second drive as the first scratch disk.

Cabaal

rymus wrote:

so I'm the only person using picassa then?

I was just going to say that, I find it like iPhoto and for a free app its not too bad...although abit basic at times

CrowdedHouse

rymus wrote:

so I'm the only person using picassa then?

Definitely yer only man for browsing pic folders.

As I dont have a huge number of pics atm,I leave them on the PC but I do regular full pc back ups to an ext HD.
I also make sure I keep an original out of the camera copy of the pics on the ext HD before I start tweaking so if/when I make a bags of one I always have an original.
I am tempted to make DVD copies for fear of HD failure but this pc doesn't have a burner.

Borderfox

All backed up to 2 seperate external HD. For Polo season I used photoshop elements and categorised by player, match, team and date. I use zoombrowser to dowload off memory cards, have a look first to take out duff photos (out of focus, bogey composition) then look again and filter out till only good stuff left. I backup every week to dvd also.

TempestSabre

I use a simple folder method for storage "My Photos/Year/Date + Event/" Sometimes I have further sub folders as required. For stuff I'm working on I have "My Projects/Project Name" because a project might involve more than just photos. When I name folders and files I use the date format like this...

20060818 1400 Carls Wedding
20060818 1800 Carls Reception
20060821 Car Racing in Mondello
20060924 Car Racing in Mondello (Big Crash)

So that it sorts correctly on the computer. I use programs like XnView or ThumbsPlus a bit. Lately I'm just use the thumbnail and preview in Windows Explorer.

I have a couple of USB external disks which I sync on a regular basis. Long term stuff goes on a DVD.

Morlar

I really need to get this sorted too - I had a 300gb ext hdd which went and died and since then have gotten out of the habit of backing stuff up.

Roen

Incidentally I set Ghost to run incremental back ups at 11am and 5pm everyday so if one of my drives goes I'll only have lost half a days work at most. Take a look at Norton Ghost or Farstone's Restore IT pro. I use both in work and they have the added advantage of not only backing up your pics, but your entire drive, OS and all.

davmigil

Morlar wrote:

I really need to get this sorted too - I had a 300gb ext hdd which went and died and since then have gotten out of the habit of backing stuff up.

You should be able to open it up and replace the drive (assuming it wasn't a case only job in the first place .

mervifwdc

If your not sure, your not backing up enough :-)

google for "the dam book". There is a thing called the dam method, and it's a dam heavy ready, but dam smart.

dam = digital asset management.

I've started renaming each image as part of the download process to merv_date_seq.cr2 Works well when you have 2 cameras to download from , but want one naming standard. The camera's numebrs get mucked up from time to time if you have to swap a card from one camera to another.

Seriously, check this out: http://www.thedambook.com/

I've about 25k images stored, and am only now looking at this seriously. I should have done it ages ago.

Merv.

aFlabbyPanda

I'm a bit anal about backup's and file/folder arrangement following a drive failure a few years ago which damaged a lots of pic. Some of which I hadnt printed either so lost them for good.

I have my documents folder redirected to a 300GB internal drive. I use zoombrowser to import into folder with yyyy_mm_dd. Then i use picasa to tag and sort the images to albums as appropriate. I use the backup feature within picasa to backup to DVD every week.

I also have an external drive which I backup everything to (using backup exec) and I also backup stuff offsite to a server I have at work using ftp.

elven

Some fabulous ideas here, I did get round to doing most of the sorting, but haven't done the backing up yet - had a look at the 2brightsparks one mentioned further up the thread and that looked pretty good, mostly because of the synchronising possibilities, but have to get some extra storage because not enough gb left on the laptop - I discovered I now have about 6gb of pictures - although that includes the psd files as well. Not as if that's much compared to you lot, but still...

rymus

Ohh actually.. speaking of backups, I've been meaning to create a little server to store photos on. Nothing flashy, just a few 300gb drives in raid 5. Either that or buy one of these.

aFlabbyPanda

my buddy has that one. I went the cheap route and got this one

Roen

rymus wrote:

Ohh actually.. speaking of backups, I've been meaning to create a little server to store photos on. Nothing flashy, just a few 300gb drives in raid 5. Either that or buy one of these.

Not a bad looking bus for $800. Can they be bought over here? Most of the shipping I looked at was either prohibitively expensive or just non existant outside the States.

Fenster

I variously use Adobe Lightroom, Bibble Pro, Picasa and xnview depending on my exact needs - Bibble for fine edting of a raw file, Picasa for showing people photos, Lightroom for odds and ends and xnview for utility.

As far as storage, I save all files to a folder called Imports that I regularly copy to an external HD. File ordering is by year, month and day; ie: 2006-08-21, 2006-12-25, etc. Works grand for me. :]

jpogorman

I use Picasa2 also. Very useable on my slow machine. I used to use ARen for batch renaming but I'm just after discovering Dim 4 (http://www.alanlight.com/dim/Dim.htm) which will do the copy from memory card, batch rename and copy a backup to a specified location. Looks good so far.

Unfortunately, I'm a bit lazy about backing up to DVD. I'll be punished at some stage!