How do you store your photos.

[Sgt.Pepper]

Just curious how people have their photos stored on their computer.
Do you have them saved to an external harddrive, or saved onto the computer?
Do yo have a backup of all your photos?
Generally I guess I'm asking what's your method for dealing with your photos?

 

[Phrasikleia]

I keep my most current photos on an external drive. All but the most recent are backed up to DVDs in triplicate.

 

[greg555]

I have an external Time Machine drive that I connect about once a week to backup the computer (photos included). Keeping it disconnected and powered down protects me against power surges that could damage the computer and drive at the same time (unless they happen during a backup).

I also burn DVD+R discs every month or so and store them off site. Plus I don't delete the photos from my camera's memory cards until they are stored off-site.

Greg

 

[heron88]

I just back them up to cds. I have like 30 cds with 20,000+photos

 

[66217]

I have them in an external drive. And back them up to two more external drives. One of them is normally at the office. And eventually I'll get and burn them all to DVDs, but I have been lazy about doing this.

 

[juanster]

I have them all in time machine and two separate external drives... but i am really looking into somehting else... iPhoto is killing my space in my laptop's Hd, I donlt knwo whats going on I have about 15 Gb of pictures but somehow my iphoto library is over 43 GB...I donlt knwo what to do to fix this...

 

[66217]

I have them all in time machine and two separate external drives... but i am really looking into somehting else... iPhoto is killing my space in my laptop's Hd, I donlt knwo whats going on I have about 15 Gb of pictures but somehow my iphoto library is over 43 GB...I donlt knwo what to do to fix this...

It sounds to me that you have tons of duplicates. Whenever you make an edit to a photo, iPhoto creates a duplicate of that photo.

 

[juanster]

It sounds to me that you have tons of duplicates. Whenever you make an edit to a photo, iPhoto creates a duplicate of that photo.

yeah i am pretty sure tahts what it is i just don t knwo how to get rid of the excess

 

[66217]

Not sure what would happen if you export all the photos, erase your iPhoto folder, and then re-import them again. It could work.

I see you have a Rebel XT, I would really suggest getting Aperture or Lightroom. Both programs really change your life. iPhoto is very annoying when you edit photos.

 

[juanster]

Not sure what would happen if you export all the photos, erase your iPhoto folder, and then re-import them again. It could work.

I see you have a Rebel XT, I would really suggest getting Aperture or Lightroom. Both programs really change your life. iPhoto is very annoying when you edit photos.

I actually do have LR and Aperture(my dad's but he hasnt even installed it yet so he said can have it), i just havent looked into it to tell you the truth...do they save and arrange things in a different way after editing my photos? so taht ic oudl save some space?

 

[sud]

I use Aperture and decided on keeping all the photos on my laptop, I have 2 external drives, one of which is just for the aperture vault and the other which I connect to the laptop once a week and let Time Machine back the up the complete computer.

I do have a second laptop which has a second copy of my vault on which is only 10gb at the moment.

I should also keep a copy off site but have not got around to that yet.

 

[ChrisA]

Just curious how people have their photos stored on their computer.
Do you have them saved to an external harddrive, or saved onto the computer?
Do yo have a backup of all your photos?
Generally I guess I'm asking what's your method for dealing with your photos?

I have my entire home folder on an external drive, photos documents, music and all. My home folder is twice the size of the iMac's interal drive. So exernal was the only option

The photos live inside an Aperture library. The library (and everything else) is backed up by Time Machine to a second external disk. And also I use Aperture's "vault" system to make copies to a few other disk drives that I rotate out to both an external location and a fire safe in another room.


You need to keep at least three copies of your data at all times (even while a backup is in progress.) and always have your data in at least two geographical locations

Negatives are files in "print file" pages and then in three ring binder boxes and then in a file cabinet. I'm slowly adding scans of these to my Aperture library. I'm scanning in batches of about 1,000 every few months

 

[waloshin]

How i backup

I back mine up on my server, and then do a backup of the server.

 

[ChrisA]

I have them all in time machine and two separate external drives... but i am really looking into somehting else... iPhoto is killing my space in my laptop's Hd, I donlt knwo whats going on I have about 15 Gb of pictures but somehow my iphoto library is over 43 GB...I donlt knwo what to do to fix this...

I just bought a 1TB disk drive for $149. Given that price 43GB costs $6.45 Yes, six and a half bucks. It's not worth thinking about. When your disk fills up buy another one, and then another and so on. Each time you buy a disk the replacement is about twice the size for the same price or less.

iPhoto keeps the original un-edited image and your edited ones too. This is a good thing

 

[seenew]

reel-to-reel

 

[juanster]

I just bought a 1TB disk drive for $149. Given that price 43GB costs $6.45 Yes, six and a half bucks. It's not worth thinking about. When your disk fills up buy another one, and then another and so on. Each time you buy a disk the replacement is about twice the size for the same price or less.

iPhoto keeps the original un-edited image and your edited ones too. This is a good thing

hmmm... good point...

 

[Sgt.Pepper]

You need to keep at least three copies of your data at all times (even while a backup is in progress.) and always have your data in at least two geographical locations

That's what I was thinking, part of the reason for posting this, besides just being interested, was just to gauge whether I'm going overkill when it comes to backup. But reasuringly I'm not.
Currently I save my best bunch of photos from each event, onto the computer, so if I want to show someone a trip or anything, there's a few to show (if I don't have my external hardrive around that it), and it doesn't take up much space.
My entire collection of photos is then on an external hard drive, and I also have another hard-drive which is a second backup.
(p.s. This is the same procedure I have for my video footage too.)

Do you think it would be overkill to also back it all up to DVD's? Or is it good to have different mediums holding the information.

Negatives are files in "print file" pages and then in three ring binder boxes and then in a file cabinet. I'm slowly adding scans of these to my Aperture library. I'm scanning in batches of about 1,000 every few months

I didn't even think to ask about how everyone stores their film negatives.
What are the quality of the scans like out of curiosity? What scanner do you use?

 

[wheelhot]

Well I went to an Aperture free course today and I love how Aperture work, everything seems fast and efficient. I like the idea of that when you edit, its like editing a layer and the master picture won't be damaged if you edited wrongly or would like to edit the original again after CnC.

So a Aperture license is for 1 notebook and 1 iMac/pMac right?

 

[jpfisher]

I keep everything that I can fit on my internal drive, as well as a backup copy on an external RAID 1 system. I also keep off-site copies at my office, on a couple of portable USB drives...

 

[Edge100]

Just curious how people have their photos stored on their computer.
Do you have them saved to an external harddrive, or saved onto the computer?
Do yo have a backup of all your photos?
Generally I guess I'm asking what's your method for dealing with your photos?

My Lightroom gallery is stored on my MBP internal HD (I import to and work from this drive).

I have a LaCie 160GB FW external that I use to automatically backup when I import new images to LR and a Maxtor 320GB FW external acting as a Time Machine drive that I plug in every night when I get home. I also burn a DVD+R of every shoot.

The weak link is that all of my stuff is stored in my house, so any major incident would take everything out. I really need to begin storing those DVDs with the RAW files offsite. But barring a catastrophe, I have at least four redundant copies of the RAW files and at least three copies of my LR gallery, which contains my LR edits.

 

[jamin100]

I have a 250GB data partition on the internal drive of my macbook.
All my photos are stored in there.

I then have 2 250gb external wd passport drives which i do incremental backups to in rotation every other week.

I also have the 250gb partition as a sparse image which is encrypted should my macbook get stolen.

I then burn a few dvd's every month or so and keep them in a safe at my parents house.

There's also around 25gb of the most sentimental photos uploaded to my idisk.

 

[ChrisA]

Do you think it would be overkill to also back it all up to DVD's? Or is it good to have different mediums holding the information.

As long as you don't concider the DVD as long-term storage. and re-burn the set periodically. If you have 100 DVDs in a few years some will have failed. So you just keep making new sets and then after a while tossing out the oldest set

You do the same to hard drives, you re-record the data periodically you have to do the same with DVD. Neither media can be left on a desk drawer for 10 years and expected to work.

I didn't even think to ask about how everyone stores their film negatives.
What are the quality of the scans like out of curiosity? What scanner do you use?

I mostly use an outside service to do the scans. They use a Nikon 5000 and then spend some minimal time in Photoshop for each image. I'm paying them 25 cents per image. I don't want to work that cheap. They do a good job with good quality controls. But then I also have an Epson 4870. Yes, it's a flat bed but a good one and with the right software can do work as good as the Nikon. A use this when I want fast turn around. The service I use (scancafe) takes 8 weeks to turn a job around. In both cases the quality is good. Mostly the film itself is the weak link. Some 35mm scans to a 24 megapixel files but mostly it is scanned to 12MP files. When I find a frame I really like, only 1% or less of the total, I can have it re-scanned on a drum scanner locally if need be So the quality of the bulk process scanning need not be perfect as I can re-scan the very few that warrant the effort.

So a Aperture license is for 1 notebook and 1 iMac/pMac right?

It can be installed on one notebook and one desktop at the same time. So you only need to buy one copy

 

[gkarris]

I finally consolidated all my photos onto my MacBook in iPhoto.

Then, I backup the iPhoto folder to my PC server's main drive, and then again to the 2nd hard drive.

I'm trying to figure out what to do as far as off-site backup in case of a home fire...

I also plan on getting a negative scanner to scan in all my old negatives.

 

[wheelhot]

Thanks ChrisA, kinda cheap eh, Aperture if you think about it, dual license and its a pro app.

I actually do have LR and Aperture(my dad's but he hasnt even installed it yet so he said can have it), i just havent looked into it to tell you the truth...do they save and arrange things in a different way after editing my photos? so taht ic oudl save some space?

Do tell the difference experience between LR and Aperture. I am currently on Aperture trial and I love how it works, the free course I went really show the power of aperture, no longer do I need to edit 1 picture 1 by 1 which is tedious and no question annoying. I'm not planning to download LR trial cause its huge and internet here in Malaysia is snail slow (The government give our nation tele provider (the only one) big bucks to upgrade their service but since there is no major competition in broadband service here, guess they are taking their own sweet time,Zzzzzz).

How big to download LR anyway and what's the advantage of using LR over Aperture? Only reason I can think of is better integration with Adobe products and of course cross OS compatible.

 

[ChrisBrightwell]

I have two 500GB external hard drives and I use Aperture's Vault functionality. I keep one at my grandparents' home (a few miles away) and one on my desk. I keep a copy of my wife's iPhoto library on these drives, as well.

Every so often (sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly ... it depends on how much shooting I've done), I'll take the drive on my desk to my grandparents', sync them up, and bring one of them home with me.

This gives me three full copies of my work, plus off-site storage. When my Aperture collection outgrows my internal drive, I'll buy a third drive and move my Aperture library to that drive, but my backup habits won't change.

Eventually, I'd like to buy two Drobo units, but the thought of spending $2k on storage for what amounts to "just a hobby" at this point is hard to wrap my head around.