Photo storage and organisation

[susanw]

I was bought a Canon Powershot SX220 HS at Christmas and have been taking some photos.

I now need to consider storage and organisation before my collection gets any larger. Storage wise, I'm concerned I may take loads of photos and then lose them if something catastrophic happens to the computer.

Regarding organisation, my sister in law recommended I use Picasa, which I've been doing and found easy to use, although I've not completely mastered it yet. I had assumed, however, that I would be able to open up my albums on any computer, so when I tried to view them on my laptop, they weren't there.

Can anyone advise me on their methods of storage and organisation.

[Steve]

Sue,

There are lots of ways to handle this sort of thing.

What I personally do is...

I take all my photos with various cameras and when I get back in the evening I attach the camera to my PC with a lead. That makes my photo handling software choices pop up.. in my case I choose to click on Adobe Bridge as I like using that for taking my photos off my camera. Most cameras come with software you can install to do the same thing. My software is setup to copy all the photos to a directory of my choosing and then to put them into folders that bear the date when they were taken. Once I am confident they made it onto my computer okay I then delete the photos from the camera.

So, I have all my photos on my PC. I then tend to make any edits I need to do, cropping out bits mainly in my case. As I do so I use the SaveAs option in my photo editing software. I do that so as to preserve the original photo untouched - the SaveAs version with edits gets its own more meaningful filename. When I use the RAW setting on my camera I do this to all my worthwhile photos and save the SaveAs versions as .JPG files so I can do more with them etc.

This then gives me folders containing all the original photos and my edited versions ready to use as .JPGs etc.

At this stage I choose out the ones I like best and upload those here to ukexpert. That gives me my first backup of my favourite photos, and shows them to others, and makes them available to just about anyone anywhere in the World - 24hrs a day 7 days a week... including me when on my travels and wanting to show a relative something or whatever. My photos have been viewed millions of times here.

Personally I rarely upload my photos to corners of the massive online systems like Google or Facebook etc.. as I see no gain in that, and most systems seem to mess the images up by insisting they are small versions or altering them or displaying them badly. Also some these days are said to use things like facial recognition software and to try and store and use info on who you are photographing and where and why etc etc...perhaps alongside their possible records of every email you send, every search you do, photos of your home, etc etc....geeze what a World... I hate to think what happens if you get a terror suspect or potential terror attack site in a photo background or whatever...

My final step is to copy backups of what is on my PC to a USB attached hard drive. These are very reasonably priced these days and you can get massive storage for amounts as low as £50 etc. Plug it in, copy all the photo directories to it, and anything else important, and unplug it and put it away.. and you have a very fast backup under your personal control and stored wherever you feel is safe... and available to use in an instant if anything ever goes wrong. If and when a drive like that gets full the simple thing to do is to get another.

I hope that was of some help...

Steve

[susanw]

Thanks Steve for your response.
It's a good idea to keep the photo's on an external drive, Gary does back up the home network, but that is to an internal drive.
I intend to put the better (IMO) ones onto ukexpert, but it's the other 99% I would like to organise better on my PC
In particular I'd like to be able to tag photos so I can search for them easily without having to trawl through loads of folders.

[Steve]

Sue,

I like to be able to find my photos with ease and I use ukexpert for that. As I always put the ones I want to keep use and view on here whenever I want one I can just look on here and find them sharpish... whether taken this week or 20 years ago.

For Mother's day I printed 7x5 photos and made up albums for my daughter Kristen and for my Wife Majella - both are Mums and it took me no time at all to locate and save and print the most suitable photos for them from here. You just view the large original image and right click and save it, and then I printed mine using Photoshop.

I have every photo I have ever taken on a collection of external hard disks.. but I never look at them and they are just stored as I hate to delete old photos. Going through decades worth of those would just be a pain and I can't really be bothered and I can't see the point as I know the ones I liked best are on here.

I see lots of other benefits in working that way.. that others like friends and relatives can see and view and print my photos 24hrs a day 7 days a week 365 days a year too... and that it continues on, and even the photos of our sadly passed on members are still available in that way etc. Where my old disk drives will probably end up in a bin or re used at some point down the line.. like everyone elses.

In my case I have about 5000 photos here at present, and people looking at ukexpert have already viewed my personal photos over 2 million times. I like that, and feel is much better than having them in the loft ready to be thrown away after I'm gone...

So, that's how I do things and why I do it that way.

Steve