How are you storing your Digital Photos?

Newbie needing your input....

I've just gotten into digital photography.
I've got a lot of pic's to load onto my computer,
with a bunch more pic's to come.

So, since I'm starting out, I would like to "get it
right from the beginning." In other words, how
should I store my photo's...just as files on my
hard drive or should I put them into something like
Adobe Photo Shop or some other type of software
designed for archiving photo's?

I don't want to start a "system" and then discover it
would have been better by starting out a different way.

I want easy access to them, I want to easily arrange the photo's and I want to easily share them via email. What
will give me the most control and flexibility? And, oh yeah,
"user friendly" is important too.

How are YOU working with your photo's?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Bill

 

If you've got adobe bridge, use that, if not, download Picasa and use that. A system is up to you really, but I put images in a folder with a rough 'place taken' and then keyword them with other information. Then I can search through them fairly quikcly.

 

I just shove them on my harddrive and when it gets full, start burning them onto DvD

 

I use a method described in the book "The DAM book". DAM stands for Digital Asset Managment" and it's available from amazon.

Basicly I download the images into an empty folder on my hd. There I rename them by adding the data at the beginning in the format YYMMDD. My camera names files in a sequential order. So for example a file from my D70 could be DSC_1139.raw. This would then be renamed to 060619_1139.raw. Once this is done I convert the raw file to the dng format (this is not necesarry. You should study the pro's and con's of dng and make up your own mind about it). Then I transfer all the photos to a folder in my pictures folder. I basicly fill folders untill it reaches the size of a dvd for easy backup and then I start a new folder. Then I import all the images into iView MediaPro, give them keywords and I'm done.

I really recommend that you purchase a copy of "The DAM Book" as my archiving was a mess before I read it, but now it all makes sense.

 

I save them on DVD's.

 

Also, just like the book I mentioned will tell you, keyword you photographs. It will make things MUCH simpler for you in a few years time when you've taken several thousand photographs. I have a collection of over a thousand photographs in my iView catalog and I can find a specific photograph in under 30 seconds due to the fact that I have keyworded my photographs.

Also if you only archive on DVD and no where else (which I don't really recommend) you can still catalog them in iView. iView stores a preview of every photograph in the catalog file which means that you don't have to have access to the actual file while browsing. Lets for example say you have a photograph of the Monolith in Oslo archived on a DVD and not locally on your hd. Simply launch iView, search "Monolith, Oslo" and you'll get a preview of the photograph. Read the comments field and you'll see that the file is located on dvd nr 4. This works great for traveling as it means you can browse your files and work with iView without actually having access to the photographs. Also the preview images take up very little room. A new catalog I put together yesterday contains about 100 photographs and takes about 2 mb hd space.

But once again, The DAM Book will answer all you questions.

 

I second that suggestion; it looks like your after something basic - so stick with a simple folder naming convention as suggested above. I often tag on a description at the same time - so my folder would read:

"YYYYMMDDD - Desctiption of Photos" keeping the description to 2 or 3 words. Then use Picasa for viewing and emailing. Picasa is free and a great program. If you want something more complex then take a look at photools.com imatch; I've 'grown up' from picasa to imatch. It's got a steep learning curve though and it's a pay-for product.

 

I have three hard drives. I load them to one then back them up to another every few days. If one hard drive goes bad it can be a mother to salvage them. Mine aren't very valuable but I would still like to keep them in case I ever want them again. The extra hard drive is cheap and easy to install.

My son in law who shoots a lot of weddings has at least three back up sets on dvd one cdr and one hard drive copy. I don't have a dvd burner but if my cd's i burn are indication I am better off with the hard drives.

 

I agree with mysteryscribe and everyone else who said DVD/Cd or extra harddrive. I also recomnd orginizeing your pictures so you find them easly. I did mine as Family, Friends, Flowers, etc... I a looking into getting an external HD t store my pics on.

 

I am working on building my new PC for Digital Photo Management. The new system will consist of two 250GB IDE SATA Drives in a raid 0 mirrored configuration with partitions for Operating System (small maybe 20GB) and Data. Another physical hard drive for the Photoshop Scratch file so it is not on the same drive as my OS Swap file and 3GB of ram.

Also I will have two more 250GB drives in USB enclosures that I will back up to each night (OS and Data) alternating which drive I back up to that night.

I have tried the whole archive to DVD thing and it just is not working for me. Drives may get busted from more wear and tear from being handled but hopefully with my data in three (actually four counting both sides of the mirror) locations I should be safe enough unless someone sets off a bomb while I am home (since one drive would always be with me if I am out of the house, and the first thing I grab if the house catches on fire)

 

Im thinking long usb cable to an underground bunker designed by the french, to store one of the back up drives.

The truth is if I was still in business I would have an off premisis storage of some kind even it it was just a once a week back up to a drive I brought in and out of the car. If my garrage weren't attached I would just run a network cable out to a second cheap old used computer to store backup data. Funny how much more paranoid I am about digital than I ever was about negatives. There was no way to back up a negative, but then the customers knew that. They could understand a fire ruining your negative files, but not a lightnight stricke killing your hard drive. It will kill one won't it..

 

With electronics, anything is possible. Technically the UPS I have attached to my computer is supposed to arrest the lighting before it makes it to my system. I Have yet to test this theory and really don't want to either.

The UPS puts a 25,000 warranty on my system and the contents so if I were to lose it, well, I would be ok to live for a couple of months, sad to lose all the data but still, I could live on and recover.

Cheers,