Digital Photo Management

shopbot

I thought it might be helpful to get peoples views on how they manage their photos on their PC. I now have well over 1000 photos taken with my digital camera on my PC. I have backed these up onto CD-R and stored them at a different location to computer (in case of fire, theft etc). At some point I am going to have to start removing them from my PC because of space considerations.

As photos often have sentimental value what is the safest way to look after them? I would also like to ensure that they are 'future proofed' to the best possible extent to ensure that (i) the storage material can be opened in the future and (ii) the storage material degrades least over time.

Thanks
SB

intel

I store mine on PC, USB Pen Drive and CDR, I will upload to My paid Webspace very Soon in a Zipped password Protected File ............

shopbot

I have also been looking for a program that spots duplicate photos/files on your hard drive so that you can delete and leave only one copy. I often find that I have the same photo duplicated. I have been having a look at download.com and tucows. Can anybody recommend one?

bethom

The only problem with some batch management programs is that they sometimes mess with files of the same names or file size or even pixel size... and thats why I always
store in a sub Folder named to my requirements.

chunter

This is slightly off the point but I believe the coming version of Windows will allow all sorts notes & info to be stored permanently along with actual pictures.
I think this includes NOT using folders to organise photos. I think they have some new grouping mechanism. I'm guessing it's like the 'albums' you get with most camera software.

I think that this is supposed to make pictures and video easier to organise and search and hopefully, easier to store and archive.

How many years does a burnt CD / DVD actually last these days?

intel

It may even include when the first BSOD happened on what photo.

Sorry couldnt resist.

sevlow

Shopbot,

I have tried several software packages for instance Jasc Photo Album 5 and Adobe Elements 3 which provide the fascility to organise your images. They all work in similar fashions and I suggest the best way to find out what suits yopu would be to download the evaluation versions.

Personally after a lot of testing I found that ACDSee suited my needs best. You can create a variety of nested catergories to your own design(so a bit of forward planning is required) and this allows you for example to find all the images of "Person X" taken in "Spain" playing "golf". I liked ACDSee because it provided a robust means of recoving your images AND database information. You can also archive information in a condensed format to save space - but I have had no need for this feature.

The issue you raise about future proofing is very valid. There is a whole industry going on to digitise all records or create them electronically in the first place and their are concerns about what we do in years to come when the media and operating systems required to recover the data are no longer commercially available.

I guess for home use as long as you keep up with the flow and upgrade/replace you kit at reasonable intervals you should not have a problem

Good luck

normal

I can also recommend https://www.flickr.com It's a website for storing your photos on as well as much more. It costs $25 a year but it does offer better service than any of the free ones I've found. Otherwise I burn a dvd every couple of months too. If computer, dvd and web back up go then I know there's something seriously wrong!

charlieheard

I've tried a few management suites such as Adobe's Photoshop Album and Kodak's Easyshare: I used the latter as it would allow you upload photos easily to a personal gallery on Ofoto (which is now Kodak Gallery).

Now I'm using Picasa , which was highly recommended on sites like CNet as the best Freeware solution. It can scan your PC (or selected folders) and catalogue your pictures. You can then store the photos in different albums, categories or whatever. You can even have it running in the system tray to catch all photos, which I declined.

You can also use it to do fairly sophisticated fixing of photos (one-click-fix, colour balance, red-eye, cropping, basic filters, etc). The good thing for me is that it stores the underlying photo untouched, and stores the list of actions to be applied to the photo separately, so you never lose the original quality.

You can use it to download pictures from a camera and store them in any locations. It allows you to upload photos to a blog, or to share them as emails.

For backup, it allows you create CDs of one, many or all your albums, or to backup only new pictures.

As you may have guessed, I'm a great fan - and its FREE