Question about managing many Gb of pictures

[kevinhhood]

All:

This post is directed at all picture takers with many giga-bytes of pictures. I am about to fill the first 32 Gb memory card for my camera that I have only had for about 4 months. I foresee several problems looming (with possible solutions):

• Drowning in data: How do I keep memory storage under control? (Buy more drives or chips, compression, ruthlessly deleting all but the best, other ...)
• Finding a picture: How do I organize pictures for easy access by date/time, location or theme? (database, picture management software, change file names to describe images, searchable text, other ...)
• Backup: How do I make sure that a fire or other event does not result in the loss of all or at least my most valuable pictures? (Back up to cloud, back up to media held 'offsite')

At the moment I use the application that came with my camera to put each days pictures in a separate directory with folder name based on the date. I use Lightroom to touch up pictures. I currently have no easy way of finding specific images or specific sets ( e.g. "Manning Park pictures" or "Merganser pictures"). The best pictures end up in the cloud in Flickr.

I would be curious to know how others deal with their image collections. If there are one or more favourite computer or internet-based applications that you like and use, I'd like to hear about them as well.

Thanks

KevinHHood
(Coquitlam)

[dpeppar]

Kevin no easy answer to your question....now what I do is (not to be confused with the correct method):

Memory storage: On my computer I have created a file (under Windows 7) for 2013 (I have files back to 1950). Under 2013 I have separate file for Jan and Feb....etc. Now when I'm shooting any subject (birds, G-kids etc which can be on 3 different cameras) I download them to the correct month. Do not use your cards as long term storage - they can fail. Next I rename the files by date Jan 22 etc.

I then go through the pics and delete any picture which were shot as a test for exposure, are out of focus or highly overexposed. I do not delete picture which are under exposed or of birds I cannot id.

I now post process (Elements 11) every picture that is worthy. This is about 10% of what survived the first cut. During the post processing I rename all saved shots with a consistent form: For birds Bird Name Sub-infor of bird Location Date eg House Sparrow Female Sardis Park Jan 13-13. The file is then stored under the date/month/year that it was taken. I only rename those shots which have been processed.

I also make a files for trips, projects etc and move a copy of appropriate pictures into the file.

One other thing. For all cameras - I have changed the file name to tell me which camera took the pic..eg K7 K5 etc.

Back-up is the biggest pain. I have an external drive which I back up for each month. It works fine but is very slow.

Have fun...DaveP

[oldfulica]

Jul 22, 2013 7:37:48 GMT -8 dpeppar said:

Kevin no easy answer to your question....now what I do is (not to be confused with the correct method):

Memory storage: On my computer I have created a file (under Windows 7) for 2013 (I have files back to 1950). Under 2013 I have separate file for Jan and Feb....etc. Now when I'm shooting any subject (birds, G-kids etc which can be on 3 different cameras) I download them to the correct month. Do not use your cards as long term storage - they can fail. Next I rename the files by date Jan 22 etc.

I then go through the pics and delete any picture which were shot as a test for exposure, are out of focus or highly overexposed. I do not delete picture which are under exposed or of birds I cannot id.

I now post process (Elements 11) every picture that is worthy. This is about 10% of what survived the first cut. During the post processing I rename all saved shots with a consistent form: For birds Bird Name Sub-infor of bird Location Date eg House Sparrow Female Sardis Park Jan 13-13. The file is then stored under the date/month/year that it was taken. I only rename those shots which have been processed.

I also make a files for trips, projects etc and move a copy of appropriate pictures into the file.

One other thing. For all cameras - I have changed the file name to tell me which camera took the pic..eg K7 K5 etc.

Back-up is the biggest pain. I have an external drive which I back up for each month. It works fine but is very slow.

Have fun...DaveP

My system is very similar Dave. Canon camera came with a post processing program called Digital Photo Professional. It is simple and I use it for most processing and filing. If I have an exceptional picture I will use Aperture to process as it is more complicated and fine tuned. (Burn, dodge etc.) I file the pictures in Digital Photo Pro. also. I will make a file, say "Mallard" . Then every time I get a picture of a Mallard I make a subfolder, eg "June 10 2013 Wilband male". I also use an external backup. My jpegs are also on my website and blog where they can be retrieved. When I go out and get pictures I can easily have over 100 when I get home. I narrow that down to 1 or 2 immediately. JUST PICK OUT THE BEST ONE OR TWO. Even using this harsh method I have managed to get close to 4000 pictures saved up. Then I format the memory card for the next trip. I never store pix on the memory card either.  When on a trip I use a laptop and process all pictures the same day I take them. If I let this process slide I will never catch up to sorting them. I also use the laptop for all processing at home as I can watch TV at the same time.   

[merlinator]

I use lightroom 5 to catalog my pictures. When I'm on a shoot I can shoot well over 1000 pics a day. On my Namibia trip I came home with 17,000 images. I download to my macbook and also to two external drives. When I get home I delete all the files from my mac book and import the files from one of the external drives to two more external drives (2 TB) connected to my PC. Upon dowloading to the drives using lightroom I can give each file as many keywords as I like and then if I want an image of, say a chickadee I just type chickadee in the search engine in lightroom and all my chickadee images are loaded. The process I use to delete images is also done in lightroom. On my external drive called master I delete all the files that don't meet my standards, the other external drive (backup)I leave alone so one drive has all the images I've taken good or bad. So far a 2TB drive lasts about a year. Both my monitors on my PC are callibrated and I do all my post processing on them. I process a small number on my laptop when on the trip. My jpegs and tiff files are also on my master drive and backup.
I also use PS6 to finish processing my files.

[kevinhhood]

All:

Thanks very much for taking the time to respond.

I am going to have to take some of my next vacation hoping for rain so that I can organize my current pics without feeling guilty for not being outside (taking more of course). I have been avoiding dealing with the organizational issue but I think I have enough pictures to know what general categories are going to work for me.

Thanks again for the tips!

Kevin

[theanimal]

Kevin, I can't stress BACK UP...BACK UP...BACK UP. In the past year and a half, I've had 3 hard drive crashes on three different computers, because I didn't have the cash to get a decent external hard drive. Don't wait for a filling system. Get it backed up now and then figure out the filing system. The last thing that you want is to have a hard drive crash on you. And if you have a 32 GB card, that means that you have thousands of images.

1. Get into the habit of downloading your images every day, keep them inventoried by date, and then you can inventory them further after you edit them.
2. Back up those images every single day onto your hard drive.
3. IF you have a CD or DVD-writer. Write a copy of your images onto them. You may have a stack of 5 or 6 DVDs if you have 32 GB card that you're trying to write backups for. Process (card to HD to CD). You will have a backup external HD that you write your main back up of images to. You will also keep CDs off-site at a lockbox or somewhere that you have access to if it should happen that you have a fire and everything is destroyed. I personally will have two off-site locations where my images are backed up.

It doesn't matter if you're selling your images or not. Your images are your record of the species of birds that you have found...and a part of you. Keep them backed up.

[kevinhhood]

Jul 23, 2013 14:26:06 GMT -8 theanimal said:

Kevin, I can't stress BACK UP...BACK UP...BACK UP. In the past year and a half, I've had 3 hard drive crashes on three different computers, because I didn't have the cash to get a decent external hard drive. Don't wait for a filling system. Get it backed up now and then figure out the filing system. The last thing that you want is to have a hard drive crash on you. And if you have a 32 GB card, that means that you have thousands of images.

1. Get into the habit of downloading your images every day, keep them inventoried by date, and then you can inventory them further after you edit them.
2. Back up those images every single day onto your hard drive.
3. IF you have a CD or DVD-writer. Write a copy of your images onto them. You may have a stack of 5 or 6 DVDs if you have 32 GB card that you're trying to write backups for. Process (card to HD to CD). You will have a backup external HD that you write your main back up of images to. You will also keep CDs off-site at a lockbox or somewhere that you have access to if it should happen that you have a fire and everything is destroyed. I personally will have two off-site locations where my images are backed up.

It doesn't matter if you're selling your images or not. Your images are your record of the species of birds that you have found...and a part of you. Keep them backed up.

Thanks for the reminder and I understand where you're coming from. A little over 10 years ago we were vacationing in California and I took a great close-up shot of a page-wire fence with a Turkey Vulture on each of 5 consecutive fence posts. I lost that (and many other holiday pictures) to a corrupted memory card before I could transfer them to my computer.

I now do transfers from camera to computer daily (or even more often) so that all pictures are off of my camera ASAP. In the other areas, I am not so dilligent and a fire or a break-in/theft could get all my pictures except those that I have uploaded to Flickr. I will definately be dealing with the backup and offsite storage issues very soon.  As for the 'triage' and re-organization - I'm hoping for a rainy day.

Kevin