Digital photos

Good Question Greg. I eagerly await the responses.

I have several photo applications on my Mac, but not real happy with the complexity of storage-and-retrieval of any of them.
Member Stephen-L has a voluminous photo library and seems to be able to put his hands on any chosen photo very quickly.
I hope he responds.

Happy New Year to you also.

Hi

I just place mine in a folder (via PC onto an external HD) named after Month and Year pictures taken. If it was a specific trip somewhere I might name the folder with something more descriptive. Then through iTunes I sync all or some of the folders with Apple TV - then you can go straight to a particular folder for a particular Month/Year of interest to view on the big screen. You can do same same (sync) with iPad/iPhone/iPod.

Same sort of process with other media hubs though a bit easier - just plug/connect the external hard drive to any compatible media hub and you can view photos on TV (or laptop etc) - all shown in folder with month and year (some newer TVs you can plug external HD direct without need for separate media hub).

There are sophisticated photo catalog programs (e.g. Lightroom) that allow you to associate keywords with photos (e.g. a person and/or place) so that you can sort your collection at any time based on more specific criteria (using one or more of the keywords). In putting this data can be a time consuming process if you have a bit of a back log of photos but up to the individual. Adobe Lightroom costs money ..others maybe able to suggest free or cheaper options.

Cheers
Greg

Hi Greg H,

A second vote for Lightroom 3, I have over 300 folders of photgraphs which I have catalogued with LR3, I can usually find a photo fairly much instantly, I search by keywords, dates, star ratings, or names of places makes life very easy.

Lightroom 3 costs about $149 well worth the money .

Regards

Barry H

I am Windows based but I use the same method as Bruce and Di T (SA).

All the photos are in one main folder and categorised into sub folders and sub sub folders etc. by year or location or some other specific information pertaining to a group of photos.

This way I can dump them all onto a flash drive or portable hard drive for transport or safety in case of an emergency, or if one is impending.

This way you can scatter them around the family and in the event of a catastrophe you can still reclaim most of them.

Cheers, Bruce.

Hi Greg

I find it easy to locate my images, and I know that I have thousands of them. Being the Mac user that you are, you have all that you want without having to buy any other programme.......iPhoto that is standard on your Mac.

If you use this great and easy tool, you have everything at your fingertips and all so easy to follow. I create a new events folder for very trip, so I know where every photo is located. Like all the useful features on the Mac, you can scroll over the folder to see what is in there without having to open the folder.

As long as you create a new folder every time, it is dead easy to find what you are looking for.





This is what I do and it works for me.


Cheers


Stephen

Nope. I still use a photo album.

Hi
Store at least a copy of your photos on Dropbox. This is a cheap cloud based storage system. Two advantages. First you are protected if your pc is lost, stolen etc. Second you can access your photos from any pc in the world linked to the Internet.
Cheerd

I thought I would add a display method to the discussion.

Most TVs these days have a USB socket or three on the side. I put my photos into Folders on a USB stick and display a slideshow on the tellie. As a matter of fact I have so many pictures on there now, I have to use a portable hard drive instead of a thumbdrive.

It's great just to have it going in the background when friends are here.

This works for me with tens of thousands of photos:

There are many subject named folders, eg flowers, cats, grandchildren (with subfolders for each child or event eg Christmas 2013), and trips listed by the year, with subfolders of places to keep them workable and easy to find what I want.

Sometimes the numbering on my husband’s camera coincides with mine on the same trip. In this case there is a further subfolder make for each camera.

All photos are stored on two separate terabyte external hard drives. The Terabytes, which also back up all my other work and files in addition to digital photos taken since 2003, have only about 10% used so far.

My sister has a Dell laptop and the photo storage programme stores each photo only once but tags it so it can be seen in different folders eg Bridges, Melbourne and Trip 2012.

Some people upload their photos to an internet site in case their backups fail, or in case computer software in the future doesn't read the old formats.

I have back up paranoia. I won't even clear a camera card until I have at least three different backup copies. They go onto the laptop short term. First back up is to a USB thumb drive (box of these comes in the car with ups when travelling in case something happens to the caravan). Second back up is onto a Terabyte external drive, and when I get home onto the other Terabyte as well. Third copy is burn to DVD. When travelling I periodically burn to extra DVDs which I post home in case something happens to everything I am travelling with. Once they are on both Terabytes, I can recycle the thumb drives.

Motherhen

G'day Greg,

we use methods the same as those mentioned above to store our photos but it is easy to make up an album online these days.

My wife has made up a few albums of different trips online and the cost is quite reasonable. This way we can take them to work, pass them to neighbours or family and they can just flick through the album.
If it gets damaged we still have the photos on file.
They come in hard or soft cover.

For Christmas we made up our own calendars with our pictures for presents.
Last night we gave a 2014 calendar to one of travelling friends and looking at it brought tears to her eyes.

Steve