Will Google delete your photos without notice?

The simple answer is YES, but there are reasons and not right away.

One thing that peeked my interest amongst the forthcoming changes to google photos (google drive & gmail) was not that they are intending to charge for storage (which is what a lot of current hype is about)  it was a paragraphs in their November explanation of the changes. Gmail, Google photos and other google tools are being combined into s sinle google Drive Limit of 15 GB (for free) and after that storage will be charged.

When you have been over your storage quota for 2 years, your content in Gmail, Google Drive (including Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, Forms and Jamboard files) and Google Photos may be deleted.

Another section make the same claim about inactive gmail accounts!

There is not mention of any warnings, just they now have the right to choose to start deleting inactive accounts and services, presumably without notice. Clearly its aim is to clean up storage once users are dead, or thy choose to stop using the services (including forgetting their password, etc). Which seems perfectly reasonable

The downside here is for your digital immortality (or not). Do you expect your personal data in the cloud to be accessible after you are dead?

Probably in most cases you might be glad this is the case, all those embarrassing photos to vanish. However there can easily be situations with family photos (which tend to become precious over time) need to be preserved. Its probably time to think about putting those important photos that form family memories into a separate album that gets share amongst your family members and encourage them to keep copies.

No need to panic this policy will only be started on June 1st this year. The 2 years of in activity probably begin then. 

I don't think this is a google #FAIL, I just think they hopt it will get through without much fussy (compared with charging for photo storage after claiming it was the perfect place to store all your family photos - did they actually say for free?)

Revisiting Geotagging

Once upon a time, I was interested in the idea of being able to label photos with their location. Back in March 2007, I used and nokia flip phone to access google maps and select a point on the map, grab its coordinates and latter add these into the tags on flickr (which would allow others in the geotagging group on flickr to see where the photo was located on a map). Seem like a big step forward at the time.

Today I can do the same with my garmin watch (at pretty much the same location) and merge the coordinates in my way file collected as I walked, into my photostream on uploading to my computer (I use Olympus workspace and/or photo mechanic but there is a lot of other software that can also do this).

The magic is now mundane.

Return to Wandering in the light

 The frustrations of social media and made me realise I should return to just share interesting light and things I have photographed in the process of living

Between Summer and Autumn

This was photographed with my Olympus OMD EM5 and post-processing using luminar Ai, using the sunny small template and a vignette

I just missed "world pigment day"

 

I discovered that yesterday was “World Pigment Day” thanks to an email from Windsor & Newton. Honestly who makes up these names & days?, but it is an excuse to post my revised portable watercolour palette based on the idea of six primary colours (ie combining the photographic RGB scheme and the printers CYM(k) schemes). BTW Being watercolour I’m not using black. Whereas previously I had tried the conventional idea of a warm and cool version of each, I’ve now concentrated on trying to get a transparent and opaque version of each. Some of the pigments are same as before but I have more transparent versions now. The #watercoloursocietyofvictoria ‘s #paintaway was a great opportunity to try this out for “plein air” work. I enjoyed it a lot. (also see my instagram)

A more convention RYB Pigment based Colour Wheel (from Winsor & Newton)

Adobe Max and life without creative clouds

Life after creative cloud is fine, infact the computers have sighed several sighs of reliefs, start up is faster (no waiting for yet another "mystery" update). I've had enough of those with windows10, especially the ones that repeatably failed. Also I'm definitely wasting less time (some was learning but a lot of pointless play). Has my photography suddenly become poorer, don't think so (Dan Andrews lockdown has had more influence.) Am I more likely to use outrageous filter, ...  ...  ...Yes

So for yet another opportunity to learn that may become a waste of time. Comparing Adobe Max and  to last weeks ZOOMtopedia its a really clear example of how high quality video with snappy graphs is no where near as compelling as more interactive video streams that you know are truely live. You naturally follow the live much more close focus than the slickness of tight video was like have the TV on in the background Still I like the concept of learn and train in lightroom where you can select and example tutorial and work through it in light room.

Adobe Max is still on (the a big catalogue of "live" event) and is free to join but you may to set up an adobe ID.

Yet another update issue

 I have come to use OnOne Photo RAW as my go to RAW file editor of choice and when I use it I generally export a "finished" jpeg version but something has gone astray in the latest update. It often reports that the screen resolution has changed and I need to restart the application. I assume this is related to the fact that one of the two screens on my main desktop had died and I replaced it with an old VGA style monitor. The Microsoft update fiasco made this worse, the software would hang and clearly had rendering issues anytime I exported a finished edit.

Initially the response from their support was very non-specific (ie delete OneOne and reinstall it) but I had already done this 3 times. Yesterday I got a real reply it turns out this is a common bug when using two monitors. I had to physically unplug the old monitor and just use a single screen, Magic everything is fine again, albeit with less overall screen real estate.

Am I becoming too cynical or are companies just in such a rush to push out updates to their software they are forgoing testing, and using us as Alpha testers?

Enough is enough!

 

I have (yet again) wasted painful days watching this repeatedly appearing on three of my 4 active computers (two desktops & two laptop). Once this happens the next update on that machines takes hours. One desktop took 3 days before it was again useable.

Microsoft surely to realize this is a massive #FAIL.