Three Weeks On …the cloud photo archive splits into two

              

My cloud photo archiving experiment is continuing but only one of the original contenders, OneDrive, has survived and still running well. I was looking at a way to automated the update process to it and I have gone back to a very “manu-matic” (part manual, part automatic) method utilizing the powers of PhotoMechanic. There is a story behind that choice so I might explain that now.

A real advantage of the OneDrive approach is being able to control the sharing of specific photos with others in a secure (email private perma-link) connection (Dropbox also does this well). Google on the other hand isn’t secured (their idea of secure is just to have complicated file names, but that file name does have a permanent url, which is always publically accessible) AND I’m sure their approach will soon be, if not already being hacked. This private share feature would make such a service a good place for a family photo resource, that is only shared with the “trusted” family members.

This then got me thinking about making the family photos archive separately, and the more I think of it the better this strategy becomes. The difficulty is how to separate out the photos and more importantly the family just wants one or a few good photos not everything. The solution is good rating and culling. Damn, more work! This can be done with lightroom, On1, Aftershot Pro, Darktable using star & colour tab ratings. Providing I have this software automatically writes out. xmp sidecar files, I can make and change these rating at any time. These programs all monitor the .xmp rankings (Pick flag are an exception which none of the software seems to want to exchange, and I don’t use them anyway)  As I am reviewing or processing my photos I consciously mark those photos with the purple colour tab (pressing <Alt>5 in most software, but not lightroom). However I like to recheck my ratings and colours using PhotoMechanic’s contact sheet display view perhaps once a week, I review each days contact sheet (PhotoMechanics Term for the folder/thumbnail view) and I can then filter to see only one star and above rated. I can also check the colour tags and metadata updates if required. and recheck the ratings (eg change * to ** etc.). Next I remove the purple tagged family photos (they will go into a separate archive (see below) and finally I “save as” the selected group to my OneDrive folder on my computer. I am only saving finished jpeg files and have adopted the practice of resizing the photos to 2400 pixels on the longest dimension and jpeg quality to high. This approach to reduces the file size but in future being able to print approx 10” by 8”.  Finally it wpould be possible still be able to upscale because I have not utilized the .jpeg lossy compression to reduce size.

There was a secondary benefit from reaching back to a manu-matic step, after uploading my better photos into the cloud archive, without family photos included. I could switch the filtering to only include family photos (the purple colour tag and 2 starts of greater) and upload those to my trials of a private flickr family group and revised dropbox family folder. More is likely to unfold with this second type of cloud archive, so say tuned for updated.

More on Legacy Achiving of Family Photos

By Coincidence I have come across a couple of podcats on The FIX that also deal with the ideas of given maximum chance to preparing a legacy of family photos that will be useful to future genrations. If they are not also keen photographers, what will they need. Hint it isn’t in a massive Lightroom catalogue, or a mounatin of CDs, or even an external USB drive packed with RAW files.

 

HINT think jpeg files &/or 10 by 15cm (4”” by 6”) prints are a better start.

Prints can be Excellent Archives as well

I have come to accumulate a lot of very early family photographs and they are still in reasonable condition (some aren’t more on that in another post). The biggest challenge is figuring out who is who (picasa face recognition is helping but it does a fair bit of grouping parents with their children and mixing siblings etc) and getting things organized, and working out safe storage. Not such hard task but time is required. However I have begun to imagine what a horrendous task this might be for future generations that might suddenly find themselves with a few million digital photos many in camera specific RAW format, spread across a number of the by then outdated USB external drives or in a massive zipped conglomerations plucked from a social media web service just before it shut down. The solution to ensuring a future of family photo legacy is simple, just make prints of your favourite photos. Print those important family photos now!

This brings me to how to get those prints of all your social media post (the ones you really want) onto prints (or photobooks). A couple of years ago that could have been expensive but several services are gearing up to make that more affordable. Services like Big W, Harvey Norman and Ted’s camera have kiosks that will let to log into a number of popular social sites, like facebook and instagram. On-line service like shutterfly and snapfish (there are plenty of others) offer some compatibility to pull out images from your social photostreams. However often these will probably have been resized to suit fast web display and might not be able to be printed much larger than 10 by 15 cm (4 by 6”).

Whilst I do have my own ink jet printers (yes I have a few including a decent older HP photosmart with 12 ink colours but now I’m having difficulty getting the ink cartridges) I usually get prints made from an on-line service such as snapfish. The reality is they are cheaper by the time you consider the ink and paper costs (and less frustration) up to about the A4 size. Current prices of the better deals should be around 15 cents for a 10 by 15cm up to just over $5 for an A4. Many services still offer the 10” by 8” inch size as the largest mass processing option at around the $5 mark. These are the size ranges that will suit most family legacy collections anyway.

I notice that snapfish are heavily advertising unlimited 6 cent prints at the moment on TV and this is a great deal to start you family legacy project. If you miss this deal just keep your eye out for other similar offers, many services offer 50 to 100 prints free when you sign up. This lead me to look at printing from flickr (which I have done previously to snapfish on many occasions but the links from your photostream now go to the more expensive wall art and photo book services offered by flirkr itself. However creating prints is still there in the organizr tool under the print and create tab. You need to scroll past the wall art and photo book option and then you will find other options, including prints. In Australia the only non flickr photo services come from snapfish.