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.

Sharing :: That feeling of being backed into a corner

Recent change over at google and flickr … and seems like everywhere else as well, have seen me seriously looking for alternative to where I can post photos for blog post and the best place to share on social sites. I was starting to warm to flickr, and use their auto uploadr to make my life simpler contributing to my daily photo album. Loosing that isn’t such a big deal but  the way it was done does diminish trust. Further my trust has pretty well also been savaged by google changes.

So What do I do?

1) Blogging, I went looking for automatic uploads (to both Flickr and Google Photo, without using their native apps). This seemed simple because most programs now have social share with options. A lot have the flickr symbol and a few have google+. Well guess what I tried out all of my photo managers and only one of them work to flickr (and that's ACDsee, which I am only trialing anyway) and that actually used two steps where it invokes the old flickr web up loader, then let the web loader do the upload but it worked. Picasa sort of works to google photos but its a maze to then find to where they are stored. The new Open Live writer, works just fine with google photos, so I am happy to continue with that, but none of the photo managers offers an inbuilt upload to google photo. I even went back to withknow, and the Idea of re-establishing the POSSE approach, and the upload to flickr doesn’t work! (the twitter link does still work). I’m having a little more success uploading to Tumblr but its not a compelling enough platform to change to, and I will just keep experimenting with it for my (not exactly) daily sketches.

So its Open Live Writer to google photos when I blogging and flickr “manual” web uploader and then embedded to blog or just get a link to share as an optional extra.

 

2) Social Sharing, well I could not find anything that does what a want except DropBox. There are cross posting icons everywhere but that means public sharing. My trouble is I don’t want to share with the world (those images are dealt with in option 1 above, Flickr and google photos are my only face to the world) so I’m abandoning all the social media share hysteria. I’m just going back to using drop box which I know I can share with a specific person (or people). Drop box isn’t totally photo friendly but it is very easy to use, both on phones and computers. If thats not suitable for the recipient or time is very tight its back to resizing down and using either MMS of email.

So its dropbox, MMS or email for sharing family photos. Further I’m adopting similar approach with friends and potential purchasers of my art, none of whom have yet complained.

What to do if you want to keep using Picasa on your PC

 

The simple answer is NOTHING

 

 

There are a few extra things you might consider in the very immediate short term. If you don’t have the very latest version3.9.141 (you can find this on the about item under the help tab) it is probably a good idea to at least download the latest version, which according to the google blog will only be available till the 15th. March. I have downloaded this version and it looks a lot like version 3.9.140 (which I’ve had on my machines for a while). This version shows upload to google photos on the big green button at the bottom of the main picasa screen, and seems to work, but bizarrely when I try view on-line it loads internet explore (whereas chrome as my default browser), but it lands on a page that introduced the google photo apps for android and IOS, but looking around there is a red goto google photos button that first ask me to log in with my google account, then recycles the screen and this time ask me to also put in my passwords and then finally I can see my photo. Not exactly simple, probably best avoided in future (see below).

 

I already know an elegant way to share photos privately with just specific people via an email link, that is just the basic dropbox. Something I’m sure you already have. If you want to automate this a little, get the drop box app for your PC and this sets up a drop box directory under your user account. One of the default directories set up is called photos. Now using the export button all you need to do is the change the directory to that dropbox location. Any new export folder then becomes a separate album and the whole album or selected photos are easily shared, using drop boxes share with tools. This includes setting up collaborator two way sharing. With a two-way share you can also the add folder to picasa and set up the scan always so the picasa view is always up to date.

 

One final thing you might consider is making sure google doesn’t keep watching you and/or interfere (albeit unlikely). To do this, find the Options Tab under the tools item on the main menu, and untick the send anonymous usage stats to google item under the general options tab.

 

There are a few things to do to ensure you can migrant your collection’s organization to other packages but that can wait for another post.

What of that race?

It only seems like a short while ago but it was back in April & May, both flickr and google where re-inventing themselves as the place to store all your photos.  So in June I frivolously started a race to let them do what they wanted (just on my phone). It began simple enough but Google Photos kept administering self-inflicted injuries in the form of upgrades. Too many of them. Mostly that just meant I had to restart the autobackup (or turn off of the upload features to tone down the bandwidth usage). However I now notice the Google Photos logo has gone (I do realize that google have been updating logos and typography) and been replaced by the little green android robot with an obscure title that it is an android app. The underlying app is still google photos but with a screen that is at least a fortnight old and nothing showing for the current phone gallery (it looks like its in hibernation). My original concern that this race might end in tears was perhaps a bit prophetic. I trust you, my readers, have not put all your eggs in the google camp.

For the record the clear winners are Dropbox (which wasn't even supposed to be in the race) and Flickr.

And the winners is...

Whilst Google photos and flickr are slogging their way along, vying to be first to upload any image from my phone, I realised that there are already two clear winners in this race and its not the tortoise or the hare. First is Dropbox, which I have reinstated (I suspect it might have been nobbled by either google backup or flickr's uploadr but it did have a significant app update around the same time, so I haven't notified the stewards yet!). I didn't find carousel so useful but dropbox is really simple, solid and still has the very logical private sharing options. I could live without it but I love the reliability of knowing soon after I find a WiFi spot my phone images are up on a private cloud (flickr could safely substitute here). The second is a surprise, its QuickPic, an alternative to the native gallery app or Google Photos itself. Compared with Google Photos its a real lightweight with a tiny memory footprint but its fast and does exactly what I expect from a photo gallery app. More importantly it plays nicely with other phone apps.

Whilst the other race is still on, flickr is becoming my favourite as a stayer.

Me!bourne By Night by Phone

I tried out a little experiment as I was in the city to go the princes theatre to see “The King & I” which was a great production. Anyway on the way the wet city streets begged to be photographed but I only had my phone. So I took a couple of  photos with HDR Camera+. Next as I waited for the train home I played the Pixlr app creative filters to make the image on the right and then I created a blog post, using a Blogger android app, expecting to be able to utilize the WiFi at the station. However after a lot of non action and spinner on the screen I eventually got a message that the server wasn’t available. However when I got home the photos where already on my Dropbox recent uploads, so dropbox worked just fine.

 

 

HDR Camera+ 2,  Dropbox 2,  Pixlr 1,  def Android/Google Blogger 0