Storing Photos

“What to Consider when Storing your Digital Photos

Sudbury Shutterbugs Feb 2015

What’s Important when Saving Digital Photos?

• You must have a computer• Safety– Is the media robust?– Is the media resistant to aging?– Is the media portable?• Fire• Theft

– Can the media be easily duplicated/backed up?

What’s Important when Saving Digital Photos? (cont’d)

• Ease of Access– Can you access from anywhere?– Are you confined to your computer work station?

• Support– Will the media be supported over the near/long term?– Indeed does the media need support?

• Cost– For the purposes of this presentation, we’ll refer to the

cost of saving 100 photos of 10 Megs in size each (in other words, 1 gigabyte).

What’s Important when Saving Digital Photos? (cont’d)

• Indexable– How do you find a photo quickly?

• Typical index variables might include:– Why the photo was taken– Where it was taken– When it was taken– Who is in it– Type of file (JPEG, GIF, RAW etc.)– Quality of photo– Is it adjusted (edited) or is it an original

– A sample index method is included at the end of this presentation

Methods and Media

• The following slide identifies methods and media currently available for use when saving your digital photo files. It is important to remember that multiple copies in multiple locations is highly recommended to offset the possibilities of fire, theft, catastrophic failure etc.

• Each dimension has arbitrarily been assigned a value out of a possible 5 points (being ‘the best’) with the exception of cost which is expressed as the cost of storing 100 photos of 10 megs each.

Storage ComparisonCost of storing 1 Gigabyte of data (100 10 meg photos)

Method Safety Ease Support Index Cost

Floppy Disk 2 4 0 0 n/a

CD/DVD 4 4 3 0 $0.25

Memory Card 4 2 3 0 $1.50

Computer Hard Drive 4 3 5 5 $0.04

External Hard Drive 4 4 5 5 $0.045

Cloud Drive 5 5 5 5 $0.47/yr*

* highly variable

depending on

supplier

My Indexing Method

• C:\Users\Ron\My Pictures\– Next Level Folder• 1Costco (place copies all of the pictures I want printed

here – the ‘1’ places the folder at the top)• 2015-02-09 Sportsmens (Date taken and Place)• Big50 (My favorites)• Europe1 (pictures for Europe slide show)

My Indexing Method

• C:\Users\Ron\My Pictures\– Next Level Folder

• 1Costco (place copies all of the pictures I want printed here – the ‘1’ places the folder at the top)

• 2015-02-09 Sportsmens (Date taken and Place)• Big50 (My favorites)• Europe1 (pictures for Europe slide show)

– Inside These Folders• DSC_0115.JPG (downloaded from camera)• DSC_0115.NEF (downloaded from camera)• Sport0010.jpg (Edited picture)

Additional Indexing Tools

• If I want to select pictures of a certain person…– Use Picasa software…it indexes pictures and does a

pretty good job of identifying faces• If I want to identify ‘best photos’ – Picasa or other post production software normally

have a ‘star system’ to attach to photos…usually 1 to 5 stars

– Usually the adjusted photos are best so, my naming convention separates those in each folder

– Special folder (Big 50, Europe, etc)

Bottom Line

• Safekeeping is Job #1• Familiarity with the Operating System’s file

management scheme is a necessity• There are common methods to index files,

but, in the end, it is a personal choice (maybe that’s why they call it a personal computer?)