[Conqueror]

How do you store your photos and what do you store?

...and here comes the usual barrage of questions :

-Do you have an external hard drive or NAS?
-Do you bother with off-site copies?
-Do you print your digital for archive or viewing?
-Do you use "cloud storage"?

-How brutal are you after your session, do you delete a rough % of photos JPG/RAW (which).
-Do you ever go back to old photos/RAW to fiddle?

---------- Post added 05-04-15 at 11:46 AM ----------

Thought I'd kick things off ...

-Do you have an external hard drive or NAS?

Yes but its small (1TB usable - NAS)

-Do you bother with off-site copies?

Not currently. I should.

-Do you print your digital for archive or viewing?

Not at the moment.

-Do you use "cloud storage"?

Not at the moment.

-How brutal are you after your session, do you delete a rough % of photos JPG/RAW (which).

I'm bad at this, deleting mainly in the field after instant review or in a gap... and perhaps only 10%. I'm probably keeping more than I should. Both JPG and RAW.

-Do you ever go back to old photos/RAW to fiddle?

Not at the moment.

[Groove]

-Do you have an external hard drive or NAS? External drive attached to Mac as primary storage. Backed up to NAS drive (Time Capsule) every hour.

-Do you bother with off-site copies? Yes - a full backup offsite, but I only update it about four times a year.

-Do you print your digital for archive or viewing? About 10% just to have some physical legacy.

-Do you use "cloud storage"? Flickr, but really mostly for sharing rather than archiving, although I suppose it is a form of last resort backup.

-How brutal are you after your session, do you delete a rough % of photos JPG/RAW (which). 10% in the field, another 10% or so before editing.

-Do you ever go back to old photos/RAW to fiddle? Occasionally - my Lightroom technique is improving (although going back takes so much time I doubt I will do it much).

[max_pyne]

-Do you have an external hard drive or NAS?

home server 6TB (12TB mirror) = dual back up

-Do you bother with off-site copies?

have a 1TB drive at my parents place...:-) (only the good stuff)

-Do you print your digital for archive or viewing?

Yes, but only photo books, or big wall prints. I like to finish e.g. a trip/travel/vacation with a small photo book

-Do you use "cloud storage"?

have flickr, dropbox, one drive for sharing. my "all time best" pictures end up there.

-How brutal are you after your session, do you delete a rough % of photos JPG/RAW (which)

I'm very brutal -came with time- in the beginning of my digital photography journey i kept everything but over time an experience i just keep the good ones
I tend to take lesser pictures with a generally higher keeper rate.

-Do you ever go back to old photos/RAW to fiddle?

yes, but seldom.

[BrianR]

- No external backup at home, I do have an internal drive backing up photos to save me from mechanical error or idiocy.

- External hard drive that gets stored at the in-laws to protect from theft or small disasters (they're not that far away, so a Godzilla rampage would probably be ruinous to my photo collection). It's refreshed before I format my memory card so I always have at least one off-computer copy (every 3 or 4 weeks). I also have dumps of all my raw files on a stack of dvd's. Not reliable but force of habit and I have a big stack of blanks to go through.

- I don't print to archive, but do print frequently to use the photos for display, sale, etc. I do a yearly album of 200 4x6's that gets sent across the country to my parents, so I suppose that's a small safety net if the province I'm in disintegrates.

- No 'cloud storage'. I'm worried it will rain and I'll lose my data.


- I try (and often fail) to delete all but one image from groups of similar images. According to the file numbers, I seem to keep about 44% of the pictures I take. I plan to delete many more, but can't always bring myself to do it and instead just hide them in a corner using lightroom's various sorting filters.

- I do occasionally fiddle with older images if I go to print them and wasn't satisfied last time. Nothing radical usually happens.

[savoche]

-Do you have an external hard drive or NAS?

Yes, both.

-Do you bother with off-site copies?

Yes, see below.

-Do you use "cloud storage"?

Yes, automated backup of my image folders and LR database.

-How brutal are you after your session, do you delete a rough % of photos JPG/RAW (which).

I don't usually bother with JPEGs. And I delete only images that are very obviously garbage. The reason for that being that...

-Do you ever go back to old photos/RAW to fiddle?

...I do go back to old files, and quite often I find images I like among the ones I initially thought not to be very good.

-Do you print your digital for archive or viewing?

It happens, but I keep thinking this is something I should do more often. Photo books (and prints) are far more accessible than my archive!

[mixberry]

How do you store your photos and what do you store?

...and here comes the usual barrage of questions :

-Do you have an external hard drive or NAS?
-Do you bother with off-site copies?
-Do you print your digital for archive or viewing?
-Do you use "cloud storage"?

-How brutal are you after your session, do you delete a rough % of photos JPG/RAW (which).
-Do you ever go back to old photos/RAW to fiddle?

---------- Post added 05-04-15 at 11:46 AM ----------

Thought I'd kick things off ...

Yes but its small (2TB usable)



Not currently. I should.



Not at the moment.



Not at the moment.



No I'm not brutal, I don't delete my photo at all except test photo for dust review



Not at the moment.

[Neville]

Do you have an external hard drive or NAS?

Yes, I use a 1 TB "My Passport" drive for my MacBook, which backs up every hour using Time Machine, although I don't keep my photos on my MacBook's hard drive, so they don't get backed up onto the external hard drive either.

Do you bother with off-site copies?

No.

Do you print your digital for archive or viewing?

No.

Do you use "cloud storage"?

Yes, I have 1 TB Google Drive storage, where all my edited photos are stored. Makes viewing of all my photos easy from my phone, tablet and computer.

How brutal are you after your session, do you delete a rough % of photos JPG/RAW (which).

Yes, often I am left with 25% or less of all my photos taken.

Do you ever go back to old photos/RAW to fiddle?

No. Periodically I delete my Lightroom catalogues in order to recover hard-drive space.

[ZoeB]

I store my RAWs on a 1TB external drive. Exported photos go onto my laptop and in dropbox as well as usually on flickr, or on whatever website/social media that they're relevant to. I get some of my favourite shots from every month as 10x13 cm photographic prints, and occasionally get the best ones done bigger. I go back and fiddle all the time, all of my photos are a total work in progress.

[dadipentak]

Keep in mind that I'm an enthusiast, not a pro. I'm not really ruthless about culling: it varies widely but, over all, I guess I delete 2/3 of my shots. Of the remainder, I probably process 50% to 'finished product'. Users of Lightroom (which, after several attempts, I have not been able to master) will face/palm over this, but, in pp, I'll save to tif at various stages of the process so I can revert to an earlier version if I want to "undo" subsequent changes: as a result, I end up needing a lot of storage space. I save to an external HD and backup to another which occasionally.gets shipped off for off-site storage at my son's house. I don't print myself at all and only have prints made very rarely. I upload downsized versions* of my processed finished images to Smugmug for sharing purposes. And yes, I do occasionally go back and fiddle with old images--it's rare but I'm glad I can.

*Because I want to control the image effects of the resizing, because my Verizon internet connection is agonizingly slow and because it inhibits wrongful use (as if... :~)

[max_pyne]

What software are you using, for what and how?
Lightroom: for import and editing (i do use the back up function, directing to my server)
Picasa: General viewer of my archive and all my pictures - much quicker and more responsive then Lr, if i just want to show something or when i'm looking for something (can display DNG)
Photoshop: for heavy treatment of my pictures when needed...

[AquaDome]

How do you store your photos and what do you store?

...and here comes the usual barrage of questions :

-Do you have an external hard drive or NAS?
-Do you bother with off-site copies?
-Do you print your digital for archive or viewing?
-Do you use "cloud storage"?

-How brutal are you after your session, do you delete a rough % of photos JPG/RAW (which).
-Do you ever go back to old photos/RAW to fiddle?

I copy the SD card into a folder named for the camera, subfolder for the year. I leave the camera's numbered folders and file names intact. Then, when importing into LightRoom (catalog for project or subject), I do not import any obviously bad or useless pics. If I run low on hard disk space, I will audit and purge the original files that won't ever be used.

I have an external 8TB backup. I have no off-site copies other than what I upload here, to social media, or to flickr. Not much.

I have printed maybe six digital photos in the past ten years. Those were for work.

I do not currently use cloud storage, though I have in the past. Currently, my internet connection doesn't support it (pay per GB). In the past, it was not terribly useful, but seemed like a good idea.

If I am working on a project that is intended to generate specific images, I delete everything that isn't part of the project. If it is my personal artistic stuff, it stays around a while for future re-evaluation.

Sometimes I revisit a photo for a different edit, if a new purpose for it arises.

[Thor Gunderson]

Hi there, interesting post, I have used several hours thinking about this, I have created several usher profiles on all the biggest online sharing sites, without the right feeling to it.
Here I answer your questions: I am super satisfied with my setup now.


-Do you have an external hard drive or NAS? Once I had an external nas drive (only for back up photos), now only online backup
-Do you bother with off-site copies? No
-Do you print your digital for archive or viewing? Not really, i print Pictures when I need them, I do not print and save/store them
-Do you use "cloud storage"? I have tried everything, and now i use Google, it is free for Pictures at 1600p
-How brutal are you after your session, do you delete a rough % of photos JPG/RAW (which). I copy all Pictures to computer in RAW, i edit and save about 20% as JEPG
-Do you ever go back to old photos/RAW to fiddle? I do not save RAW, and only once i could use it, but still my JEPG did a good job.

[ablundon]

-Do you have an external hard drive or NAS?
I have a Linux Ubuntu server set up with a 4 TB HDD and a 2TB backup drive (both internal). I only have about 1 TB of data I'm backup up. The 4TB drive contains my photos that I copy from the SD. Every night it backs up whatever has changed on the 4TB drive to the 2TB drive. It then sends me an email letting me know if the backup was successful. The Linux server is an old desktop (~9 years old).

-Do you bother with off-site copies?
I have an old laptop (9-10 years old) set up at my parents house with a 2TB external drive connected. The laptop is running Linux Ubuntu Server. I have a software VPN tunnel created between my house and my parents house. Everything the home server backups up whatever has changed to the offsite server. Again I get an email telling me if it was successful.

My backup system was basically free with the exception of the drives. The computers were old 2nd hand ones. Ubuntu is free.

-Do you print your digital for archive or viewing?
I print only when I want to hang something or the kids need something for a school project.

-Do you use "cloud storage"?
Not for my photos.

-How brutal are you after your session, do you delete a rough % of photos JPG/RAW (which).
I never delete. I use Lightroom which is non destructive (I shoot RAW).

-Do you ever go back to old photos/RAW to fiddle?
Frequently visit old RAW photos and fiddle.

AB

[frogoutofwater]

I've just switched to a new PC and as part of that process, I spent some time "weeding" my photo files and cleaning up my archives. I'm also trying to get more systematic about file management and back-up, but I I know there's more I need to do.

1. Do you have an external hard drive or NAS?

My new laptop has a fairly small internal SSD, so now I keep my "working catalog" of photos an external hard drive. I quickly realized that 1T wasn't going to be enough, so I'm using a 2T Western Digital drive for now.

2. Do you bother with off-site copies?

I've started backing up that drive once a week (I am photographing a lot these days, partly because I'm studying photography part-time and am working on a few projects). If I slow down my pace, I'll probably reduce that back-up frequency to once a month. I keep that drive at the office.

3. Do you print your digital for archive or viewing?

I started printing my photographs because I need to do so for school (we show new work every week or two) and then I got hooked on printing. So I print for class and save my favorites. I need to do a better job of organizing those prints, though - currently, they're just stored in Art Profolio books (but not in any organized way). I also keep a small selection of images on display in my office - I've got a couple of gallery shelves and a set of frames - I rotate the images in and out of the frames. I also make photo books from time to time for different topics.

4. Do you use "cloud storage"?

No, but my husband and I are planning to set up a cloud storage system for photos and other information. I do have a website (through Smugmug) and I suppose you could say that I've got high quality JPEGs for the several hundreds of photos that are uploaded there.

5. How brutal are you after your session, do you delete a rough % of photos JPG/RAW (which).

I shoot in RAW and delete the obviously bad stuff (e.g. out of focus or bad-blurry images). I photograph animals a lot (and they move quickly) so I often have a fair number of crap photos in a session - maybe 20%. I also photograph fairly regularly for some animal rescue groups, and sometimes I'm just trying to get a few cute photos for their FB page or petfinder. I'm a little more ruthless in deleting files from those shoots once I know I've got at least a few decent images of each animal from that day's shoot. Even so, I probably only delete up to 40% of a day's shoot in those circumstances. And if I have a series of images (e.g., 001-010 and 003 is the keeper, I always keep the surrounding images in the series (unless they're out of focus or badly blurred) - you never know what might also turn out to be a gem when you look at it again a few months down the road.

After about 6 months, I will go back and review my old files and pare them down further. Depending on the nature of the shoot, I might retain only 5 or so photos. For example, if I did a photo shoot for a shelter and later on I got much better images of the dog I photographed, I might only keep the few files that I had sent through the shelter and delete the rest. On the other hand, I kept about 50% of the photos I took during visits to orangutan sanctuaries in Borneo (because that's not likely to be a repeatable experience).

6. Do you ever go back to old photos/RAW to fiddle?

Yes, fairly often - as I learn more about post-processing, I like to go back and try to re-edit photos that I found challenging to edit well the first time.

[Lowell Goudge]

-Do you have an external hard drive or NAS?

external drive(S)

-Do you bother with off-site copies?

yes, safety deposit box for one copy of the drive, second copy in locked local up copy

-Do you print your digital for archive or viewing?

print for display only

-Do you use "cloud storage"?

never

-How brutal are you after your session, do you delete a rough % of photos JPG/RAW (which)

I never delete anything, all edits are made on copies not originals

-Do you ever go back to old photos/RAW to fiddle?

RAW what? I shoot jpegs mostly

.