Putting pictures onto computers

Don't know what other members do but I have got into the habit on putting all photos from the camera straight onto DVD before anything else. So my DVD has all the original shots (good or bad)stored safely away

Next they get stored onto the computer hard drive ready for any work on them to be done, be it reject or edit (most are rejects ). Too many times I have forgotten to work only on copies of photos on the computer hard drive and totally wrecked the originals.

So that is my strong tip for the month for what its worth STORE TO CD/DVD FIRST

Bazza

I would have a veritable mountain of DVD's if I were do the same

My work flow is, take CF card from camera and put into card reader. Lightoom automatically opens and the images are copied to an internal 2TB hard disk and also copied to my one of the Backup external HD.

After this has finished the card is replaced in the camera and formatted.

As I often fill a 16GB CF card I would need to burn 4 DVD's to accommodate all the image files each photo shoot.

No chance of working on the original files with LR because it does not alter the original file but stores all edits etc in Sidecar (.XMP) files.

Steve

Steve

it doesn't really matter how pictures are backed up, the point I was trying to make was about making sure the originals are kept stored somewhere other than on a computer.

Bazza

I save to internal hard drive, then process, then save 3 files of each picture to external hard drive the RAW the embedded Jpeg and the CS5 processed image this works for me but I never ever format my memory card until its all done

Didn't realise how interesting the way members go about saving their pictures by way of backup

Bazza

I copy straight to PC and edit - but I shoot RAW and the programmes I use keep original files untouched, so I always have those. Also, I have two forms, NEF and DNG (and then anything edited is TIFF. I also store everything on external hard drives.

xx

For every Tog there will be a different method. It's finding the one that suits you personally.

Steve

Card straight into the side of the laptop. Pictures then put onto a external hard drive. All family pictures on facebook (I set it who can see them), any good ones on flickr and facebook.
External hard drive is my main storage.

Typical flow for me:

Take 100 pics
Review on camera once home and delete about 25
Copy the 75 I might want to PC
Look through the 75 and might keep 25
25 saved to external hard drive

I have 1 external hard drive but would like to get another. Every month or so I plan to copy the whole contents of external 1 to external 2 and leave it 'unplugged' as a backup.

As a last resort I guess my favourite pics are also 'hosted' at full resolution online so I can get them back if all else fails.

Over time I have just cluttered up my computer with images. I always thought I had an "organized" system but the more and more I watch the LR guru's and now I am pretty much out of room on my computer I am trying to do things a bit different. I have always taken my card from the camera to the PC. Once into LR then I would run a backup. Then I would edit in LR and then I would export my new images to a new file. Well if you work in LR you will also know that LR saves the files consecutively (or however) but it gives your file yet another new file name. So, now that's like three different files and they were all in different places (not to mention the originals in LR). Now, I have a 250GB external hard drive and within all of two weeks and thousands of photos later I am just 61GB short of filling it up. I have cleaned up my PC files up and I am a bit more organized about the way I am just saving an image. It does certainly help to get insight from others on how they do things. So good luck in whichever way you decide to manage your files.