storage/editing tips for a newbie

Hello and thanks for reading my first post! I just bought a D3100, my first DSLR. I'm looking for tips and advice on storing and archiving photos. I've been using Picasa and storing just about every photo I've ever taken on my laptop in the "My Pictures" folder (backed up to an external hard drive). Now I have a few different cameras and two laptops, so it's getting a little difficult to keep track of all the files.

Here are a few questions:

• Do you save every single picture you take?
• What format do you shoot in, and do you ever compress them for storage?
• What software/websites do you use for saving and sharing photos?
• Is there a good way to sync to a website from various different cameras and computers? I was going to try to sync to Picasa Web but it only has 1GB of free storage. I could pay for more storage, but before I do I wanted to find out what the best software/websites are and also find out if there was some other way to do it for free.

Also, I haven't done much editing beyond basic cropping and color fixing in Picasa. I haven't even loaded the software that comes with the D3100 yet. Are there any recommendations for free or inexpensive software to get started? Thanks!

Hey Ben! Welcome to Nikonites!

I made your questions into a list so others can read them more easily. I can't answer all of them since I'm really bad at backing things up

I so save mostly everything that I take just in case. If there's a group of pics that I know is crap, I don't though.

I shoot in RAW, so the file size is going to be bigger then jpg.

I use picasa, but I have paid for more storage.

It gets pretty tricky when trying to sync across multiple devices. I'll let someone else chime in on that one.

Ben said:

Also, I haven't done much editing beyond basic cropping and color fixing in Picasa. I haven't even loaded the software that comes with the D3100 yet. Are there any recommendations for free or inexpensive software to get started? Thanks!

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You may want to try the beta test version of PhotoDirector 3. This is a free beta test download, but Cyberlink will sometimes gift their betatesters with a full functioning copy after the test period. Its worth every penny of what it costs.

For my storage, I go a little overboard, but want to make sure I have copies a while down the road.

I do save every picture I shoot, even the test shots to see if my lighting is correct. I shoot in raw and jpg so I can work with a picture further if needed, but have one I can send to someone right away without needing to process the image. I don't compress my images because the time it would take doesn't make up for the little bit of savings on disk. Also, I don't have to wait to pull it out of the compressed file when I want to work with a large set of images.

To copy my images to my laptop, I use the card reader built in my machine and I copy all images to a dated folder (20111223 for today as an example) so that they will always sort in the correct order of when I pulled the images to my computer. I also create another folder inside of the dated one named NEF and MOV for their respective image/movie types. That way I can browse through the jpg list faster (faster loading time in the app) and I don't have to look at each image twice (when the jpg and nef files are in the same folder). I also create a Mod folder (for modify) for those images I want to work with so I keep my original images un-touched or changed. I save the mod and dated folders to my external drives at least once a week.

I purchase all of my external hard drives in sets (both identical) and make a copy to both of them. I copy the folders from my laptop to one, then move it to the other. That way I keep two copies for storage. I also use Backblaze for my online storage. It is about $50 per year for unlimited storage from one machine. It will backup external drives as well. I set one of my external drives to backup to the online location. Anytime I put new files on it, it automatically queues it to send. My second external I take to work and lock it up there so if I something happens to my house, I have another location I have my images. Backblaze is for worst case, where I have both externals with me and then something happens.

So far as sharing goes, I don't do much of that except for occasional CD or DVD copies or prints/enlargements. I have looked at Photoshelter for sharing, but want to get my hobby ironed out before going that far (watermarks, formal copyright, etc.)

Hope this helps.

You may want to try the beta test version of PhotoDirector 3.

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Downloading now, thanks!

I've been using PhotoDirector 3 for a few days now. Pretty neat program. Is this the same type of thing that PhotoShop does?

There seems to be a lot of things you can do to post-process a photo and it makes me wonder how many great pictures I see out there have actually been modified, versus just having been a great photograph. It seems like to be a great photographer these days, you have to master the software as well as the camera!

Ben said:

Here are a few questions:

• Do you save every single picture you take?
• What format do you shoot in, and do you ever compress them for storage?
• What software/websites do you use for saving and sharing photos?
• Is there a good way to sync to a website from various different cameras and computers? I was going to try to sync to Picasa Web but it only has 1GB of free storage. I could pay for more storage, but before I do I wanted to find out what the best software/websites are and also find out if there was some other way to do it for free.

Click to expand...

No, I do not save every picture, but probably 99.5% I only delete an image if it is so badly out-of-focus or improperly exposed that there is no saving it.

I always shoot in RAW, uncompressed.

I do not share images often, but I have used Nikon Picturetown, Flickr & Photobucket.

A friend turned me on to an excellent free syncing program: Dropbox . It will sync images and documents to/from my laptops, phone and editing PC. It comes with 2GB free, but you can buy more storage or get up to 8GB free by referring others to the program. You get an additional 250MB for each person you refer to the program.

LensWork said:

A friend turned me on to an excellent free syncing program: Dropbox . It will sync images and documents to/from my laptops, phone and editing PC. It comes with 2GB free.

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Dropbox looks good, but I want something with a lot more space. Or if Dropbox could just do the sync-ing from one computer to another, but not store anything online (then I only have to worry about local disk space). I just found that SkyDrive is part of my Hotmail account and it has 25GB of free storage, which is pretty fantastic! I think I'm going to start using that.

Do you have a massive hard drive? Good. Save your pics there. For a start. Then back up on CD/ DVD. Find a shoe box or 4. I have mine on PC, CD/DVD and external hard drive, with a few on pen drive. I also use Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket, though these will cut down file size.

Poolkas said:

Do you have a massive hard drive? Good. Save your pics there. For a start. Then back up on CD/ DVD. Find a shoe box or 4. I have mine on PC, CD/DVD and external hard drive, with a few on pen drive. I also use Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket, though these will cut down file size.

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haha - you pretty much use everything! I started backing up to a 500GB hard drive that I keep in a fireproof safe, and I'm starting to use Flickr too.

Hey, this is also my first post, i have just purchased a NAS drive to store all my media on (photo's, movies, music etc.)

My setup cost in the region of £400 for 6TB of storage and a 2TB back up drive.
You can get nas drives for around £100. To me this is the best way to store media, especially from several pc's. You can access it from any pc or laptop, as it just plugs into the router and is always accessible.

Great idea, I wish my HDD was a NAS.

I has two NAS drives and a backup program called Memeo that automatically backs up every file I put on any of my computers. If I edit it it keeps an additional copy of the edited file while leaving the unedited copy on the backup even if I copied over the original file. This feature will save you at some point.

Now that sounds like a good idea