I’ve had a couple of people asking lately about what I do
with my pictures, so I figured I might as well try to be smart about this and
write out a whole setup to describe what I do and how to do it yourself. Oh, and don't worry if it's confusing below, I'll go into more details about how to do steps(if wanted) but here's the basics of what I can do.
My goals
- Centralized storage – I want to be able to look through all my pictures in one spot.
- Remote access – Sometimes I want to pull up a certain picture from an old album away from home.
- Backup, backup, backup – I’m big on backups. I don’t want to lose any of my pictures if I lose a hard drive or phone.
- Easy – I’m a computer guy, I can handle complicated stuff; but the less steps it takes, the more likely I’ll do it.
- Cheap – I’ve learned there are times to pay, but I don’t like to pay much.
As soon as I started writing this stuff out I realized just
how long it’s all going to take, so I’m going to split this up into a couple of
posts. First let me describe my setup,
so you can decide if it’s worth trying or not.
- Take Pictures – This is the easy
part. I have a digital camera and a
video camera, but more and more I find myself using my phone for most of
this. It’s with me all the time,
it’s convenient, and convenience is worth so much.
- Transfer pictures – Anyone with a smart phone knows you fill those things up fast.
- Camera
i.
EyeFi(recommended) - My camera doesn’t support it, but if yours does
I highly recommend EyeFi. Turn on your
camera around your Wifi, and it uploads all the pictures to your computer
automatically.
ii.
Cable transfer – Simple method, quick, but involves
manual steps ( I try to avoid those ).
With Picasa it’s pretty simple to import new pictures, just plug the
camera in, click import and go.
iii.
SD card slot – If you have one of these slots it goes
much faster than a cable typically does.
Import with Picasa.
- Phone
i.
Cable transfer – Same as the camera, but I’ve found
this to be pretty slow for the iPhone
ii.
Dropbox(recommended) – My fun way.
I got tired of hooking up my camera, so I use the dropbox app, it syncs
any new pictures I’ve taken to a folder on my computer that’s automatically
imported into Picasa.
- Sort pictures
- Imported – Import straight into a folder, then use Picasa to move pictures between folders
- EyeFi/Dropbox
– Pictures will show up in your incoming folder for each, all you do is
categorize them. For dropbox you
want to move them out because you have limited space
- Cleanup – Once you import photos
from your camera or phone, you’re free to clean out any pictures you
want.
- Backup – Depends upon your size you’ll need to decide on what to use
- Google - Recommended
i.
You start with 5-10gb of storage(~3000 pictures)
ii.
Upgrade to 25gb(~15000 pictures) for about $30 a year
iii.
Two clicks to setup the backup of a folder, rest is
automatic
iv.
Great thing about backing up to the web is that it’s a
remote backup. If your house burned
down, it’s still there
- Secondary drive
i.
I’ve done RAID before, basically you can mirror drives
in case you lose one. More expensive to
setup
ii.
USB hard drives – They’re cheap, and it gives you
another spot in case your drive goes out
- Using your photos – Picasa does a number of nice things for you
- Uploading to google. Gives you access to all your albums on the picasa website, so easily pull up from your phone browser to show to others.
- Easy transfer to a number of sites to order pictures(Walmart, Walgreens, etc)
- Easy transfer to other photo sites for things like making photo books.
- Easy transfer between computers ( with dropbox ).
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