Keeping track of CDs

[Kin Lau]

I'm quite disorganized as well, so these suggestions might work quite well for you 🙂

10,000 pics on file, at 6megs per image is only 60gigs. Just keep CD's as backups but keep the actual images on the HD. Retrieval would be _very_ fast compared to CD/DVD's. If you want to keep 1meg jpgs as thumbnails instead, then you can easily keep 100,000 pics on a 100+ gig HD. If you keep your scan folders organized the same way as your filing system and CD's, then you'll end up with an electronic "visually organized" system. I don't know how Nikonview works, but Zoombrowser (Canon) and Irfanview both let me see a list of folders on the left, and the thumbnails on the right, and I can scroll thru 100's of pics very quickly.

Other suggestions: a fully rez tiff scan of a slide is probably around 24-36megs each, so all 24 slides will easily keep on 1 CD. Just store the CD with the slides. You can also buy hanging sleeves for CD's, 4 or 6 CD's to a sheet/page for ease of storage.

HD storage is down to only CDN$.75 per GIG, so consider using CD/DVD's only as storage, and get a few 200gig hd's (even removable hd's) as near-line or online storage.

 

[jlw]

An alternative product, which I have not used but appears similar, is iView.

I use iView and it DOES work similarly.

(The "MediaPro" version, which is admittedly rather expensive at nearly $200, has a number of additional features which I find very useful, including a basic but capable set of rotate/crop/edit tools, and the ability to output HTML pages formatted with user-designed templates, a feature that I use extensively.

What I often have to do after a shooting session is quickly screen all the images, select a few top picks, edit them into publishable shape, write captions for them, format them into a webpage like this one, and get them onto a web server so the press can download them; iView has everything I need to do that, right from my iBook.)​

BUT, the fact that all these programs use this same principle means that for cataloging your images, it relies on YOU to sit there and assign keywords to them. Just about all media-catalogers, from iPhoto on up to Cumulus and other high-end products, have this same requirement. Some human intelligence has to look at the photos, decide what features in them might be of future interest, and the label them according to those features via keywords.

I think what Roger is telling us is that he finds that process too much of a PIA to contemplate, and it's hard to blame him. Keywording can be a huge task for a "general interest" photographer. It's easier for someone like me, because my photos are fairly specialized and can be categorized fairly easily according to a few constant types of information.

But for someone who visits locations and photographs whatever looks interesting there, I can see how that would be really difficult. For example, suppose he photographs a blue boat in Bayswater. Obvious keywords might be "Bayswater", "boats", and "blue."

But then suppose an editor comes along and says, "Oy, mate, have you got any photos of a dockyard under gray, stormy skies?" or "I need something with a nautical theme where the main subject is on the right side of the frame" or "We're looking for a shot that's mostly in cool colors so we can Photoshop a model in an orange swimsuit into the foreground" or whatever.

The keywords aren't necessarily going to help in a case like that; it's only the photographer's memory that allows him to say, "Right, I've got something I shot in Bayswater that might work..."

Even though my filing system is highly organized, I find that a lot of times my retrieval needs are driven by an image that just sticks in my mind for some reason; then I have to wrack my brain for keywords that might describe it so I can pull it out of the files. A sad but typical case happened last year, when a friend who had been a ballet dancer years before died at a tragically young age. Her parents had asked if I could find any pictures of her dancing that could be displayed at the visitation; she never had been a big enough star to be individually "keyworded," but I remembered several photos in which she appeared. By a certain amount of guesswork about what was being rehearsed, what year it was, what tour it might have been, etc., eventually I was able to pull them out of my filing system and print them, which they appreciated very much.

The point is that the filing system may have made it easier to find the originals once I had remembered them, but there's no way I ever would have found them if I hadn't remembered them first.

I guess this illustrates the importance of really LOOKING at your work! And if you're going to rely strictly on a visual-recall system, you probably have to be willing to do what Roger does and continuously pare down your collection to an amount that you can "get your head around"!

 

[cathy_w_J]

All these file systems must require lots of space...especially if you have years of photos to catalog. Did any of you get new hard drives for exclusively for storage? Do you have additional backups on cd/dvd?

I am at the beginning of getting organized and have very little to save digitally at the moment. Right now I need to just get my negs organized. What is the best way to store them? Sleeves in boxes or binders?

 

[Roger Hicks]

Kin's idea of storing the CDs with the trannies sounded great. I really thought I was onto something with that one. But then I realized that I only scan the images I want to use, so there might be 6 hanging files with half a CD between them. Still promising!

jlw is spot on. Keywords don't suit the way I work. There's a lot of non-verbal stuff, I could often use a dozen different keywords, and mostly editors don't ask me for images: I supply images that suit what I'm writing. If I do have to supply an image and it's not specially commissioned I can usually find it quickly enough anyway, e.g. 'general lifestyle shots in Mexico' to illustrate a Mexican cook-book.

For example, I've just been working on a black-and-white book proposal. Important factors included film type; format; toning; cropping; focal length; and of course looking pretty. The next time I use those same pictures it might matter what developer I used; whether they were portrait or landscape format; or filtration.

In colour, by the same token, I might need shallow or deep d-o-f; or lowlight; or portrait/landscape; or fast or slow film; or rural versus urban; or people vs. no people; or geographical location; or colour harmony or dissonance; or big or small grain... And again, it has to look pretty.

Also, if I look at CDs only, then I'm looking at pics I've already scanned and probably already used: looking at slides reminds me of other ideas.

Of course, none of this helps with digitally originated images on CD so I'll just have to work out how to print thumbnails of the damn' things.

Once again, thanks to everyone. You really have helped me clarify my thinking -- especially JLW.

Cheers,

Roger

 

[Thomaspin]

Dear Cathy -

Well, a 35mm original scanned at 2000 dpi yields a 6 megabyte file. At 4000dpi it's 24 megabytes. I store the original scans on my iMac's hard disk (an 80 meg) and make incremental backups daily (meaning only changes are backed up) to an external, plug-in hard disk, which is also 80 megabytes. Finally, original scans are also saved on CD as I'm concerned about the long term integrity of all these media.

Given that 80 megs will accomodate 13,000+ scans at 2000dpi (which I find is indistinguishable from 4000) that will last me approximately 10 lifetimes as I do not expect to take over 1,000 good pictures in my current life....

The catalogs Extensis creates are very small - a few megabytes - so the additional overhead is negligible from a storage point. The external disc cost under $100 (storage is very cheap nowadays) and the software (Carbon Copy Cloner - Mac only) was free off the web.

I do think JLW makes some excellent points, above, and it bears re-reading his posting before deciding if this approach is for you.

 

[T_om]

All these file systems must require lots of space...especially if you have years of photos to catalog. Did any of you get new hard drives for exclusively for storage?

I used CD's and DVD's up until about two years ago. At that point, it became more cost and time effective to store all my files on hard drives. In addition to my internal drives, I currently have 5 Firewire externals running all the time. I have backups here and offsite at my daughter's house.

If you are looking at just a few thousand images, a single 300gb drive will satisfy your needs for a long time. Get a spare or two to have a backup and keep at least one offsite if you are looking for the maximum security.

It is SO much easier and faster to recover needed files from hard drives than messing about with CD/DVD storage. Not to mention the time saved by not having to burn all those CD/DVD disks to begin with.

Finally, the best reason to have a hard drive based system, in my opinion, is that it makes backups a piece of cake. Just a mouse click or two.

If doing backups are easy, backups are more likely to get done.

Tom