Replace Picasa? But need "online backup sync"

[Zarch]

Upto last month, the wife and I have had P&S and a Superzoom cameras and shot solely in JPG. Over the years we've accrued over 14,000 images and over Christmas I finally got round to sorting these properly and now are all contained in folders (1 per month) going back around 9 years.

I have all these catalogued in Picasa on my PC into monthly "albums" which are all backed up online to Picasa. (so in sync with my local collection).

The local collection is on my RAID-1 NAS as well as taking an external USB drive backup. All of this weighs in just under 40gb.

But now I own a Nikon D3100, I have ditched JPG and will be shooting NEF and I like the idea of converting to DNG. I have being playing with Lightroom and like the way the import converts to DNG for you etc. It can also keep the year/monthly directory structure I like.

But here lies the problem.
Do I ditch Picasa and import all my historical collection into LR?
Or do I have 2 things on the go? (which seems a bit daft)

What I really like about Picasa is the way it automatically Syncs my local collection to the online version when I make any additions or changes. It costs just $20 for 80gb of the Google/Picasa storage, so I don't want to be spending anymore than that.

So the big question I suppose it "Is there a Sync facility in LR?" And where could I sync to?

Uploading 40gb again is a big undertaking, So I don't want to do this lightly.

Any ideas/thoughts would be very much appreciated.

 

[Chappers]

Lets tackle one problem at a time.

Are the images stored on your computer as monthly folders or are they all dumped into one large folder and Picassa sorts them out for you. If it's the former, I'd just copy them all into Lightroom and maintain the folder structure.

If it's the latter and you import them into Lightroom you'll have no real organisation and finding images could be a real pain. In this case I'd consider what cataloguing system you want to use. I use a Year/ Shoot/ sub cat if necessary, system. You may want to consider this. You can use Keywords and collections as well to group similar types of images together, even though they may be in separate folders. I'd start then with saving the NEF files like this ( or whatever you chose) . I'd then spend time converting the Picassa libraries to this system if you can. Using a Year/Month system you can sort by date and then import into Lightroom.

As far as I know there is no automatic online storage for Lightroom. You can ask it to back up to a second location on import, but if you change names etc then this backup does not have the new details. You could use some automated backup system to save to your external hard drive and then backup to an online service.

One point I would make though is that .nef files like all RAW files are fairly large so backing up and retrieving can be time consuming and I'd think you would fill up 40Gb of storage space fairly quickly. If you want to keep things safe try using another portable hard drive to mirror your image storage and keep this "off site"

 

[Zarch]

Hi Chappers,

Thank you for the reply.

I have meticulously gone through the collection and created folders for each year/month and moved each image into the appropriate folder based on date taken. A whopping task as we'd previous had a random collection of folders between us. (it was a merge of 2 collections really).

Picasa only picks up the folders and does nothing more with them.

At the moment, I have no real further categorisation apart from occasionally creating a 2nd directory for a particular month alongside the standard folder if something good happened.

2010-01 September ("general folder")
2010-10 September - Isle of Wight Holiday ("addition folder if required")

I think I've just convinced myself I need to start using keywords in whatever long-term solution i go to as the above is not acceptable moving forward.



I appreciate that we could be talking 10mb increase per image..... but I think this means I need to be more selective about what I keep....... I have hoarded a load of crap at times really.


I'm not too worried about the new sizes or the folder layout as I think I can cope with whatever each program throws at me. What does concern me is keeping the local folder in sync with an online copy.

Flickr, Picasa etc have very aggressive pricing, as well as the advantage of a sparkling front end for showing off your pics. On the other hand, places like Dropbox want $20/month as opposed to $20 year and have no way of showing off the images/categories/keywords etc.

 

[jamin100]

Your using Windows correct?

If it was me I would get another 2 hard drives.
1 portable and one desktop. you could have both for less than £80 depending on the size you require.

I would then use a program like synctoy to run overnight (or weekly whatever suits you) to copy your photos to the desktop hard drive. So there is a complete clone of your photos on another drive sitting next to your computer.

Then I would perform the same process but maybe forghtnightly or monthly with the portable drive. Keep this either in another house or at work just somewhere away from your main pc.

So with that solution your protected from a busted hard drive in your main machine and fire / theft at your home.

Ok a nuclear bomb hitting your area means all your photos are gone but if that happened I think the though of loosing 15 years worth of photos would be the last thing on your mind.

 

[Zarch]

Thanks Ben.

Yes, i'm Windows on the main machine......

I think I'm all sorted on the mechanical failure front with a 1tb RAID 1 mirrored NAS and a further 500g external drive copy for belt and braces.

I agree that another £40 for another drive could be taken offsite, but I'd really like every image upto date online with the ability to view the photos.

Media Players such as Apple TV, XBMC etc all allow you to view Picasa/Flickr albums etc on your TV. Whatever solution I come up with (or continue with in Picasa's case), I want to be able to do that.

I can also get to my Picasa album from my phone to show people.....

Losing those potential abilities is what is putting me off using a "standard" online backup facility.



From what i'm reading about Picasa, whilst is professes to handle raw formats, it doesn't really, so i'm thinking of the following.

Keep current JPG on NAS/External and already up on Picasa.
Keep new RAW on NAS and External Drive
Export a JPG version from the RAWs and upload to Picasa.

If my house burns down, I think I would be happy to take having a JPG only of all my photos. I'm not a Pro, I just want my family snaps secured.... As Picasa is crap with RAWs (fro now), then JPGs will have to do. (plus, its saves me about 10mb per image!)


I still need to get my backside in gear with keywords though.... something to look at there.

 

[Chappers]

I think you probably have sorted your requirements out. If you are happy with the plan then I'd go with it. It certainly appears practical.

As far as keywords are concerned I wouldn't go overboard. You may get away with a couple of dozen, after all you may only want to find pictures from a particular event or location.

You could also try renaming the files to help. You may have some images in a folder labelled June 2010, but you could have the image files named Cornwall_2010. Lightroom will let you rename files and apply a sequential number to them. so you would have Cornwall_2010 01....02..03 etc. You could then search using the text option for any file containing "Cornwall" to find all your Cornwall images, saves adding that as a keyword, unless you want to

 

[Zarch]

Thanks John.

Are the keywords in the exif data of the photo? or are they package specific? In LR's case, just stored in the catalog?

I wondering If I add comments on import into LR whether they'll end up on the JPG export? And will Picasa pick those up?

I suppose the main problem with maintaining 2 repositories is they will never be in 100% sync. I.E. if I update some tags in Picasa on the JPGs, they will never make it back to LR without me manually making the changes in LR too.

I think I need to have a play with the folder names on both LR import and then when exporting to Picasa too. I like the idea of renaming the files as you suggest, but i've already got the 14,000 up on Picasa, so wouldn't be able to change those without a lot of work. Maybe something just for my new images.

I'm certainly not at the end of this challenge yet!

 

[Chappers]

Keywords are stored within the LR catalogue. It is possible to export the processed images with the data in XMP sidecar files. However there is no real standard as to how that data is stored so it may not be possible for another application to read it. In fact the original version of Lightrooms XMP files were not compatible with Photoshops. Although this was sorted with later versions of both. So if you need "keywords" to be read by multiple applications you need probably to use the file name as the source.