How I organized photo storage
Hi Habr! Each of us stores some information, some use secrets and life hacks for this. Personally, I like to press the button of the photogun and today I would like to share my experience of storing information, to which I went and went and came.
I'll warn you right away: there is no “silver bullet” under the cut, which multiplies by 0 the problem of chaos in the files on your devices. And not even a line about neural networks, the recognition of something by anyone and other nanotechnologies. Under the cut - a bit of text and an oak plate, which also have to be filled manually =) But that works.
Before understanding what problems I wanted to solve, let me briefly tell you about it =) I do not consider myself to be a photographer / photographer, but still:
')
Now a little more detail.
I use 1-2 64 GB memory cards (not the ones in the photo below, although I know that they have already come into view)) - to buy more voluminous cards (128-256) I am being strangled by a toad. Even not so much a toad, as the attitude to the card as to no one consumables, with which a fiasco can happen at any moment: I lost the cards, bent them, and once it was stupidly stolen right from the camera. And “all the eggs in one basket” is not the most far-sighted approach.
That's what happens when I forgot to pull the card out of the laptop, put it on the passenger seat and braked sharply. And on this rake - twice.
64 GB is somewhere 2000-2500 photos in ravah. In my case, these are 4-6 photosets of events or about 10 “gadget ones”. Look at my previous publications and see why so much. Someone will say "why torture the shutter button so much" and it will be right, but I wrote above that I am a little noob. Moreover, I have a pernicious habit of doing two shots - if the first one turns out to be blurry, then perhaps the second one will come to the rescue. I have it at the level of instinct and so far nothing can be done about it. This is the answer to the question “why do I take pictures to the raves” - yes, it’s banal to correct later my own shoals, all overlaps and other geometries there.
For a long time, I could not find a program that would help me to fully cover my data storage needs. There are catalogers, there is a convenient work with meta tags, with face recognition and drawing photos on the card - a whole car of cool features, but ... scattered across different applications. I will list a few pitfalls, about which almost all applications stumbled.
Problem number 1: there is a memory card on the table - what is on it? You never know. Of course, you can skip 2000 photos on a camera, insert them into a laptop or keep notes on your smartphone, but this will not give you a “big picture”. And it will not answer the question “ have I already backed up this data or can they be permanently deleted? "If, for example, urgently need to free up space? After all, the free 64 GB may not be at hand.
Problem number 2: you never know the condition of the photo. Sorted? Processed? Can I delete or first throw on the computer? Do you know these endless folders “From SD”, “SD64 LAST”, “! UNSORTED”, “2018 ALL”, “iPhone_before_update” and so on? =) On a laptop, on a memory card, on an external disk, with a bunch of repetitions? And this oppressive feeling, “ it would be necessary to bring orders in all this — there will be a free weekend ... ”. And there is no free weekend and no.
Problem 3: how do you quickly find the right photos? For example, I recently needed to make a collage of all the “first september” in a few years. Store on laptop? It does not fit. Wool on different disks? Well, as an option. But uncomfortable? ..
I will be extremely grateful if you tell me a more functional and flexible option than the one I invented by trial and error for myself (below). I repeat that this is not about the photo viewer / sorter, but about convenience / visibility / information.
I decided to use such a cool tool like tables in GoogleDocs =) It is free, cross-platform and tede - I think it needs no introduction. Before drawing up the frame of the tablet, I tried to understand what fields I needed. They can come up with at least a hundred, but we must make it so that they are convenient to use and do not bother to fill each time. Well, try to take into account further scaling: that it would be convenient to use the tablet in a year or two or three.
I stopped my thoughts on the following set of fields:
Clickable:
Actually, I got such a sign =) Pretty massive, but I did it for myself. If you like my train of thought, then take it and adapt it to your needs, add-remove.
Optionally, you can sum up the weight of all photosets, and count down the% of the space occupied on a carrier of known capacity (a sort of progress bar).
By the way about carriers.
At first I kept the files only on the laptop, but the place quickly ran out. I bought an external disochek for 2.5 "- he died relatively soon due to my fault, since I was constantly carrying him in my backpack and did not save it once.
I decided to try Ya.Disk, bought 1TB - in general, it seems to be convenient, but at the same time a lot inconvenient: download and download speed, cost, confidentiality (what if any beta version of the new algorithm finds my pictures unacceptable and the whole account goes away?) and much more.
Therefore, in the end, I settled on a version of symbiosis: I took two stationary disks and left a subscription in Ya.Disk as a transit point and a spare wheel. Those “insensitive” data that potentially may be needed in the foreseeable future - for example, photos of the device you are about to write, or photos from children's events that you have to share with other parents — fly away to the cloud (having a DSLR automatically dooms you to this function). kindergarten and school). On disks - all that is not a place in the cloud.
At the beginning of the year, I took two 3.5 "Seagate Ironwolf as stationary drives - a series of disk drives specifically for NAS. In this line there are models from 1 to 14 TB - 1 and 2 TB is not serious, 6 or more - expensive. I stopped at the model 4 TB each - at first I thought about making 8 TB JBOD out of them, but then I figured out and realized that I hadn’t done so much yet =) And in the end I glued it together in raid 1 - so that I would surely not bite my elbows. there is little noise, they don’t heat up much, everything is more than ok with speed (although I didn’t even measure it accurately).
1TB on Ya.Disk costs 2000 â‚˝ per year, that is, 4 TB will cost 8K annually (life hacking: if you have Ya.Plus subscription for 1500 a year, you will get a 30% discount on Ya.Disk); a couple of clicks. Seagate Ironwolf at 4 TB costs 7K each (I managed to snatch at 6), but you bought them once, set them and forgot - they can rustle autonomously somewhere in the closet and not ask for money at intervals of a year.
For the sake of interest, I looked at the tariffs in Cloud@mail.ru - 1 TB costs from $ 699 per month! ) That is 8400 per year. 4 TB - from 2690 â‚˝ per month (32K per year).
I have 4 TB for photos so far enough with my head, but if you are editing video, it will not be enough. In general, consider yourself for your tasks =)
An important point that should be considered in the calculations. Recently, I talked with two wedding photographers - they said that they were trying to send a photo to a client for a month (this is already with retouching). Then they keep pictures for a couple of months, and then ruthlessly delete them, leaving only a couple of photos for each photoset for the portfolio (and the source for them in case you have to prove something to someone, both have happened). At first I thought about this approach: “ Hmm, but maybe well, what about him ?! After all, the truth is, why keep all these photos of other people's weddings and gadgets, if you never watch them? ". Wait for the magic " and suddenly come in handy "? If over the past year you haven’t had this opportunity, then believe me, it will not come in handy. But then I thought that there is still a difference between one’s own and someone else’s - yes, family pictures and videos will not be watched now either, but it will be very pleasant to see them in 5-10-15 years. And here you understand that it is better to stock up on an empty seat.
I use Chrome and it has a convenient bookmark bar (CMD + Shift + B). Create a table tab with files, rename it - assign a name:
(UV, Habr does not support emoji, I had to insert a picture). If there are a lot of bookmarks, you can do it with a delimiter, I like this one - “⬝”. With him it turns out this beauty:
I have been using this tablet for about six months and I generally like everything about it, I’m used to filling it out while the files are being copied. Therefore, I propose not to waste time trying to convince me =) But at the same time, I understand that it is from the Stone Age and it is possible (yes, not possible, but for sure!) There is much to improve or automate (for what need more knowledge and time). Collective intelligence, let's think together, how can this be improved / redone / optimized, having achieved better results with minimum effort? Any suggestions are welcome.
Well, or maybe you have your own secrets of file storagepickles - share.
I hope it was useful =) Successes!
I'll warn you right away: there is no “silver bullet” under the cut, which multiplies by 0 the problem of chaos in the files on your devices. And not even a line about neural networks, the recognition of something by anyone and other nanotechnologies. Under the cut - a bit of text and an oak plate, which also have to be filled manually =) But that works.
Intro
Before understanding what problems I wanted to solve, let me briefly tell you about it =) I do not consider myself to be a photographer / photographer, but still:
')
- I have photoshoot and take photos in RAW (each photo weighs on average 20-25 MB)
- I had a question of storing and structuring photos (or rather their source code)
Now a little more detail.
I use 1-2 64 GB memory cards (not the ones in the photo below, although I know that they have already come into view)) - to buy more voluminous cards (128-256) I am being strangled by a toad. Even not so much a toad, as the attitude to the card as to no one consumables, with which a fiasco can happen at any moment: I lost the cards, bent them, and once it was stupidly stolen right from the camera. And “all the eggs in one basket” is not the most far-sighted approach.
That's what happens when I forgot to pull the card out of the laptop, put it on the passenger seat and braked sharply. And on this rake - twice.
64 GB is somewhere 2000-2500 photos in ravah. In my case, these are 4-6 photosets of events or about 10 “gadget ones”. Look at my previous publications and see why so much. Someone will say "why torture the shutter button so much" and it will be right, but I wrote above that I am a little noob. Moreover, I have a pernicious habit of doing two shots - if the first one turns out to be blurry, then perhaps the second one will come to the rescue. I have it at the level of instinct and so far nothing can be done about it. This is the answer to the question “why do I take pictures to the raves” - yes, it’s banal to correct later my own shoals, all overlaps and other geometries there.
Problem
For a long time, I could not find a program that would help me to fully cover my data storage needs. There are catalogers, there is a convenient work with meta tags, with face recognition and drawing photos on the card - a whole car of cool features, but ... scattered across different applications. I will list a few pitfalls, about which almost all applications stumbled.
Problem number 1: there is a memory card on the table - what is on it? You never know. Of course, you can skip 2000 photos on a camera, insert them into a laptop or keep notes on your smartphone, but this will not give you a “big picture”. And it will not answer the question “ have I already backed up this data or can they be permanently deleted? "If, for example, urgently need to free up space? After all, the free 64 GB may not be at hand.
Problem number 2: you never know the condition of the photo. Sorted? Processed? Can I delete or first throw on the computer? Do you know these endless folders “From SD”, “SD64 LAST”, “! UNSORTED”, “2018 ALL”, “iPhone_before_update” and so on? =) On a laptop, on a memory card, on an external disk, with a bunch of repetitions? And this oppressive feeling, “ it would be necessary to bring orders in all this — there will be a free weekend ... ”. And there is no free weekend and no.
Problem 3: how do you quickly find the right photos? For example, I recently needed to make a collage of all the “first september” in a few years. Store on laptop? It does not fit. Wool on different disks? Well, as an option. But uncomfortable? ..
I will be extremely grateful if you tell me a more functional and flexible option than the one I invented by trial and error for myself (below). I repeat that this is not about the photo viewer / sorter, but about convenience / visibility / information.
Decision
I decided to use such a cool tool like tables in GoogleDocs =) It is free, cross-platform and tede - I think it needs no introduction. Before drawing up the frame of the tablet, I tried to understand what fields I needed. They can come up with at least a hundred, but we must make it so that they are convenient to use and do not bother to fill each time. Well, try to take into account further scaling: that it would be convenient to use the tablet in a year or two or three.
I stopped my thoughts on the following set of fields:
- Category I analyzed what I photographed and divided it into categories. It turned out like this:
Cars - cars
Events - events
Gadgets - Gadgets
Girls - well, you understand
Home - something homely, family
Life - any movement not falling into the categories above
- 
=)
Travel - travel
All photosets will be decomposed into these sections. If you are photographing a lot, then each section is more convenient to keep on a separate sheet (at the bottom of the table).
Important : Try to avoid creating the category “Other” (Miscellaneous), since it is in it that chaos will arise that will collapse the universe. Maximum - “! Temp”, into which you will merge files for further sorting into other categories. - The name . Inside the category, each photoset has a name - it is necessary to give such names that will be easy to remember or find. There are 2 convenient options: alphabetically or in chronological order. I alternate both options: it is more convenient to use device names in gadgets, and a mask like “2018-03-08 - March 8” in events. If anything, there is always CMD + F.
- Where now . In this column, I indicate where the photos are now stored - on the camera's memory card, on a laptop, on an external disk or in the cloud. If the location of the data changes, the label is updated. It is important to provide information about the photoset immediately, otherwise it will be forgotten later.
- Pieces before sorting . It does not always work (or rather, it never happens at all) to take right away and sort the gigabytes of RAWs, usually you just dump them from the memory card. And here it is important to understand how many photos in the photoset - in order to estimate how long it will take to sort and process.
Life hacking : it will be useful to know the average speed of sorting and processing photos, if you bother with it at all. Just set the timer for 5-10 minutes and then see how much time they have improved. It takes me an average of 2-5 minutes to photograph (assuming that I know the hot keys in Photoshop well). Further see p. 8. - Sorting and processing . Just two columns, the cells of which are filled with either green (= “Done”) or red (= “Not done”) color. You can add, for example, blue - if processing is not required. Such a color legend will clearly show what is in what condition. Optionally, it can display tsiferki - speed, multiplied by the number of photos after sorting (see. P. 11).
By sorting, I mean the selection of the best personnel (removal of repeats and rejects) for further processing, and under the processing itself - their way from rav to jeep (which is not ashamed to show others). In the future, within each folder there will be processed jipegs, and in the subfolder “Originals” there will be raves and *. Xmp-shki from them. - Copy in the cloud . Usually there is no point in pouring the unsorted stratum of photos into the cloud, it is a waste of time and space. There it makes sense to back up already sorted photos. And better - already processed. If I upload files to the cloud, then I make a clickable link to the folder - so that I can go to the right place from the tablet in one click, and not climb the online file manager (which, as a rule, slow down).
- Copy to disk . Clouds are considered to be reliable, but something inside suggests that it is better to have a backup also locally (at least for very important data). Well, or if we are talking about some "sensitive" data that I would not want to upload to the Internet.
- Quantity, size . The number of photos after sorting, as well as the size of the space they occupy. Optional column, but now I will try to explain why I did it.
If I see a certain photoset with a green cell “Sorting” and a red “Processing” - this means that I just need some amount of free time for a rather dull and monotonous mechanical work. Knowing the number and size of photos, I can schedule this activity. For example, next weekend I will have to drive a sapsan from Moscow to St. Petersburg and back, that is, I know that I will have a laptop and 8 hours without a stable Internet (= excellent conditions for processing photos). Approximately we estimate how many photos we will manage to process during this time and fill in the necessary photosets on the laptop. This is where knowledge of at least 1 photo processing speed comes in handy. My photo takes from 2 to 5 minutes, 8 hours is 480 minutes, which means it hardly makes sense to copy more than 300 photos to laptop (which is approximately from 6 to 9 GB). I have a 256 GB disk in my MacBook, sometimes I have to “play tag”, but with a tablet the total size of photosets never comes as a surprise to me.
And then you just need to arrive early at the station to have time to take a table in the dining car =) - Date taken . An important parameter that is closely related to the next column.
- On the phone . It often happens that, in addition to the photogun, you have to simultaneously shoot something on the phone. For example, if you photograph a dynamic scene (races) and ask a friend to make a video. Or if you make repairs and you have dirty hands - you don’t want to get a fotik, but just take it off to your phone. As a result, right now on a 128GB iPhone I have 25,000 photos. Yes, there is a lot of bullshit, but enough is needed.
So that important phone pictures do not live a separate life, it would be more correct to add them to the theme photoset folder. And just by the date, it’s the fastest to find what you need (although geotags here also help a lot). If there is a “Yes” mark in the phone, then I need to drop the pictures from the phone separately. If "No" - then either they were not, or they have already thrown off. - Marriage It is unlikely that this column will be useful to you, but for myself I have so far decided to leave it. It shows what percentage of the marriage from the photoset I delete - on average, it is 50%, that is, as I said, my problem is that I make duplicate frames. I generally do not see anything wrong with that, I don’t feel sorry for shutter count =) but still for me it is a kind of irritant that I see every time I go to the tablet and every time I think “learn to take a picture, improve knowledge and skills”. One day, the psyche and I'll do it!
- Draft and post . In case I need to write something about the object being photographed (for example, a review of the device, of which there was a lot in my profile), then first I create a draft in Googlebox, linking to which I link to the word “Here”. Green color - the draft is completed, yellow - in the process, red - not yet taken. The same with posts - adding a link to a post allows in one click to go to the desired post, without any googling there.
It is immediately evident in what state all the publications are, what is the size of the “technical debt”.
Clickable:
Actually, I got such a sign =) Pretty massive, but I did it for myself. If you like my train of thought, then take it and adapt it to your needs, add-remove.
Optionally, you can sum up the weight of all photosets, and count down the% of the space occupied on a carrier of known capacity (a sort of progress bar).
By the way about carriers.
At first I kept the files only on the laptop, but the place quickly ran out. I bought an external disochek for 2.5 "- he died relatively soon due to my fault, since I was constantly carrying him in my backpack and did not save it once.
I decided to try Ya.Disk, bought 1TB - in general, it seems to be convenient, but at the same time a lot inconvenient: download and download speed, cost, confidentiality (what if any beta version of the new algorithm finds my pictures unacceptable and the whole account goes away?) and much more.
Therefore, in the end, I settled on a version of symbiosis: I took two stationary disks and left a subscription in Ya.Disk as a transit point and a spare wheel. Those “insensitive” data that potentially may be needed in the foreseeable future - for example, photos of the device you are about to write, or photos from children's events that you have to share with other parents — fly away to the cloud (having a DSLR automatically dooms you to this function). kindergarten and school). On disks - all that is not a place in the cloud.
At the beginning of the year, I took two 3.5 "Seagate Ironwolf as stationary drives - a series of disk drives specifically for NAS. In this line there are models from 1 to 14 TB - 1 and 2 TB is not serious, 6 or more - expensive. I stopped at the model 4 TB each - at first I thought about making 8 TB JBOD out of them, but then I figured out and realized that I hadn’t done so much yet =) And in the end I glued it together in raid 1 - so that I would surely not bite my elbows. there is little noise, they don’t heat up much, everything is more than ok with speed (although I didn’t even measure it accurately).
1TB on Ya.Disk costs 2000 â‚˝ per year, that is, 4 TB will cost 8K annually (life hacking: if you have Ya.Plus subscription for 1500 a year, you will get a 30% discount on Ya.Disk); a couple of clicks. Seagate Ironwolf at 4 TB costs 7K each (I managed to snatch at 6), but you bought them once, set them and forgot - they can rustle autonomously somewhere in the closet and not ask for money at intervals of a year.
For the sake of interest, I looked at the tariffs in Cloud@mail.ru - 1 TB costs from $ 699 per month! ) That is 8400 per year. 4 TB - from 2690 â‚˝ per month (32K per year).
I have 4 TB for photos so far enough with my head, but if you are editing video, it will not be enough. In general, consider yourself for your tasks =)
An important point that should be considered in the calculations. Recently, I talked with two wedding photographers - they said that they were trying to send a photo to a client for a month (this is already with retouching). Then they keep pictures for a couple of months, and then ruthlessly delete them, leaving only a couple of photos for each photoset for the portfolio (and the source for them in case you have to prove something to someone, both have happened). At first I thought about this approach: “ Hmm, but maybe well, what about him ?! After all, the truth is, why keep all these photos of other people's weddings and gadgets, if you never watch them? ". Wait for the magic " and suddenly come in handy "? If over the past year you haven’t had this opportunity, then believe me, it will not come in handy. But then I thought that there is still a difference between one’s own and someone else’s - yes, family pictures and videos will not be watched now either, but it will be very pleasant to see them in 5-10-15 years. And here you understand that it is better to stock up on an empty seat.
Browser LifeHack
I use Chrome and it has a convenient bookmark bar (CMD + Shift + B). Create a table tab with files, rename it - assign a name:
(UV, Habr does not support emoji, I had to insert a picture). If there are a lot of bookmarks, you can do it with a delimiter, I like this one - “⬝”. With him it turns out this beauty:
The end
I have been using this tablet for about six months and I generally like everything about it, I’m used to filling it out while the files are being copied. Therefore, I propose not to waste time trying to convince me =) But at the same time, I understand that it is from the Stone Age and it is possible (yes, not possible, but for sure!) There is much to improve or automate (for what need more knowledge and time). Collective intelligence, let's think together, how can this be improved / redone / optimized, having achieved better results with minimum effort? Any suggestions are welcome.
Well, or maybe you have your own secrets of file storage
I hope it was useful =) Successes!
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/447144/
All Articles