Where are you keeping those thousands of digital images you've taken?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an RV or an interest in RVing!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

jymbee

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 20, 2018
Posts
3,445
Location
Upstate NY
Used to be that folks would put their memorable images in binders of some kind and take them out to view from time time, at family events for example. Or perhaps in a slide carousel always at the ready to bore friends and family with slides of your adventures.

But these days given everyone has a very capable camera in their smartphone, one can build up an inventory of thousands of digital images in short order. So now that you have these many thousands of images that you've taken over the years, what do you do with them? Any kind of digital organization? Print your favorites and create photo books? Online image galleries of some kind?

Personally I use Adobe Lightroom to store them all in "catalogs" in something of an orderly fashion but I'd have to say that easily 90% of them could be deleted with nothing of any significance being lost. And given we're the only ones that even know how to use Lightroom, when we're gone no future family member will be able to recover a shoebox of images from the back of a closet and relive family moments-- like we used to be able to do a generation ago.
 
Saved to a NAS by calendar year, then event. In a perfect world they'd be sorted/indexed with EXIF data to recall by category, subject, etc but it's worked out that my digital "shoebox in a closet" allows me to sift through them in a modest amount of time without requiring software. 99% of them mean nothing to anyone but me. Much like I have survived after countless photos from mypast are lost to time, future generations will survive without mine. At least digitally they can be readily copied but who's going to look through literally tens of thousands of someone else's photos.

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM
 
I use ACDSee and folder structures to organize my pix and to make notes attached to many of the pix. It allows slide shows, minor editing of the pix, "light box," sorting and much more, even finding duplicate files. I also keep backup copies on external disks, in addition to videos and backups on these external disks, but mostly just a folder structure and, sometimes, a text file in the folder.

In either case, there is a section for family, for trips, for aviation and much more, with sub-sections for rallies under the trips, reunions under family, etc. etc.

So though they may lose a little organization and possibly some notes, family would merely have to get on the computer and make copies and/or take the external disks to their own computer. Of course both laser and inkjet color printers are also available for hard copy, and some pieces have been widely shared with others.

On a related note, my dad took lots of pictures over the decades (mostly slides), starting before I was born, and my brother has scanned just about all of them into the computer, organized by year, and distributed to a wide chunk of family via CD. Naturally, those are are copied into my pix, in addition to keeping the CD copy.

We also have priceless audio files (cassette recorder) of my grandparents generation discussing family history (my folks started this- we continue with video) and their own personal lives. Twice, at a family reunion, I've video'ed discussion circles, once with the generation who lived through the dust bowl years (most were in Kansas) and once with my generation. These are also shared widely through the extended family.

So lots of stuff is readily available, but the older folks wonder how much interest there is from young folks. In a very few years I won't care, though.
 
Our pictures are mostly digital, those are on several places; onedrive, my desktop comptuer, laptop, and an external HD for backup.
I use XNView MP to keep them organized, by year taken and location and by trip; it's great for managing all aspects of them; like sorting them by my childrens' family, by face recognition, etc. Then it's easy to download to a USB stick to give them. What they do with the stick is their business.
 
Last edited:
I have thousands of digital images stored on Google at no charge stored in folders making them easy to find. I can access them from my laptops or my cell phones. Click the link below to see the best of them (My Photo Portfolio).
 
Last edited:
Especially coming from an Information Technology background, I understand the necessity of having "back-ups" of everything. Long, long, long ago, when "digital" was still in it's infancy and digital "data" was just beginning to become the new way of life, I started doing back-ups of everything I did. If "it" was saved on a floppy disk, I made another copy on another floppy disk. When hard drives became the "norm", I still make copies on 3 1/2 inch disks. Then, eventually external hard drives. Then file sizes got bigger, digital photos got bigger, and space ran out on computer hard drives. So hard drives got bigger and bigger and bigger.

I STILL do back-ups of everything. For the last 20 years my process has been ... take the photo (with a digital camera or my phone now) and make a copy to my computer (now, my laptop computer as I no longer have any desktop computers). I now have 2 copies of those photos, one on the "camera/phone" and the other on the lap top.

Again, space gets limited on the camera / phone and that's when an external hard drive was introduced to my world.

Now ... take the photo (phone), copy to Laptop hard drive. Copy to external hard drive. First external hard drive ran out of space and purchased a new one years later. Copied all the original files and photos from the 1st hard drive to the second hard drive (2 copied now), and started maintining 2 copies (going forward) on my current phone, then laptop, then larger external hard drive. My ultimate back-up is the larger external hard drive.

I do not use on-line (cloud) services as I've seen over the years too many problems with companies going out of business, deleting, or closing down the users accounts, or charging money for storage. I don't depend or trust or want to spend money with MY stuff in someone else's hands and at their control. So, external hard drives work very, very well for me.

I have also digitized (scanned) thousands to old photos from my parents, and their parent's families and old photos and such from the late 1800's. Some of those photos are on steal plates. I know who most of these people are and have them scanned and cataloged in my file directories. As long as the photo file format does not change because of new technology, those photos and scans are safe. I do have the originals tucked away, but it would take the rest of my life to rescan all of that again if technology changed or I lost ALL my digital images.

For me, it's been a 37 year process. Last count (approximately), I have over 135,000 scanned and saved photos from my family going back to the 1890's to as late as (1 hour ago).
 
Been digital for about 22 years. Directory structure by year and event. And a couple physical albums from my youth when I used to shoot with a 35mm SLR, but those live in a treasure chest.
 
Last edited:
Anybody see the ads for that dongle that's supposed to search your computer and other devices for photos, delete duplicates and organize photos from all platforms in one place? Wonder if that works?
 
Anybody see the ads for that dongle that's supposed to search your computer and other devices for photos, delete duplicates and organize photos from all platforms in one place? Wonder if that works?
It depends on what it's looking for to consider it a duplicate. As long as it doesn't just check file name as we have gone around the clock with some file names and therefore have duplicates but photo different.

I wonder how it organise.

I have mine as year and then place. I need to get better at taking fewer photos. I'm still going through last year's photos and deleting the not so good or duplicates.

We have external hard drives and nas drives to backup.
 
I need to get better at taking fewer photos. I'm still going through last year's photos and deleting the not so good or duplicates.
Same here; Over the years, I've not been good at deleting the dup's and not-so-good photos.

Having been faced with online storage options going out of business, increasing prices, or otherwise changing, I've tended to keep my personal photos locally, organized in folders by year/event or family/history photos by individuals' names. I have several backups on other devices.

Going in the opposite direction, I recently moved many years of a club's photos from server storage to Google Photos. In the back of my mind I'm conscious of those prior online solutions that I previously had to recover and store elsewhere.
 
It's been a while since I messed with looking for duplicate files but I used a javascript app that compared MD5 checksums. Being java I could run the same app on my linux NAS or windoze client on the network. Point it at a given directory and it would recursively drill down and come up with a list of files (not just images) with duplicate MD5 checksums. Using the checksum it doesn't matter what the filename is, as often a picture or data file will get renamed from whatever the camera writes to something one might email or save in a different location. Sometimes you want to keep files with the same name but multiple versions. When the program finished mining checksums I could review the list and whack files either selectively or by directory, depending on which one I wanted to keep. Maybe there's a newer/better/faster way to do this nowadays but it worked for me.

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM
 
I use ACDSee and folder structures to organize my pix and to make notes attached to many of the pix. It allows slide shows, minor editing of the pix, "light box," sorting and much more, even finding duplicate files. I also keep backup copies on external disks, in addition to videos and backups on these external disks, but mostly just a folder structure and, sometimes, a text file in the folder.

In either case, there is a section for family, for trips, for aviation and much more, with sub-sections for rallies under the trips, reunions under family, etc. etc.

So though they may lose a little organization and possibly some notes, family would merely have to get on the computer and make copies and/or take the external disks to their own computer. Of course both laser and inkjet color printers are also available for hard copy, and some pieces have been widely shared with others.

On a related note, my dad took lots of pictures over the decades (mostly slides), starting before I was born, and my brother has scanned just about all of them into the computer, organized by year, and distributed to a wide chunk of family via CD. Naturally, those are are copied into my pix, in addition to keeping the CD copy.

We also have priceless audio files (cassette recorder) of my grandparents generation discussing family history (my folks started this- we continue with video) and their own personal lives. Twice, at a family reunion, I've video'ed discussion circles, once with the generation who lived through the dust bowl years (most were in Kansas) and once with my generation. These are also shared widely through the extended family.

So lots of stuff is readily available, but the older folks wonder how much interest there is from young folks. In a very few years I won't care, though.
Wow-- very impressive! (y)

And here I thought I was pretty organized but...

We also have a couple dozen slide carousels with images going way back. I had a Nikon slide scanner at one point and started digitizing them, but that died. Since then my siblings went through all the slides we had and as so many weren't of any particular interest, managed to cull the collection down considerably. Hope to get back to the scanning project at some point.

The audio and audio/video you're recorded will be priceless to future generations. We have a few of those as well. Also have boxes of very old 8 and Super 8 tapes. Trying to figure out just who in hell all these people are can be a challenge!

Which brings up another point in that many times when people look back at very old family photos it can be difficult to know just who's who. Especially at occasions such as family reunions or parties which might be attended by more distant relatives or friends of theirs. Coming up with a way to identify the main people in old images for future generations might be a worthwhile effort.
 
I STILL do back-ups of everything. For the last 20 years my process has been ... take the photo (with a digital camera or my phone now) and make a copy to my computer (now, my laptop computer as I no longer have any desktop computers). I now have 2 copies of those photos, one on the "camera/phone" and the other on the lap top.

Again, space gets limited on the camera / phone and that's when an external hard drive was introduced to my world.

Now ... take the photo (phone), copy to Laptop hard drive. Copy to external hard drive. First external hard drive ran out of space and purchased a new one years later. Copied all the original files and photos from the 1st hard drive to the second hard drive (2 copied now), and started maintining 2 copies (going forward) on my current phone, then laptop, then larger external hard drive. My ultimate back-up is the larger external hard drive.
Great backup strategy! I fear many are living on borrowed time given they might have all their images on one aging HD. Just a matter of time...

I do not use on-line (cloud) services as I've seen over the years too many problems with companies going out of business, deleting, or closing down the users accounts, or charging money for storage. I don't depend or trust or want to spend money with MY stuff in someone else's hands and at their control. So, external hard drives work very, very well for me.
Same here for the reasons started. Although I do think today's "cloud storage" when it comes to the big companies like Google & Amazon is safer then some of the outfits that came and went in the past.

I have also digitized (scanned) thousands to old photos from my parents, and their parent's families and old photos and such from the late 1800's. Some of those photos are on steal plates. I know who most of these people are and have them scanned and cataloged in my file directories. As long as the photo file format does not change because of new technology, those photos and scans are safe. I do have the originals tucked away, but it would take the rest of my life to rescan all of that again if technology changed or I lost ALL my digital images.

For me, it's been a 37 year process. Last count (approximately), I have over 135,000 scanned and saved photos from my family going back to the 1890's to as late as (1 hour ago).
As you mentioned, I hear people some say that new technology will make today's formats unusable. Poppycock. I suppose basic image formats such as jpg and tiff might be replaced over time with newer formats but there will be ways to use today's formats for a very, very long time.

135k scanned and saved photos?!? That's simply incredible. (y)
 
Anybody see the ads for that dongle that's supposed to search your computer and other devices for photos, delete duplicates and organize photos from all platforms in one place? Wonder if that works?
Without knowing anything about this dongle, I seriously doubt it would be worth much. Finding duplicates perhaps but there's many apps that can do that. As for searching all your files and "organizing" them? No way. At least not in any useful manner given there's just too much personal, subjective input required.

Not to mention connecting a dongle from an outside source to one's computer that proposes to search all your files can be risky business in general.
 
We also have a couple dozen slide carousels with images going way back. I had a Nikon slide scanner at one point and started digitizing them, but that died.
I've got many years (and many boxes) of slides, and quite a few prints/negatives. On my brother's recommendation (he does most of the family genealogy stuff) I got a Plustek Optifilm 7600i scanner that does a great job on 35mm slides and negatives. It also has many enhancement modes (takes longer, multipass, etc.) and produces excellent results. I use it with VueScan software, by far the best I've come across, and it works with a large variety of scanners, both flatbed and specialized, and has many adjustments available also to improve scans further.

Of course this scanning is time consuming, so I still don't have some stuff scanned, but I do have the slides, projector and screen, along with an 8mm/Super 8mm film projector, and care with a good camcorder (hard to minimize the scan anomalies) and care with the now-brittle film (and a splicer) I've got good video copies of my old films.
 
I did the slide/negative scan deal years ago with a nikon coolscan I think it was. It took a number of minutes per slide but it had a clever feature the included an IR light source that minimized dust and scratches considerably. Took several months, but the way I would work it is turn the machine on, shove in a slide and went about my business. When I noticed it was done I'd shove in another and over time I got through them all (prolly a couple thousand). It would automatically advance 35mm negative strips so got 5 or 6 at a shot with those. The only challenge was I had some kodak disc negatives that had some air force days photos I really wanted to keep. Ended up making a 35mm slide frame that I could cut the disc negative up and fit them into and scanned them that way. I still have a binder of black and white 35mm negatives from my home darkroom days. Most of those are probably bracket shots or subjects I don't care about, so was going to just do a contact sheet kind of scan on those and see if any are worth a full scan. I started that in high school so there might be a few gems in there. As soon as the first retail digital camera I could afford hit the market (a sony mavica) I went all in and never looked back. A darkroom on your computer was heaven. I learned the discipline early to sort through photos and cull out the duplicates and stinkers, make it a single "event" like a birthday, vacation spot or whatever and save it to the NAS. So from there the only photos on my cameras or phone are recent ones in the camera folder I haven't sorted yet, and folders of things already sorted and saved on the NAS. That way I don't have so many "loose" photos around that aren't saved anywhere I risk accidently losing them. Many ways to skin the cat, I appreciate those that have the time to critically index and fastidiously back up and preserve them. If I thought anyone else would care I would probably be more diligent but mine are all "snapshot" grade, and there's only so much attention I can give to them. When I'm gone there is no doubt most or all of them will end up in the bit bucket but they're fun to look back on today.

Mark B.
Albuquerque, NM
 
Last edited:
In addition to boxes and carousels of 35mm slides, I have a number of glass/emulsion slides from my Dad's early photography days. Of course, they're negatives, so you can't just look at them. Some years ago, when our oldest grandson (a pro photographer) was visiting, we experimented with taking camera images of the slides and reversing/manipulating the images in software (why didn't I think of that?).

I doubt that future generations will have any clue what those glass slides are, or what to do with them.

Some years ago, another (younger) grandson was visiting and Chris wanted to show him some memories she had on VHS tape. At the time, the only VCR we still had was on the boat, so Chris took him down the ramp and popped the tape in. He had never seen a VCR or VHS tape before, and had no idea what they did.

It doesn't seem that long ago since our kids had to program our VCRs for us o_O
 
So from there the only photos on my cameras or phone are recent ones in the camera folder I haven't sorted yet, and folders of things already sorted and saved on the NAS. That way I don't have so many "loose" photos around that aren't saved anywhere I risk accidently losing them.
On videos I still have all of the original VHS/Hi8/Digital8/DV tapes, and for the later camcorders that use memory cards I not only copy the card data into the computer, I also keep the original card intact, stored in a small plastic box, so with the two copies on different disks I have good backup.

It took a number of minutes per slide but it had a clever feature the included an IR light source that minimized dust and scratches considerably.
The Plustek (referenced above) also has that feature, and combined with a bulb to blow dust off the surface it almost eliminates all such.

so was going to just do a contact sheet kind of scan on those and see if any are worth a full scan.
I found that my HP G4050 flatbed can do a decent job on contact sheet stuff (monochrome OR color), even has an adapter for the purpose, so it's pretty quick.
 
I have a Synology NAS attached to my home network. It has nice software for managing photos. I also backup the photos to Amazon Photos. Both the Synology software and Amazon Photos help organize and search the photos.
 
Back
Top Bottom