Best way of saving Photos.

M

Molli

Registered User
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Can somebody tell me please of best way to save photos that I have put onto my laptop. I'm not very technically minded so something that's quite easy to follow.
 
do you mean to create a backup of your existing collection, or some utility to view/edit your photo's? Is it a Mac or PC?
 
There are several ways.

1 adjust the settings in your camera to specify the picture quality and size you want
2. specify the size & quality when you save photos in your picture editing software
3 use a photo shrinking app like JPEG mini (Mac OS) or similar to reduce the size of the pictures
4. Compress the files on disk into .zip files purely for storage
5 Image types can influence size as well. .jpg files can be small but image quality may suffer due to the introduction of artefacts and loss of information .tif files have high-quality but will be physically bigger.

There is no perfect answer for everyone; it depends on what you want. If you want to print pictures on your 300 dpi photo-printer, there is no point in storing multi-megabyte images with billions of pixels - the printer cannot reproduce them. Refer it can take multiple printer "dots" to produce a single pixel.

Remember the number of pixels in a photo dictates the image quality.
 
Eithneangela said:
Paid, how do you reduce the size prior to backup? My camera takes pics which are individually greater than 4.6 MB.
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Google Photos have a app for your computer you can install that will back up your photos automatically in this reduced size - you need do nothing. If you want to keep the high Res images - then you will most likely need to pay for space.
 
Eithneangela said:
Paid, how do you reduce the size prior to backup? My camera takes pics which are individually greater than 4.6 MB.
Click to expand...
You don't need to. Resizing is done by Google Photos after you upload, you just upload your photos without doing anything to them first.

There are two options.

1. Upload the originals - limited to 15GB storage (you can purchase more space).
2. Upload in what they call High Quality - unlimited storage.

The second option is good enough for most people.

There are lots of other options too e.g. Google Drive, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, etc.

If you're a pro-sumer photographer you could purchase a Network Attached Storage (NAS) unit. It connects to your router and is accessible via wifi as a shared folder. I have one of these and back up my raw images to it - http://www.elara.ie/productdetail.aspx?productcode=ECE3017690

It's prudent to back up the photos to two different locations just in case.

This is a great resource for all things photo (including backup) -

e.g. - [broken link removed]
 
What about www.flickr.com ?
You have a terabyte of unlimited resolution photo storage ie no compression unlike google photos does.For context,if your camera takes 20 mega pixel photos,then you can save 50,000 for free.
 
If you want a real backup, then I presume you don't want to compromise the picture quality in doing so. If you reduce the quality, you can never recover and may regret that at a later date should you wish to have them printed.

The likes of Picassa and others will allow you store photos online at their original quality. There are also a number of cloud base backup solutions that allow you backup all important information online.

You can also get network attached drives that will allow you to automatically backup all important files on your laptop, and make them available to any device on the network (other laptops, phones, tablets, smart TV, etc.) Some will allow you access when you're away from home.

If all you need is to have a safe backup of your photos so that you can retrieve them if your hard drive fails, then a couple of portable external hard drives are hard to beat for cost/convenience. I say a couple, as you can store one elsewhere so that you still have a copy should one drive fail, get stolen, damaged in fire, etc.
 
Thanks a mil all for that very useful info. I have some on a memory stick and can somebody also please tell me if they re loaded back into computer for viewing do they have to be re sent back to memory stick again or do they remain on it. I notice nobody mentioned memory stick here for storing and Im wondering why?
 
Because you can lose them !
And they can become corrupted.
If you load images from a memory card/stick to a computer,the images stay on the card .
 
vandriver said:
Because you can lose them !
And they can become corrupted.
Click to expand...

Exactly, and to the second point, flash memory as used in USB drives is not designed for long term storage. They WILL become corrupted over time, higher temperatures and temperature fluctuations will speed up the process. After a couple of years, some of your data will be unreadable.

So you're best using an external hard drive (again, not one of the solid state drives), using at least two backup copies, and replacing those drives every 5 years or so.
 
Molli said:
I have some on a memory stick and can somebody also please tell me if they re loaded back into computer for viewing do they have to be re sent back to memory stick again or do they remain on it.
Click to expand...
As long as you just select the photos or folders you want and copy (Ctrl c) and paste (Ctrl p) them. If you drag them from USB to PC they will be moved from one to the other.
 
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