In today's edition of this series, we're going to discuss the nuts and bolts of any backing up program: organizing your files. Then I'll teach you how to burn your DVDs, store them properly, and manage them so that you will keep the contents safe and be able to locate the image you need when you need it.
After four years of running a digital scrapbooking company, I began to lose control of my photos, digital scrapbooking design files and graphics. My problem? I didn't think about what I was doing when I "organized" my images as I went along. I organized on the fly. And what's worse, because I'm usually in such a hurry, I dumped all of the photos on my camera into the folder that contained the most on-topic items, resulting in high numbers of misfiled images.
Now before you raise you hands to inform me that there are lots of great pieces of software that will do this for you, let me clarify something: I own that software and I attempted to use it exclusively for this purpose for awhile. But tagging images minus a filing system is slow going and because I am a busy person, I gave up. I do not have hours to waste. Besides, I have read too many horror stories posted by hysterical digital scrapbookers in which databases associated with these programs have disintegrated. They have often discovered that their wok did not upgrade with the next edition of the software for some unfathomable reason. If this individual has depended entirely on their software to organize them, they have been left with a worse mess than I used to have in my folders. I wanted to tag, but I had to find a fast way to get it done.
After considering the situation for several years (and after working with the various software packages), I have come up with a solution that seems workable, is stable, and uses the best features of the operating system's folder filing system along with features from various software packages to do certain things. I've discovered that takes multiple solutions to manage images well.
Starting out: Organizing Your files with Your Operating System's (OS) Filing system (Vista, XP, Mac)
The benefits:
1. Stability. Nothing is as stable as the filing system that comes with your Operating System. Why? Every piece of software that runs on your computer is dependent upon this filing system. Use it to your advantage. Please don't fight it. Software will fall apart faster than your operating system does. If your operating system falls disintegrates for some reason (and no OS is immune), your software's filing system will be gone anyway because it depends on the OS to run. (This is why we back our files up.)
2. Ease of use. If you will set up an operating system filing system for your images - a well, thought out filing system - and use it in a disciplined manner, all of the software functions I am going to recommend later on in this series will work better for you.
- If you use online back-up systems, your backup will occur in a manner that allows you to retrieve a single folder, if you accidentally delete it. If a complete restore is required, an organize filing system is easier to retrieve.
- You'll be able to easily manage your DVD back-ups and know where you are in the back-up process, as I am going to demonstrate.
- When you are bringing your images onto your computer, if you have a filing system set up, you know in advance where you want your software (or operating system's import function) to point. If you don't do this, you will end up with a mess. I guarantee you will.
3. Tagging Speed Increases. If you begin with a OS filing system, using software to tag your images is a snap. If you don't file your images, you are forced to browse through folders and tag them one by one - or in small groups. And, as I mentioned, if the software's database falls apart (and they do), your tagging system is lost and you are back to square one. If you ever need to retag your images (if you get a new computer, have to restore your OS, or reinstall software), filing and backing up your files in an orderly manner allows you to get back on track fast.
Note about this: I realize that certain pieces of software saves keyword (tagging) information to the image Metadata. But my experience is that when you move the images from computer to computer, you have to rebuild your database again because the new computer doesn't know what your old tagging/Metadata filing system was. I recently experienced this unhappy situation. Same software... good software... same filing structure... completely blind as a bat as to what I had done before. Without my OS filing system, I would have perished.
Other benefits:
1.Increased speed while browsing your images. It is faster to browse through your Operating System's files than through a software's browsing system. Why? Because a third-party isn't running interference between the OS and you.
That said, there is one piece of software that I retried this week that is now working lightning fast: Picasa3. I will talk Picasa3 more in details later in this series. I am recommending Picasa3 because I am knocked-out by it. The last time I attempted to use this particular software, it was so slow-going and miserable (and featureless), I uninstalled it. I reinstalled it this week as part of an experiment with all of Google's latest features and was truly surprised by the improvements Believe me, when I say that if any software can impress me under the circumstances I work under (trying to manage hundreds of gigs of images located on three hard drives), I can heartily recommend it to you. And better yet... it is free. But I will tell you that your experience with Picasa3 will be drastically improved if you have filed with your OS first and if you disciplined when you name your files. (Picasa3 will help you batch rename them, if you want to do that.)
2. Speedy access when digital scrapbooking. Nothing is faster than dragging and dropping an image from a folder located in the Operating System's filing system into your software. Why? That 3rd-party issue I mentioned before. When you have a piece of software between the image and the software you are going to digitally scrapbook with (say Photoshop or Photoshop Elements - even if it is the actual software itself), you have to go through that software to get to the filing system. (I apologize to our Mac users if this doesn't work for them. The last time I checked, it didn't work.)
However, I just checked... and again... Picasa3 does this action almost as fast as the OS does. Because you can see all of your computer's images in a hurry with Picasa3, I think I'll experiment with this for the next few weeks and see how it goes. I'll report back.
My Personal Photo Filing System
I had MORE problems finding the images I wanted when I insisted on keeping my event photos together. (Where was that photo of the wrought-iron bench? I know I took some photos of streaking lights, but where are they?)
What does all of this have to do with backing up?
It was necessary to attempt to convince you to use your OS filing system so that I can show you the benefits for backing up your files on DVDs.
I used to constantly worry that I was missing something when I backed up my files on DVDs. As a result, I found myself backing up the same files repeatedly. This not wastes materials, it wastes so much time that backing up files to DVDs feels hard... extremely hard. And therefore, it is easy to get seriously behind. And if you are seriously behind, then one of your methods of backing up has been taken out of action.
Here's the simple trick that makes backing to DVDs easy to manage: Inside of your main folders, you will create a file each time you backup. You will name the folder with the main folder name and the backup date. After that, whenever you place images or layouts in that folder, you will dump them into the main folder - until the next DVD backup
Let me show you what I mean. I am going to show you the process I used to back up the folder named, "Andrew". (I am demonstrating this process on my Vista computer.) My new backup file will be named, "Andrew BackedUp 052008".
1. Create the back-up folder.
2. Move the images into the folder.
3. Select the folder, right click on it, and choose the option to send it to the DVD.
4. Name the DVD. Notice I have included the date.
5. The computer is working.
7. Next, I go to my backup file on my computer, select the images and choose Print from the File menu, as demonstrated.
8. I choose Contact sheet from the print option. This is the easiest way to print out the JPGs and I prefer how the Contact sheets look so I use this option whenever I can. I will use Bridge to print the PSD files (my working digital scrapbooking files) because Windows won't show them to me. As you'll see, there are a lot more steps involved.
(Photoshop Elements users: You may be wondering why I haven't taught you to do this in PSE. Frankly, it is because Photoshop Elements filing system frustrates me. I want something fast and bullet proof. I haven't spent enough time in that side of the software to see if I can "beat the system" into submission yet. I'll try to do that in the future and report back to you.)
