internet photo storage

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It's very easy to post photos from your hard drive to TF. You choose the files and upload them. Then you click on them to add them to the post.

This is the best way to ensure the images will be available as other sites change things around and make the links that work today, not work tomorrow.

Not sure if there's an easier way, but one way is to click on your ID in the upper right (open in a new tab if you don't want to lose your place.) This opens your profile page. Click "Show All Albums" on the right. From here it's easy to upload and manage your images. Click on one and you get the "BB Code" below it, which you can copy-and-paste right into any post.
 
We export the photo to desktop, give it a name, adjust size to 1200 pixel width, click manage attachments (below post on TF), click choose file, click choose, click upload, then click submit reply to post. Afterwards, drag photo from desktop to trash if you don't think you'll be using it again for a while. We have a mac.

Maybe that's too many steps for you? Seems a small price to pay considering what's happened...
 
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I use Tumblr to share my boating photos and YouTube for videos. They don't cost anything and are pretty simple to use. I store all my photos permanently on local hard drives with automatic daily backups. I would not trust any web-based service with anything I didn't mind losing.
 
Exactly.

Reality of data management security is, don't trust any one device, synchronize and/or backup to multiple places.

Remote backup or media rotation is great in the event complete disaster strikes you primary facility.
 
We export the photo to desktop, give it a name, adjust size to 1200 pixel width, click manage attachments (below post on TF), click choose file, click choose, click upload, then click submit reply to post. Afterwards, drag photo from desktop to trash if you don't think you'll be using it again for a while. We have a mac.

Maybe that's too many steps for you? Seems a small price to pay considering what's happened...

yes ... too much ...we're not worth the effort.
 
It's very easy to post photos from your hard drive to TF. You choose the files and upload them. Then you click on them to add them to the post.

not. at least for me.
 
I use Tumblr to share my boating photos and YouTube for videos. They don't cost anything and are pretty simple to use. I store all my photos permanently on local hard drives with automatic daily backups. I would not trust any web-based service with anything I didn't mind losing.

Something to consider.
 
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Postimage or Google photos or one drive

Postimage and one drive lets you post pics on forums easily
 
TF won't even allow the reposting of photobucket photos in previous posts. Obviously, photobucket has claimed total ownership of my photographs. (Not unlike other sites.) They are claiming exclusive rights, and I'm, the creator, treated as a third party.

Why is TF a party to this?

This is something entirely beyond our control. When photobucket changed up their display scheme, we took action to prohibit further use of Photobucket links on the site and converted the 1000's of ransom notes that had been posted in threads here (photobucket) changed them out for the existing hotlinked images). We posted about that at the time: http://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/s22/photobucket-images-not-forum-use-32988.html

Photobuckets change effectively gutted threads that members had put up, of all images. A huge loss, imo especially on how to threads. The second effect was that the demand notice that was set in place of the image caused some folks to actually pay the fees. The notice was misleading and intended for the person who had hosted the image, but instead others also paid in order to view photos. Once they paid, they still could not see the pics. Theft, in my opinion.

To help members out, we increased storage limits here and you can load pics to threads or store them in albums. Alternatively you can find another hosting site, there are many out there.

We know this is all a hassle for past PB users, but we had nothing to do with their decisions. The take home lesson here is that if you have a lot of pics - you should probably be keeping local backups. :flowers:
 
P.B. has screwed up several other forums. I see lots of their mess on several other forums.

It's not just T.F.
 
I use Tumblr to share my boating photos and YouTube for videos. They don't cost anything and are pretty simple to use. I store all my photos permanently on local hard drives with automatic daily backups. I would not trust any web-based service with anything I didn't mind losing.

I've been burned. Don't trust any photo site which can/will later claim control of one's photos. Further, it's too much trouble to go over the thousands of photos on camera memory cards to select the hundreds applicable to boats which you might enjoy. And that's not counting of digital photos of printed photographs. :banghead::banghead::banghead::banghead:
 
...it's too much trouble to go over the thousands of photos on camera memory cards to select the hundreds applicable to boats which you might enjoy. And that's not counting of digital photos of printed photographs.

I see this as one of the largest unrecognized problems of the age we live in.

After a digital photo is taken, then what? A few may live for a couple of days on Facebook, or flit by on Instagram. But after that, they're totally lost to history. No-one ever goes back to look at them.

Some of the social media and cloud storage sites now send you "what you were doing last year" links, but beyond that, they're all as good as gone, never to be seen again.

Some people have a system to organize them on a computer, and make backups. I try, but it's an ongoing effort. If you get behind, it's very hard to catch up.

Cloud storage sites and operating systems try to make the job easier by sorting them by date, and performing face recognition, which is certainly better than a jumble of random file names starting with "IMG" or "DSC."

But in the end, what do you do when you want to find that picture of your genset control box you took when you were in Port Someplace? That great sunset with the catamaran and seagull in the foreground? That time your cousin went out fishing with you and caught the big one?

One of the handiest tools I've found is a program called "Advanced Renamer." It lets you highlight a list of files and edit the name. For example, keep the date/time stamp that your camera puts in the file name, but replace the rest of the letters with something meaningful like the place you took the picture. That, along with a halfway meaningful folder structure, is about all I have energy for.

Given enough time, I could go through and "tag" each photo with keywords for future searching. But that's not likely to happen. I'm also reluctant to let cloud storage sites do face recognition and store even more information about me and everyone I know than they already have.
 
I've been using Adobe Lightroom for years and really like it. You can categorize and tag in many different ways, pick out pictures that meet some criteria, and rename all pictures in some uniform way.

One thing to watch out for with tagging and other info is to understand where that extra info gets stored. Many programs store the info in a so-called side-car file which is a separate file in some proprietary format. If you lose that file, or want to use a different program to sort your photos, all teh extra data is lost.

The preferred way to do it, at least in my opinion, is to embed the extra info directly in the photo file. That way the picture carries the info with it forever.

I accumulate about 3000 photos per year like this, and have found it very effective. And it's all stored locally so I can access it without an internet connection, backed up, and I have not granted unlimited rights to all my photos to some cloud fart, or anti-social company.
 
I see this as one of the largest unrecognized problems of the age we live in.

After a digital photo is taken, then what? A few may live for a couple of days on Facebook, or flit by on Instagram. But after that, they're totally lost to history. No-one ever goes back to look at them.

Some of the social media and cloud storage sites now send you "what you were doing last year" links, but beyond that, they're all as good as gone, never to be seen again.

Some people have a system to organize them on a computer, and make backups. I try, but it's an ongoing effort. If you get behind, it's very hard to catch up.

Cloud storage sites and operating systems try to make the job easier by sorting them by date, and performing face recognition, which is certainly better than a jumble of random file names starting with "IMG" or "DSC."

But in the end, what do you do when you want to find that picture of your genset control box you took when you were in Port Someplace? That great sunset with the catamaran and seagull in the foreground? That time your cousin went out fishing with you and caught the big one?

One of the handiest tools I've found is a program called "Advanced Renamer." It lets you highlight a list of files and edit the name. For example, keep the date/time stamp that your camera puts in the file name, but replace the rest of the letters with something meaningful like the place you took the picture. That, along with a halfway meaningful folder structure, is about all I have energy for.

Given enough time, I could go through and "tag" each photo with keywords for future searching. But that's not likely to happen. I'm also reluctant to let cloud storage sites do face recognition and store even more information about me and everyone I know than they already have.

We have started this process recently. Filenames and folders going OK, albeit slow.
I came across this - https://sourceforge.net/projects/fastphototagger - downloaded it, but haven't tried it out yet. Multi, pulldowns, and abbreviations look like good features. Anybody use it?
Will update post after trying it out.....
 
Regardless of the tool used, just a little forethought. Intelligent naming and using of folders. If they aren't worth the trouble of organizing and aren't worth the trouble of recovery to someone, then seems like they aren't worth all the complaining when a free site starts charging. I think many viable solutions have been offered in this thread.
 
We're going to go with Lightroom as well.

Having one foot firmly planted in the past century (past couple centuries if I do go with platinum/palladium contact printing) a photograph doesn't really exist until it's something you can hold in your hands.

Going back to what Ansel Adams said, about a negative being the score and a print is being the performance, even a digital image doesn't really exist until all the post processing "tweaks to heroics" have been done to the original file and it's turned into something solid you can hold in your hands.

Ones and zero's just don't cut it. Those files could eventually succumb to bit rot, maybe todays technologies will be tomorrows eight track, or after we're gone and nobody is doing regular backups the hard drives will eventually just quit. Meanwhile, my 4X5 B&W negatives will happily live in a box in somebodies future closet for centuries.

Our plan after Christmas is to first acquire a storage device (leaning towards the Synology DS718+...expandable with hot swappable drives so one can be stored at the bank) then get Photoshop with Lightroom plus a luminosity mask panel, then get an Epson P800 printer. By then my new traditional darkroom / platinum palladium coating and ultraviolet light contact printing room should be finished.

Ultimately, the platinum/palladium prints will be printed as limited editions of 10 to 15, and will last around 1,000 years or more if stored and displayed properly. Some of my wife's colour wildlife photo's and my colour scenery stuff will be printed and should last about 300 years before the colours start shifting. As for family and boating snapshots, we plan on using one of the many websites to make a hard cover book once a year to do what the old photo albums of the past did.
 
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We show our best photos on a digital picture frame and on our kitchen tv. Brings back wonderful memories each day.
 
CapTom wrote;
“Some people have a system to organize them on a computer, and make backups. I try, but it's an ongoing effort. If you get behind, it's very hard to catch up.”

Agree.
I have about 3000 6 meg pics and 2000 1.5 meg pics on my 27”i-mac stand alone. Sometimes I give up looking for specific pics. And I’m way behind. It’s winter and I should be hot on the job.
This is the first I’ve heard of a special site to store pics.
 
But in the end, what do you do when you want to find that picture of your genset control box you took when you were in Port Someplace? That great sunset with the catamaran and seagull in the foreground? .

I can usually find the picture (out of 12,000+) I'm looking for in a few minutes using The Albums I've set up in Fotki (mentioned earlier). Haven't lost an image in 16 years using this service..

An example of their album layout:

https://public.fotki.com/ttschwing/
 
Google photos has a search function that works surprisingly well. AI identifies people with scary precision. I just searched for "engine", "sparkplug", "biscotti", "tugboat", "standard poodle", "ski lift", and "kayak" successfully. I file less and less. Just search.

I have a pixel phone, so I have unlimited storage.

Worth a try if you haven't already.
 
We use iMac and other Apple products at home- not to get into that PC vs Apple debate, being in a technical field i also use PC products at the office.
Anyway, i like this approach: 99% of our photos come from our smartphones. i'm not too keen on trusting cloud services, so we periodically sync our phones to the iMac at home. Syncing automatically places photos in iPhoto and organizes them by year and date.
In addition, we have a Terabyte external backup drive that always runs in the background. a 1 TB external drive these days only costs about $40. Eventually i'll get a 2nd external drive, then i will swap them maybe twice a year and always keep one in a firesafe. This is cheap, somewhat organized, and easy.
As for posting photos here, i always just attach them directly from my computer.

Also if you think about those poor folks in the fires of California: imagine a sudden disaster like that at your house and you have to get out really fast but want to save data: this little external hard drive is about the size of a cigar pack, you just grab it from under the computer and run out the door.... ;)
 
Rotation of backup media offsite is a must.

Think theft.

Disasters can strike when you aren't there too.

And possibly needing to risk your life to grab stuff? In the end it's all just stuff.
 
Rotation of backup media offsite is a must.

Think theft.

Disasters can strike when you aren't there too.

And possibly needing to risk your life to grab stuff? In the end it's all just stuff.

Theft happens in the cloud too... and as i said; one of the backups will be in a firesafe so don't necessarily have to grab anything. this was just the scenario where they say "Hey if your house is on fire and you only have time to grab one object, what would it be...?"

However I agree it is just stuff... sometimes i think we work so hard to gather a photo history of our lives, yet not sure how much the kids and following generations will use or value them....
 
However I agree it is just stuff... sometimes i think we work so hard to gather a photo history of our lives, yet not sure how much the kids and following generations will use or value them....

Wifey B: We have developed quite a written history but not big on photos. I know many photographers love taking photos and say it enhances their enjoyment of what they're looking at. On the other hand I see some for whom photography is like work, like a job to them, and they obsess so much over the photos I wonder if they're diminishing their enjoyment of what is there. :)
 
Theft happens in the cloud too... and as i said; one of the backups will be in a firesafe so don't necessarily have to grab anything. this was just the scenario where they say "Hey if your house is on fire and you only have time to grab one object, what would it be...?"

However I agree it is just stuff... sometimes i think we work so hard to gather a photo history of our lives, yet not sure how much the kids and following generations will use or value them....
1. I have never relied on cloud anything for anything except ephermal sharing, or third-tier backups, encrypted locally before uploading.

2. Fire safe means little in the context of data security

3. By theft risk I mean all your hardware at a given location disappearing, similar to a major earthquake, firestorm, meteor strike, etc

4. By off-site rotation I mean of physical media, and far enough distance to be protected from most instances of the above
 
And a proper backup strategy must also protect against user error, virus etc accidental deletions or corruption of lots of important stuff, perhaps unnoticed for months or years.
 
...As for family and boating snapshots, we plan on using one of the many websites to make a hard cover book once a year to do what the old photo albums of the past did.

Those little coffee-table books are a great way to memorialize an event or trip. And they're cheaper than it used to be to develop a few rolls of film. I've done a few of them now. I like the idea of doing one per year with a sampling of cruising pics from that season.

Wifey B: I know many photographers love taking photos and say it enhances their enjoyment of what they're looking at. On the other hand I see some for whom photography is like work, like a job to them, and they obsess so much over the photos I wonder if they're diminishing their enjoyment of what is there. :)

I was at that point - spending so much time "working" at getting the photos that I wasn't enjoying the trip. Now I try to mix it up. Sometimes I know there's a great photo, but I don't want to spoil the moment (or my memories) by taking it. Other times it's enjoyable to try to get the shot.
 
I was at that point - spending so much time "working" at getting the photos that I wasn't enjoying the trip. Now I try to mix it up. Sometimes I know there's a great photo, but I don't want to spoil the moment (or my memories) by taking it. Other times it's enjoyable to try to get the shot.

This was back in the days of film cameras, I didn't really enjoy the vacation, too busy taking pictures, until we got home and developed the film and got to look at the pictures. My solution was to buy the wife a camera and let her take pictures while I finally got to enjoy the view.
 
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