Pages: 1 2 [3] 4   Go Down

Author Topic: The Lightroom Catalogue  (Read 17267 times)

Alan Goldhammer

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4344
    • A Goldhammer Photography
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #40 on: April 08, 2010, 09:05:42 am »

Quote from: Mark D Segal
Alan, did you migrate between operating systems (i.e. PC to Mac) or within the same family when you up-graded to a new computer?
Stayed on a PC.  I did however do a Vista to Win7 upgrade and had no problems with that either.  As I noted the only thing that is a hassle is migrating all the presets as they tend to be in different file locations.  the only one that I overlooked was the import preset that I had in the library module.
Logged

larsrc

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 173
    • http://
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #41 on: April 12, 2010, 09:01:11 am »

Quote from: John R Smith
Ken

Yes, this has been bothering quite a bit, actually. As you say, if a CD fails, I am stuffed (although there are two copies of each picture, one TIFF and one RAW, on separate CDs). I did a bit of destruction testing on a CD-R (boiling, freezing, exposure to direct sunlight) and it was still readable, so I was hoping for the best, really. The other idea I was thinking of was making more safety copies on SD cards, but I don't know anything about their archival properties either.

John

I would strongly suggest having backups somewhere on some other medium: Hard disks, online, DVD. CDs deteriorate over time, generally in much less time than advertised. At the very least do some regular spot checking on the oldest ones of each make of CD. Some makes of CDs tend to last for a while then start failing quickly, so if you don't notice it early, you have a risk of losing both copies.

I worked in digital archiving for a while, and CD longevity is somewhat of a horror story.

-Lars
Logged

Mark D Segal

  • Contributor
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 12512
    • http://www.markdsegal.com
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #42 on: April 12, 2010, 09:15:30 am »

Quote from: larsrc
I would strongly suggest having backups somewhere on some other medium: Hard disks, online, DVD. CDs deteriorate over time, generally in much less time than advertised. At the very least do some regular spot checking on the oldest ones of each make of CD. Some makes of CDs tend to last for a while then start failing quickly, so if you don't notice it early, you have a risk of losing both copies.

I worked in digital archiving for a while, and CD longevity is somewhat of a horror story.

-Lars

And compounded on this, I've heard, right or wrong I don't know - that most brands of DVD writeables have greater deterioration risk than do CD writeables. I keep anything important on two external hard drives or one non-system internal and one external. That way, the risk is limited to *simultaneous* failure or theft/damage. Safer yet would be yet a third back-up outside the premiises with an external service.
Logged
Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

John R Smith

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1357
  • Still crazy, after all these years
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #43 on: April 12, 2010, 09:50:32 am »

Quote from: Mark D Segal
And compounded on this, I've heard, right or wrong I don't know - that most brands of DVD writeables have greater deterioration risk than do CD writeables. I keep anything important on two external hard drives or one non-system internal and one external. That way, the risk is limited to *simultaneous* failure or theft/damage. Safer yet would be yet a third back-up outside the premiises with an external service.

Of course you chaps are absolutely correct. In fact I do also back up to an external HD (although I don't trust them too much, either). The idea of the A4 binders organised into "films" with the contacts, shooting data and CDs is an attempt to tackle the problem of how I pass the archive on. A lot of the photographic work I do (although none of it is for profit) has a certain historical value. For example, one of the subjects I have spent many years documenting is Cornish parish churches, both external shots (including tombs and graves) and internal (fonts, arcades, windows and so forth). I also have quite a nice series of non-conformist chapels (I might attach an example here). Now, while none of them are great works of art, once I am gone others might well find them of interest for use as illustrations for books or articles in journals. So I have bequeathed my photographic collection to our Museum here in Truro, where it would join an already very extensive archive of Cornish subjects going back 150 years and comprising many thousands of pictures.

OK, so they might take one look and chuck my lot in the skip around the back, but if they do decide to keep them then I do know a bit about our local curators. They are not IT savvy. My negatives would be no problem, they know how to deal with those, but for the digital files I feel they might just possibly be able to cope with a CD with some TIFFs on. Especially if they are catalogued in the way I have described.

Well, that's the fond hope, anyhow.

John
Logged
Hasselblad 500 C/M, SWC and CFV-39 DB
an

Mark D Segal

  • Contributor
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 12512
    • http://www.markdsegal.com
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #44 on: April 12, 2010, 09:58:16 am »

John, these are very well-done photographs. I appreciate your control over tonality. If they are intended to have historic value and usefulness, as well they may, all the more reason to get them onto hard drives ASAP and teach those folks how to plug a hard-drive into a USB port and migrate to the images. As you and I know, it's no more difficult than inserting a CD into a tray.
Logged
Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

John R Smith

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1357
  • Still crazy, after all these years
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #45 on: April 15, 2010, 06:02:03 am »

Quote from: Mark D Segal
. . . all the more reason to get them onto hard drives ASAP and teach those folks how to plug a hard-drive into a USB port and migrate to the images. As you and I know, it's no more difficult than inserting a CD into a tray.

Indeed, you are absolutely correct. However, my thought is whether a USB hard-drive which had been kept in a cupboard for fifteen or twenty years (which is the way a museum would likely deal with it) would have any better chance of being readable if you were to pull it out, plug it in and hope for the best in 2030, say. Glad you liked the photos, by the way.

I'm not at all sure if this is an appropriate place to post this, but as we are talking about archiving . . . I took the opportunity here at work yesterday to check through our CDR archive (which is not a primary one but a sort of belt-and-braces security which is stored in a fire-proof safe). We started with this in 1997 (but gave up on it in 2005 when we got corporate securities), so it might be of some interest. The data is a mix of photos, scans, data sets and documents. It's a pretty small sample, too.

Anyhow, here are the results:

Total CDRs checked: 26

The oldest: 1997 (a 13 year old Sony) checked OK

Ten years old or more: 14 (1999-2000). 12 checked OK, two failed (both stationary suppliers own-brand CDRs). The 12 readable CDs were all Verbatim.

Five to Nine years old: 11 (2001-2005). All 11 checked OK, a mix of Verbatim, Sony, and one Maxell.

So from the 26 checked spanning a period from 1997 to 2005 two failed, but both were no-name CDs from a stationary supplier. All the quality branded CDs were readable and a random selection of files was loaded from each one without problem. So the implication of that seems to be that top-branded CDRs are probably good for ten years at least in reasonable storage conditions. Avoid cheap no-name or store's own brands like the plague.

John
« Last Edit: April 15, 2010, 06:08:48 am by John R Smith »
Logged
Hasselblad 500 C/M, SWC and CFV-39 DB
an

Mark D Segal

  • Contributor
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 12512
    • http://www.markdsegal.com
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #46 on: April 15, 2010, 06:53:55 am »

John - very interesting results and to be expected. Good quality CDs do have some staying power. But the question you ask about whether hard drives will be useable in 2030 could be asked in spades about CDs too, not only in respect of deterioration, but also the long-term future availability of CD readers. I'd be yet more cautious about writeable-DVD storage.
Logged
Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

JeffKohn

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1668
    • http://jeffk-photo.typepad.com
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #47 on: April 15, 2010, 02:58:41 pm »

I think cloud storage will be the way to go in the long run, once storage prices get a little lower. Even now I think it's affordable enough for your most important images.
Logged
Jeff Kohn
[url=http://ww

john beardsworth

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4755
    • My photography site
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #48 on: April 15, 2010, 03:06:55 pm »

Quote from: JeffKohn
I think cloud storage will be the way to go in the long run, once storage prices get a little lower. Even now I think it's affordable enough for your most important images.
Perhaps. But upload speeds as well as cost mean it's still some way away for more than a few images. Even then, remember when Digital Railroad collapsed and the problems some people had retrieving their work? Trust a vendor in the cloud?

John
Logged

Richowens

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 977
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #49 on: April 15, 2010, 03:31:10 pm »

As of this morning Newegg has 1 Terrabyte internal drves for $80, that's 8cents per gig. You can buy a 1 Terrabte external for about $100.

 At those prices my DVD/CD burner is gathering dust and cobwebs.
Logged

Andrew Fee

  • Jr. Member
  • **
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 87
    • http://
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #50 on: April 16, 2010, 01:28:00 pm »

I realise the discussion here seems to have moved on to backup solutions rather than your cataloguing system, but if I am understanding things correctly, it seems like it would be trivial to use Lightroom for file management and keep the same system, especially with the low number of images you take.
  • Create an 'import' directory on your drive and have Lightroom download all images to this folder when you plug in your card.
  • Add a 'catalogue' folder to your folder list in the library.
  • Using the [P] or [X] keys on the keyboard, mark images as picks or rejects. Rejects can be deleted or removed from your library by hitting [control] + [backspace] (command + backspace if you are on a Mac)
    Note: if you simply remove them from the catalogue, the files will still be in the 'import' folder on your hard drive.
  • Select 12 images, right click the catalogue folder and create a subfolder. This will move the images from your import folder to its final location.  Alternatively, you can simply drag the images to a pre-existing folder.
This does not seem any more complex than what you are already doing, except you are doing everything inside Lightroom which means it can keep track of everything.
 
This would also allow you to take advantage of things like keywording and collections if you wish, which should let you find specific images inside your catalogue much quicker.
Logged

larsrc

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 173
    • http://
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #51 on: April 20, 2010, 10:13:48 am »

Quote from: John R Smith
Indeed, you are absolutely correct. However, my thought is whether a USB hard-drive which had been kept in a cupboard for fifteen or twenty years (which is the way a museum would likely deal with it) would have any better chance of being readable if you were to pull it out, plug it in and hope for the best in 2030, say. Glad you liked the photos, by the way.

I'm not at all sure if this is an appropriate place to post this, but as we are talking about archiving . . . I took the opportunity here at work yesterday to check through our CDR archive (which is not a primary one but a sort of belt-and-braces security which is stored in a fire-proof safe). We started with this in 1997 (but gave up on it in 2005 when we got corporate securities), so it might be of some interest. The data is a mix of photos, scans, data sets and documents. It's a pretty small sample, too.

Anyhow, here are the results:

Total CDRs checked: 26

The oldest: 1997 (a 13 year old Sony) checked OK

Ten years old or more: 14 (1999-2000). 12 checked OK, two failed (both stationary suppliers own-brand CDRs). The 12 readable CDs were all Verbatim.

Five to Nine years old: 11 (2001-2005). All 11 checked OK, a mix of Verbatim, Sony, and one Maxell.

So from the 26 checked spanning a period from 1997 to 2005 two failed, but both were no-name CDs from a stationary supplier. All the quality branded CDs were readable and a random selection of files was loaded from each one without problem. So the implication of that seems to be that top-branded CDRs are probably good for ten years at least in reasonable storage conditions. Avoid cheap no-name or store's own brands like the plague.

John

Thanks for checking. Not too surprising on the no-names, truly. What did you use to check the CDs? Most CD errors won't show up until you actually try to read a file. If I had CDs as backups, I would keep a file with the MD5 sums 1) on the CD itself, and 2) on my main computer, and (if really paranoid) 3) on paper. You're lucky that you have two sets of CDs, so you could, if you wanted to, compare MD5s of them.

Are these 26 all your CDs?

I would say a USB harddrive that has been stashed away would be extremely unlikely to suffer mechanical defects; the only problem that's even remotely likely would be that USB has fallen out of favor. Given its prevalence in all manner of things, that's not a big risk. It would be just as likely that CDs fall out of favor.

A lot of useful information is available at http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.05/docs/CD...ndlingGuide.pdf except what I was looking for: actual recent case studies of longevity of CDs. See also http://www.informationweek.com/story/showA...0263&pgno=1

-Lars
Logged

John R Smith

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1357
  • Still crazy, after all these years
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #52 on: April 20, 2010, 04:57:06 pm »

Lars

Thanks for the useful links. I did not check the CDs terribly carefully, I just read up several files at random from each disk. None of the data is important now, it is all stored elsewhere. We have literally dozens of other CDs all over the office, but I was trying to check the oldest ones I have.

Actually, I am really surprised and not a little perplexed that while colleagues here on this forum agonise at great length over the archival properties of their prints, hardly anyone seems terribly concerned over the longevity of their primary data. It seems to be a general assumption that they will migrate the data as required from media to media and platform to platform, which is all very fine as long as one is alive and compos mentis enough to do it. But a very common situation is that the photographer becomes old and infirm, he or she goes into a care home, and the surviving relatives have no interest in that old pile of negatives in the corner which gathers dust until the house is eventually cleared some years later. Now in the case of negatives, there is the chance that someone will look through them and realise what they are, give them to a museum or other interested body and they will still be printable. But if instead of negatives it is an old dust-covered PC in the corner, the likelihood is that it will simply go in a skip, because nobody will see the value of it, or bother to turn it on.

Here in Cornwall neither our county museum nor the record office will accept digital media for deposition into their archives. And until the IT industry comes up with a truly archival media which can be stored on a shelf for at least 50 years and be guaranteed readable that will probably remain the case.

John
Logged
Hasselblad 500 C/M, SWC and CFV-39 DB
an

Mark D Segal

  • Contributor
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 12512
    • http://www.markdsegal.com
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #53 on: April 20, 2010, 05:45:23 pm »

Quote from: John R Smith
Here in Cornwall neither our county museum nor the record office will accept digital media for deposition into their archives. And until the IT industry comes up with a truly archival media which can be stored on a shelf for at least 50 years and be guaranteed readable that will probably remain the case.

John

Well, they have their heads in the sand (any sand out there?) and you can tell them I said so    - no seriously, the IT industry is unlikely to guarantee whether anything it comes up with can be stored and retrieved after five decades, but you can bet your bottom dollar anything worth archiving will be on digital media, so if these museums will just have to get with it and adapt - the world isn't revolving around those kind of bureaucrats.
Logged
Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

Jeremy Payne

  • Guest
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #54 on: April 20, 2010, 06:50:40 pm »

Quote from: John R Smith
And until the IT industry comes up with a truly archival media which can be stored on a shelf for at least 50 years and be guaranteed readable that will probably remain the case.

That's really the wrong way to look at it since you can always make multiple perfect copies.

You just need different policies and procedures ... ie treating digital data like a "thing" to be put on a shelf is just silly and misses the point.
Logged

John R Smith

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1357
  • Still crazy, after all these years
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #55 on: April 21, 2010, 03:49:39 am »

Hmm. Well it's not really that the Museum, at any rate, has its head in the sand. The sad fact is that they are always short of cash, chronically short-staffed, and have very little IT expertise. If you give them a book, they can catalogue it, put it on a shelf in the stacks of the Courtenay Library, and the job is done. What are they supposed to do with your 1.5 TB hard drive? How is a member of the public going to look at it?

John
Logged
Hasselblad 500 C/M, SWC and CFV-39 DB
an

Mark D Segal

  • Contributor
  • Sr. Member
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 12512
    • http://www.markdsegal.com
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #56 on: April 21, 2010, 08:26:03 am »

Quote from: John R Smith
Hmm. Well it's not really that the Museum, at any rate, has its head in the sand. The sad fact is that they are always short of cash, chronically short-staffed, and have very little IT expertise. If you give them a book, they can catalogue it, put it on a shelf in the stacks of the Courtenay Library, and the job is done. What are they supposed to do with your 1.5 TB hard drive? How is a member of the public going to look at it?

John

A general question about how one brings institutions into the 21st century. Of course it does take budget and other resources, but at some point they and their supporters will need to come to terms with modernization or they will be increasingly left behind. That of course doesn't solve your immediate problem.
Logged
Mark D Segal (formerly MarkDS)
Author: "Scanning Workflows with SilverFast 8....."

JeffKohn

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1668
    • http://jeffk-photo.typepad.com
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #57 on: April 21, 2010, 02:31:58 pm »

Quote from: johnbeardy
Perhaps. But upload speeds as well as cost mean it's still some way away for more than a few images.
For entire catalogs/libraries I agree. But give it a few years and that will likely change. Even now, I think cloud storage is feasible for a smaller portfolio of your most important, finished work.

Quote
Even then, remember when Digital Railroad collapsed and the problems some people had retrieving their work? Trust a vendor in the cloud?
I don't know anything about Digital Railroad, but redundancy and location transparency are inherent principles of true cloud storage. I'm not saying I would want my _only_ copy of a file stored in a single vendor's cloud; multiple backups on different media types still make sense for important data. Having said that, I would certainly trust Amazon's or MS's cloud to be more reliable than a hard drive or optical media stored in my closet (or even in an off-site closet).
Logged
Jeff Kohn
[url=http://ww

John R Smith

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1357
  • Still crazy, after all these years
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #58 on: April 22, 2010, 03:27:12 am »

Something which looks quite interesting would be the SSD drives, using flash memory. They have no moving parts, need no power supply, and if written to just once for archival purposes theoretically should be just what we need. However, I can find no information regarding their temporal lifespan. Does anyone have information or experience with SSD?

John
Logged
Hasselblad 500 C/M, SWC and CFV-39 DB
an

JRSmit

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 922
    • Jan R. Smit Fine Art Printing Specialist
The Lightroom Catalogue
« Reply #59 on: April 22, 2010, 08:38:38 am »

Quote from: John R Smith
Something which looks quite interesting would be the SSD drives, using flash memory. They have no moving parts, need no power supply, and if written to just once for archival purposes theoretically should be just what we need. However, I can find no information regarding their temporal lifespan. Does anyone have information or experience with SSD?

John
John,

check www.macperformanceguide.com from Lloyd Chambers, although focused on Mac, it should give you an inroad into SSD's.


Logged
Fine art photography: janrsmit.com
Fine Art Printing Specialist: www.fineartprintingspecialist.nl


Jan R. Smit
Pages: 1 2 [3] 4   Go Up