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Photo Fanatics and Computer Geniuses, come in! (long)
Background:
I am trying to come up with an efficient way to manage my digital photographs across multiple computers (2 Macs, 1 PC). Right now, my photos are a hot mess. I download my photos to all 3 computers because 1 Mac is my primary computer, 1 Mac is my husband's primary computer, and the PC is the only computer with Photoshop installed. I need to be able to access my photos from each computer for various reasons.
On the Macs, I use iPhoto and like to use the edit function to quickly touch up my pictures. iPhoto keeps the original and saves a copy, which doubles the size of my library. Then, if I want to burn to a disc (to save on my PC or to give a copy of pictures to family/friends), I need to export the pictures, and it creates another copy of the photos on my hard drive. Thus, my photo library instantly triples in size. I also use iPhoto to create slideshows and upload pictures to Facebook.
On the PC, I have all my pictures organized in my Windows directory with folders and subfolders. Sometimes I use Photoshop to edit my pictures or to create projects. If I edit a picture in Photoshop, I will need to save a copy on a thumbdrive or CD to import onto my Macs and use in iPhoto. I also have downloaded software installed on my PC to make scrapbooks/photobooks.
What I need help with:
I would like to be able to access my photos on all three computers easily without having to make multiple copies. I also need to implement some sort of back-up plan for my files. I'm thinking of getting an external hard drive, but I'm still not sure how to set everything up. Ideally, I don't want to have to unplug the hard drive and plug it into whatever computer I decide to use. Do I set-up a network? Should I run one computer as a server? If I use the external HD as the main directory that all my computers point to, do I need to have a second external HD for back-up? Should I continue to use iPhoto, or is there another program that is better/would meet my needs?
Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions you guys may have! After this project, I need to organize my music files!
Re: Photo Fanatics and Computer Geniuses, come in! (long)
I'm kinda having the same issues. The problem with external hard drives is that they need to be formatted for either Mac or PC so you wouldn't be able to use one on both. I decided to not use iPhoto at all because of the way it saves photos to the iPhoto library and is difficult to find on the hard drive. I'm importing all my photos with Bridge now since you can batch rename files when you import.
I'm interested to see what others suggest because I'm frustrated with this, too!
MH has a Mac and sometimes we want to share files, so we do it easily by just sharing it over the network (SMB/CIFS) which is compatible with both Windows and Mac. This option, IMO, is the easiest way to do what you're trying to do...
With the external drive, you do have to take into consideration the file system (FS), especially since you want to share between different operating systems (Mac/Windows). I personally use Windows for all my stuff, so it's not an issue and I use an external drive (well, I use a USB drive dock and I just swap disk drives in and out of it cuz I have several hard drives that I use) but an external USB drive should work just fine if you want to go the external drive route.
Mac reads NTFS (but not edit), and OS X has support for FAT too. Windows uses NTFS or FAT. So just make sure you format the drive to use the appropriate FS. I don't use Macs, so I can't vouch for whether FAT works for sure or not because I always use NTFS on all my Windows machines & drives and I've been able to access them read-only on MH's Mac.
So in the end, I still recommend just sharing your folder through the network. Then you don't have to deal with/worry about the FS. Just have your pictures on whichever computer (Mac or PC) you want and share it out to the other computers. Then you can get another drive (either external or internal will work) to backup the computer that the pictures are on. The programs don't affect anything, so you can continue to use iPhoto on the Mac and Photoshop on the PC (just make sure the network sharing permissions are set correctly so that all computers have permissions to modify the file). GL!
we have a network in our house. MH has it set up to where as soon as photos are uploaded to the server, a copy is instantaneously made so we have an instant backup of all files, including photos.
i like adobe lightroom b/c it saves the original file and then just the data for the editing of each photo...it does not save a 2nd copy of the edited photo. i also like that you can easily view a group of photos side by side and pick your favorites and flag them, color code them, etc. i may be wrong, but i think you can download a free trial from adobe's site???
not sure about the mac vs pc file sharing thing
Jaime & Brent
Oahu, Hawaii | Sept. 9, 2005
My Food Blog - Good Eats 'n Sweet Treats
Hi Jamie! (Wow... it's been a while since I've been on here)
I can answer this question since I just came from a One-to-One session at the Apple store regarding this. I just moved my entire iPhoto library onto an external HD because my photos take up 90GB of HD of my laptop. If you set your Mac to use the external HD as the default, it will not create another copy of your pictures onto your internal HD. (you do this by pressing the "option" button on your keyboard while you click your iPhoto icon. It will then ask you which library you want to use and you can choose the ext HD by clicking on "choose" and then finding your HD) You can then delete your iPhoto Library on your internal HD to free up space if you want to. You can use the iPhoto library on your ext HD just as you normally would. Just make sure that the ext HD is always connected to you computer before you open iPhoto.
*whew* that was long... If you have any more questions re this just let me know...
Hey Jamie! If you have more questions about how to go about using your external HD this way (you have to save your entire iphoto library onto your HD, not just your pictures), you can email me at mnm.6.24.09 (at) gmail (dot) com. I don't know how often I'll still be checking in here.
Good luck!