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Ask HN: How do you store photos and videos?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you store photos and videos?

#91

Post by mark212 »

I’ve used Dropbox for several years for sharing files and such and found it also works great for photos. Pictures and videos from my devices (almost all from the iPhone, an excellent camera) are automatically uploaded to the Camera Uploads folder. Every couple of months I drag them over to a folder for the year, which I store inside a master Photos folder.

Only the current and maybe one more yearly folders are synced to my laptops, saves a ton of space. (Investigate selective sync on Dropbox)

I do have a gigantic hard drive on my desktop at home that has everything so I have one local copy of everything.

I also use Arq to periodically upload an encrypted version of the Photos folder from this desktop up to One Drive, since I get 1 TB free with my Office 365 subscription. Just for an emergency backup.

Hope this helps.

Re: Ask HN: How do you store photos and videos?

#92

Post by mark212 »

rdiddly wrote: post #77

I guess you probably don't want to hear "Take fewer photos, keep them on a HDD with a USB backup, and always be too busy doing awesome shit to look back at them?" That's far too ridiculous to be good advice. My entire life so far fits in 30GB of photos & videos. I rarely look at them. Life's too short. Everybody holding up a phone for the entire duration of the concert I'm trying to actually watch would probably beg…

Wait until you have kids. Those stupid videos get watched over and over, at least in my house. By the parents, to be clear. Gotta father that blackmail material for when they turn into teenagers.

Re: Ask HN: How do you store photos and videos?

#93

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

VladimirGolovin wrote: post #8

Unfortunately, Google Photos. It's very convenient, but there's this background fear that if my account gets unexpectedly closed, as it happens with Google, there would be no way to recover my photos. I try to download the Photos data regularly via their takeout tool, but the process is cumbersome. I wish there was an automated way of doing that. I'd even pay for that. I moved from Gmail to Fastmail, but I still have…

I use googlephotos, but I never delete the original file. Every few months I usually transfer all those files to my computer and sort by year-month/event. It's not automated but it works and clears my phone cache

Re: Ask HN: How do you store photos and videos?

#94

Post by ptoomey3 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #88
ptoomey3 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I voted for google photos in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18770681 , I will say that apple photos is nice if you have zero need to share a library with family members. For better or worse, apple Unlike third-party uploaders, Apple photos can “cheat” and upload no matter what. That by itself makes it the most reliable for Apple ecosystem folks. That said, I’ve not had any issues in recent history with th…

When you share more than 2-3 photos at once with others who have iPhones, they get an icloud link where they can not only view the photos, but one-click add them to their own photo library. Have had zero problems keeping my library consistent with my partner's, or sharing lots of family photos at once with other close family who have iPhones.

Manually sharing works ok for super casual use, but it is way too much work when you take pictures daily. Plus, you would need to share photos both directions. And, even if you do all that, which photo library is the “source of truth”? Also, it is my understanding that photos shared through apple’s photo sharing system are not original photos or videos (they are shared at a lower resolution).

Re: Ask HN: How do you store photos and videos?

#95

Post by ptoomey3 »

ptoomey3 wrote: post #94
toomuchtodo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you share more than 2-3 photos at once with others who have iPhones, they get an icloud link where they can not only view the photos, but one-click add them to their own photo library. Have had zero problems keeping my library consistent with my partner's, or sharing lots of family photos at once with other close family who have iPhones.

Manually sharing works ok for super casual use, but it is way too much work when you take pictures daily. Plus, you would need to share photos both directions. And, even if you do all that, which photo library is the “source of truth”? Also, it is my understanding that photos shared through apple’s photo sharing system are not original photos or videos (they are shared at a lower resolution).

I just tried out the shared album thing. I shared a photo whose original size is 3.4MB. The photo you get when you download it from the shared album on iCloud is 925KB. And, I'm pretty sure there is no checkbox you can check to prevent that ‍️. I love lots about the apple ecosystem, but their photo management/sharing system is not one of them. It boggles my mind, as lots of Apple engineers have families. But, despite that, they don't have any system for seamlessly sharing photos (or entire libraries) with family members.

Re: Ask HN: How do you store photos and videos?

#96

Post by ptoomey3 »

subpixel wrote: post #89
ptoomey3 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want them, let me know and I can drop my hazel rules somewhere. They aren’t wildly complex, but it can be slightly confusing if you’ve never used hazel before. Once you see the rules it‘s super obvious what’s going on.

yes please! maybe a gist?

Here is a quick repo that has all the directions and hazel rules. I only spent all of 5 minutes pulling it together, so feel free to open an issue if you run into any problems.

https://github.com/ptoomey3/family-photo-library/blob/master...

Re: Ask HN: How do you store photos and videos?

#97

Post by TheGrumpyBrit »

srcmap wrote: post #62
ptoomey3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This! I’ve tried every option under the sun at least twice and google photos wins. My current system has been this for the past 2 years or so: 1. Create a family gmail account (ex. house-yourlastname@gmail.com) 2. Install Google Photos on the both you and your spouse’s phone and set the automatic photo upload to upload to the house-yourlastname@gmail.com account. 3. Create a new account on your local home server (ex.…

Any limited to amount of photos/videos you can put into the account with this method? I have 2 TB+ mainly of kids/family photo/videos for ~15 years. Right now, it is on a 4TB HDD with backup. Looks for good sharing solutions.

Google Drive is unlimited on GSuite. I pay about £6 a month, well worth it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you store photos and videos?

#98

Post by toomuchtodo »

ptoomey3 wrote: post #95
ptoomey3 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manually sharing works ok for super casual use, but it is way too much work when you take pictures daily. Plus, you would need to share photos both directions. And, even if you do all that, which photo library is the “source of truth”? Also, it is my understanding that photos shared through apple’s photo sharing system are not original photos or videos (they are shared at a lower resolution).

I just tried out the shared album thing. I shared a photo whose original size is 3.4MB. The photo you get when you download it from the shared album on iCloud is 925KB. And, I'm pretty sure there is no checkbox you can check to prevent that ‍️. I love lots about the apple ecosystem, but their photo management/sharing system is not one of them. It boggles my mind, as lots of Apple engineers have families. But, despite…

I agree it's not perfect, but for myself and my family (we all have iPhones, and if you don't have an iPhone in our family, I will happily provide a refurbished one to you) it is superior to all other photo management options out there (Google might shut down Photos one day, Facebook needs no explanation, Smugmug/Flickr UX is woefully inadequate for family photo library management).

One day I hope Apple improves delta/library reconciliation, but for now, it's the best I've been able to find. It Just Works (for the most part).

Re: Ask HN: How do you store photos and videos?

#99

Post by amerkhalid »

I just started using Lightroom CC with 1TB. It is a bit expensive when compared with 2TB of storage with Google and Apple.

But I like that it works across multiple ecosystems, Windows, MacOS, iOS, and Android (with bugs). And I wanted to use Adobe Portfolio for sharing some photos.

It meets your requirements for 1, 2, and 4.

Personally, I keep full resolution photos on external drive, and rsync those photos to NAS. Just in case there is bug in Lightroom and it deletes wrong photos or videos.

Re: Ask HN: How do you store photos and videos?

#100

Post by ptoomey3 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #98
ptoomey3 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just tried out the shared album thing. I shared a photo whose original size is 3.4MB. The photo you get when you download it from the shared album on iCloud is 925KB. And, I'm pretty sure there is no checkbox you can check to prevent that ‍️. I love lots about the apple ecosystem, but their photo management/sharing system is not one of them. It boggles my mind, as lots of Apple engineers have families. But, despite…

I agree it's not perfect, but for myself and my family (we all have iPhones, and if you don't have an iPhone in our family, I will happily provide a refurbished one to you) it is superior to all other photo management options out there (Google might shut down Photos one day, Facebook needs no explanation, Smugmug/Flickr UX is woefully inadequate for family photo library management). One day I hope Apple improves delt…

Totally to each their own...there is no perfect solution for this. I do understand the the apprehension with google shutting down services, though google photos is so wildly popular it would almost be analogous to them shutting down gmail at this point. Also, one nicety with google photos is the photos are just photos in a folder structure of your choosing. If/when the service goes away you can literally just import the folder structure to the next thing.
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