 Dawn M. Dorland |
Best Way to Back Up Raw Files When I travel, I download my Raw files to my laptop so I can convert the good ones to JPEGs. When I get home I like to put the Raws on my main desktop to keep them there. (I planned on deleting them off the laptop.) I was using a memory stick to to this. Now the files appear to copy to the memory stick (of course you can't view them in Raw), but when I copy them to my desktop and try to open them in Canons DPP, they don't open. The first 10 percent are OK, then the rest are just an X. I tried to go back and delete the files, but they were all corrupted. Everything worked fine for the JPEGs. Is there a better way to transfer the Raw images from one computer to another? And I would like to keep the Raws backed up so I can delete some of my 1000's of old photos off my desktop. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
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Randy A. Myers |
That should have worked fine. I use USB flash drives and CF cards to move files around all the time. I've never had a problem. Make sure you give the files time to completely transfer before removing the memory stick.
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- Carlton Ward Contact Carlton Ward Carlton Ward's Gallery |
Hello Dawn, I had a laptop hard drive fail after downloading 1200 images taken at the Northwest String Summit in 2006 (bluegrass festival in Oregon) and even after paying a bunch of $$ to a PC recovery shop, they could not get them back as the drive was fried & I lost them all. After downloading them, I intended to back them up to another external drive but I had another shoot, so I deleted my CF cards and then my laptop failed. I lost about 1200 photos. They were very good photos and they are gone, gone, gone. I will never see them again. If and when this ever happens to you, will learn quickly to back up everything as soon as you can. I have an Iomega 320GB & an older Lacie 120GB portable hard drives that I carry with my laptop (MacBook Pro) and they are fast (firewire) & do the job until I get home and add them to my 2 Iomega 1TB hard drives attached to my 24" IMac. I have 1 drive that looks exactly like the other drive as any hard drive can fail so if one does, I still have the other. I also burn DVDs of my raw images and keep these at a friend's house in case there is a fire & I have a book of his DVDs for the same reason. I have lost lots of images over the last 10 years due to corrupt CF cards (be sure to always power down the camera before inserting/ejecting a card from the camera). I am happy to say that since losing those 1200 photos in 2006, I have not lost one since :) I also use Photoshop and in Bridge (File>Get Photos from Camera,) it launches the Adobe Photo Downloader and I select the folder and name and direct them to a folder in one of my portable external drives. I don't have that much space on my internal HD anyway and afterwards, I burn the raw images to DVD in case the HD fails. Hard drives (both portable and desktop external HDs) have gotten so cheap and they are easy to use. I also have an 8GB Sandisk thumb drive but I never use it for transferring images as I can just plug my portable external drive to my IMac and copy them over to my other drives. I don't have read/write problems and have not experienced your issue with some images being readable and others aren't, so as Randy stated, make sure they are completely transferred. Hope this helps!
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Dawn M. Dorland |
Thanks Carlton and Randy... I did try to transfer the pics from my laptop to my desktop using another flash drive and it worked ok, so we think the original flash drive is corrupted. I did go out today and by an external hardrive and will start using that. I also bought Photoshop since it was on sale at Staples for $599. I put it on my laptop first, since I am leaving tomorrow for 2 weeks. Now I just look at it, since I am clueless about Photoshop. I kind of figured since I am not that bright about learning programs, why waste my time learning something else now, when I knew eventually I would buy Photoshop. Wish me luck :)
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- Carlton Ward Contact Carlton Ward Carlton Ward's Gallery |
Hello Dawn, There are tons of books, DVDs & tutorials and I have tried them all over the last 10 years and I highly recommend looking at some of the Photoshop classes offered here as they are taught by photographers who will get you up & running in no time. I have taken a few and Jim Zuckerman & Lewis Kemper's Toolbox classes will teach you the fundamentals quickly. Control-L for Levels, Control-M for Curves, Control-Alt-I for image size, Control-Alt-S for Save as, Cntrl U for Hue/Saturation, Cntrl B for Color Balance, - these are a few keyboard options I use a lot. Part of Photoshop is Bridge and this is a way to view, rate and select images you want to open in Photoshop. Bridge also has the Adobe Photo Downloader which will save the images the drive you select and will also save duplicate files to another drive. Dont hesitate to email me if you have a question and I will take you through my processing steps. ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) will do most adjustments you will need and I do 90% of my editing in ACR, then save the edited images as .tif files. I only size down and save as jpegs for images I am posting on the web. Congrats & Cheers, Carlton
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Dawn M. Dorland |
Thanks Carlton... I do plan on taking a photoshop class, but may not be until later. I am finishing a class now, and then finally got into Drager's Light and Comp class, which I dont want to drop since my pics need help. I may track you down in the future with questions. I have not even been able to find ACR yet. Do you convert all your RAWS to .tifs? I have only been converting pics I used online to JPEGS, then saved the rest as RAWS (will be putting on external hardrive soon.) Thanks, Dawn
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- Carlton Ward Contact Carlton Ward Carlton Ward's Gallery |
When you open a raw image in Photoshop (CS2 & above) it will launch in ACR. It is a separate window that says Camera Raw at the top. I am trying to do a screen capture to show you. It starts with White Balance at the top followed by Temp & Tint and then you have Exposure, Recovery, Fill light, Contrast, Saturation, etc... Its designed to work from the top down and after I tweak Clarity & Vibrance a bit (if needed), I am usually done with the image. I dont save all my rsw files as tifs - only save my preferred images. I usually use Bridge and label the good ones with a 3 (command 3) which will place 3 stars on the image. I only label the ones that are sharp, focused, etc as a 3. If it has even better composition, etc - I may label it a 4 and if it is superb - 5 :) This is my method but do whatever works for you. You can then sort the images in Bridge by "rating" and then you can select that group of images and launch them all in ACR to start editing. Hope this helps - let me see if I can include my screen capture... Carlton
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Mike Johns |
Dawn: Iam going to assume that you have a newer Canon camera, that said, One of your options for shooting is to save the images in the camera as Raw + large JPG. If you do that, you do not have to convert to jpg. I always keep all of my original .CR2 (raw) files as they came out of the camera. These are representation of what the processor in the camera saw at the time that you snapped the picture and if they are changed,you loose the original. I only convert to another format when I do what I call my ARTISTIC work on the image. I take my images from the camera and as soon as they are on my desktop PC, they are burn to CD or DVD. As a computer Systems Administrator, I will let you know that there is not any problem with moving your RAW files to any type of media that you can save other files to. RAW files are just stored bits and bytes, the same as any other file type.
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Randy A. Myers |
In response to backing up files, I have two external hard drives. I have a backup program that backs the computer hard drive to the first external drive, then the second external drive backs up the first external drive. I know if I go check the files on the second external drive and they are good, then that means the first external back up is good since that's where the files came from. It takes up no time since it is done automatically. The price of external hard drives is now cheap enough to make this a feasible option. I then burn "special trips or outings" to DVD. Good luck.
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Steven Irwin |
Dawn, If you don't have a wireless network at home, get one! This easily connects all home computers together very cheaply. Also, get an NAS (network attached storage) device to be accessed from the wireless network. I bought a BuffaloTech Terastation that has 2 terabyte of storage. The most important aspect is that it is a RAID system. The Terastation has 4 500gb harddrives that work together as one. I have the Terastation mapped to my pc as a network drive "T" (for Terastation). So, I can just copy straight to the Terastation from my pc by accessing drive "T". Very easy!! Actually, every pc on your wireless network can use the NAS device and backup to it. Now about the RAID system, the raid system allows for recovery if any of your hard drives die. It has happened to me twice in the last 4-5 years that I have had mine. I just had to buy another 500 gb drive, pull out the bad hd and put the new one in. The raid system is able to look at the other three good drives and determine what was on the one bad drive. It rebuilds the data to the new drive and you are back to normal!! It is SWEET!! ALL photographers should have an NAS device with RAID. It still allows you to backup to USB hard drives and DVDs (that you can take offsite). Also, you can pool multiple NAS devices to appear as one. It is very flexible and powerful. I have not lost one photo since I have had the Terastation with RAID. Without it, I could had lost almost everything twice. I think the 2 terabyte Terastaion cost me about $800-900 years back. The replacement drives are only about $70-80 each. What would you pay to get back photos off of a bad drive? I know I would had paid $800 easily to get them back. That price has saved me twice now and I know it will save me again sometime. Remember, hard drive never last forever. Plan for their failure. I did this for a living as an IT software consultant! I hope this helps!
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Pamela Njemanze |
Dawn: as for photoshop, it can be intimidating at first, but I just took a workshop with Jim Zuckerman and it helped a great deal. I will learn from your exp and back up. I'm gonna be sorry someday as others are if I don't start to back up. Pam :)
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Kathryn Wesserling |
This is a simplistic question, but after downloading, do you delete the images from your CF card, or do you format the card? I was taught from the git-go to always format a brand new card before shooting the first images, and always to format, rather than delete all sets thereafter. Even if this has nothing to do with your specific issues, it can't hurt to mention it (might help someone else.)
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- Carlton Ward Contact Carlton Ward Carlton Ward's Gallery |
Hi Kathy, I dont touch my cards after downloading the images until I have them all backed up to at least 2 drives & raw files burned to DVD, then I put the cards back in the camera that I will be using and delete all images and then format. Since I am bouncing between 3 different camera's I always format the card in the camera before I start shooting. Maybe overkill but it works for me and I have not had a single problem doing it this way :) my .02 Carlton
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Kathryn Wesserling |
Same here, Carlton - especially, since my dvd-burner is acting spacey! Of course, the one exception is when I recently erased my CF that held nearly 200 images of my great-niece's very first dance recital! I'd swear that I had edited just a couple (meaning they were at least on my laptop.) It wasn't until going home after an ensuing camping trip that I couldn't find the dance pictures anywhere! arggggggggghhhh!!
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Dawn M. Dorland |
Thanks everyone for the great info... and Carlton, I definitely will make sure I dont delete any photos off the memory cards until I have backed them up. I never thought of that until I read your post. I also do format my memory cards when I delete the images. I guess I will invest in a few more memory cards as well. I will start with the external hardrive and then research some of the options posted here. I am still at the stage in my photograhpy where I only get a few pis worth keeping for a lifetime. But I am working on that. Thanks for all the help !!!!!
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- Carlton Ward Contact Carlton Ward Carlton Ward's Gallery |
Dont discount the photos you have now as you will treasure them more later. I look back at some of my early photos when I was still learning to use a DSLR & photoshop and there are some real gems which are still my favorites. Plus, I have a bad habit of making a run through my images and selecting the obvious ones I want to work on and have gone back through them a year or 2 later to find a couple more gems that I had completely overlooked. One example was a shoot I did of a Butch Trucks/Susan Tedeschi concert at the Oregon Zoo. I had taken a few pics of the elephants as the stage is close by before the show and later when I selected the images from the show, I ignored the elephant shots only to find this one 2 years later. Blessings, Carlton
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