How to Keep Massive Photo Archive Tidy and Secure

How to Keep Massive Photo Archive Tidy and Secure ? How many pictures do you have on the hard drive of your computer ? How and When to Take Backups ? And how many times have you missed to find one, just because you were not too backup ? Many not happen to you things and Questions will be discussed in this guide How to Keep Massive Photo Archive Tidy and Secure.

How to Keep Massive Photo Archive Secure

If might seem to you that, How to Keep Massive Photo Archive Tidy and Secure is not a big point at all. Whatever, ow kept it arranged – forget it for now; at least you know two things for backup :

1. Saving them on some cloud storage
2. Burning on optical media

I am telling you my real story, I had a huge number of scanned images of from when Photography has been introduced – that means from those glass slides to photographs taken with grandfather of large format, rangefinder cameras. That means our photography’s history starts from my Great Grandfather’s father. I scanned this huge number of photographs, huge because great grand father afterwards had own photo development setup. It is obvious that I will take backup on DVD. Its obvious that, I will keep these DVDs in copy to some very very assured person so that, if where I am living everything physically get destroyed –  I will have a backup.

I am taking about 10 years back. Buying a photo scanner was like kind of buying an iPhone at that time. That reliable person flew away after 10 years and obviously ripped all these backups. Practically, one great portrait taken in 1920, can be claimed as their own inherited property. Yes, I can tell you the way how if someone does it with you, how you can proof that, it s yours. But understand the point – a digital data or photograph when not encrypted or password protected but burned directly is itself a point of insecurity. Know what is encryption.

Now come to those cloud based storage. Cloud Storage are only secure if you save an fully encrypted file. Read Secure Cloud Computing Guide for more knowledge.

How to Keep Massive Photo Archive Tidy and Secure

So, firstly there are clearly two types of digital images – old scanned and now pure digital photography. The theme of the picture archiving and how to organize their storage on your computer is not the most exciting. However, it is a problem to which we should devote a minimum of attention, because a good organization of the archive will save you time and most importantly will prevent you from losing your photographs. Never use softwares like Picasa or anything to organize your photos. Always use our old manual way of creating New Folder and copy pasting / moving.

In my many years of experience I have developed a system that works (thanks to my instincts engineering) and I want to share it with you (it helped the person who stolen the pictures though). Think about these points :

1. How to name the photo folders on your disk
2. How to name the files of the photographs
3. How to set up a rescue system (backup) of the photographic archive.

First make two or three or four folders – Scanned, Digital Camera, Mobile and Third Party. In all cases, for smaller number of picture’s create a folder named with the decade, for example – 1920. Inside them, One folder will be named Original where the huge over few GB sized one scanned or RAW / Digital Negative, unedited image will be. Another is Edited named folder. Here the smaller sized image after Adobe Photoshop post processing will remain. Naming the photos will be like 19_01_2013-(1)-Venice-Abhishek.jpg

As basically it is unlikely that up to 1950, frequent update will be needed – they are a static backup. Burn them as a encrypted / password protected file  so that any operating system can read them. Use an archival quality optical disk, check on a fixed day every year – its important to check the backups. After 5 years, again burn the the DVDs freshly – issue a new copy. Do not forget the password or write it over the disk itself. Always physically destroy the older backups after creation of new backups by holding them over open flame. If you use a hard disk, the method is almost the same, you need to format the hard disk before discarding in 7 pass like on Mac and fully use your hammer, nail to physically destroy before throwing the older. This is the standard method of data deletion followed by any good country’s military departments.

Avoid using Windows PC because they can add virus, malwares etc. Try to use any Linux distribution or a Mac. Mac is usually used by the Military departments as they are more fail proof and has the good and easy backup system. Nowadays many legal departments uses Linux distro on Mac hardware. More important person you are, more you need to increase your security.

For the newer photographs, which are actually dynamic – create archive Evey month – For example January 2013. If you take copyright of any image, keep the official copy inside the folder or another subfolder. Photobooth automatically understand this logic of hierarchy. That is an advantage. Restrict them not to be saved on iCloud. For special photographs like of weeding, before distributing, you can embed or hide text in normal picture files in Windows in the way we described. You can add additional security by adding Geolocation in Exif data (if not added by camera), add a barcode on images before distributing using your ISSN and/or ISBN number.