Export Archiving photos from PC to SSD

[Gunna]

Lightroom Version Number

14.3

Operating System

1. Windows 10

I want to give my kids a SSD with all the photos I have that are relevant to them. most of the photos would have had some editing in LR Classic.
I assume I would have to 'Export' all the photos to the SSD, so that when they open the SSD they get the full size image, after my edits?

A 2nd question - If I want to take off some old photos & store them on an archive SSD - What is the procedure without 'Exporting' them?, as there would be a few thousand.
As I'm pretty old, I don't know whether, down the track, I will know how to bring them back into my PC, & into LR, so that I can see the photos with the edits included.

No, the doctor hasn't told me to 'get my affairs into order' - I'm just getting in early!

Gunna

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Yes, you would export them as tiff or jpeg to give your kids photos that include the edits.
If you want to archive some photos you could drag & drop them into an ‘Archive’s folder on the external drive. That will move the original photo, the edits remain in the catalog and the catalog simply now points to the archived photo.

 

[Paul_DS256]

I want to give my kids a SSD with all the photos I have that are relevant to them. most of the photos would have had some editing in LR Classic.

Have you considered full size images in a LrC Web Page? This would provide your kids an easy way to look through the photos. You could also create multiple web pages on the same USB key/CD/DVD based on some selection.

 

[Gnits]

I suggest that you create Collections of the images you plan to share via ssd. If it is the same images you will pass to all kids then you only need one Collection, otherwise create a collection per individual.

You can then easily add relevant images to these collection/s. You can then use the collection to select the images to export.

As time goes by and you have new images you wish to share then you add them to the relevant collection and it then becomes a simple task to re issue the SSD.

I would consider creating two types of images.

1. Modest size jpgs for web and email use with an sRGB colour space.
2. Full Rez tiffs with a colour space of AdobeRGB in case anyone wishes to print these in the future.

A final consideration… do you want to share the related raw files.

By creating the collections… it is also easy to review your proposed export set as part of your selection process.

 

[Califdan]

Common question. Here are some considerations.

1. Whatever electronic technology you use will become obsolete within a generation or two. If I handed you a 5-1/2 inch floppy disk with images saved as ".BMP" files would that be at all useful?
2. Any service that requires ongoing cost like an account on Godaddy, or using a registered domain, or an Adobe license for LR will not be kept up by your heirs
3. Any "service" such as a web site will need to be maintened over time and if your kids are like mine that is not likely.
4. Any reliance on 'free' things like Google Photos, or DropBox are not long term. Companies go out of busines, get bought, get sold, get merged, change their policies, etc and you heirs will most likely not pay enough attention to such things to deal with them before it's too late.
5. For posterity, the only long term medium is archival ink on archival paper. I know that's old school but when my father in law died I was able to see and deal with images going back to the 1890's (yes Eighteen ninties), but had trouble with computer stored images from the 1980's.

 

[clee01l]

Common question. Here are some considerations.

1. Whatever electronic technology you use will become obsolete within a generation or two. If I handed you a 5-1/2 inch floppy disk with images saved as ".BMP" files would that be at all useful?
2. Any service that requires ongoing cost like an account on Godaddy, or using a registered domain, or an Adobe license for LR will not be kept up by your heirs
3. Any "service" such as a web site will need to be maintened over time and if your kids are like mine that is not likely.
4. Any reliance on 'free' things like Google Photos, or DropBox are not long term. Companies go out of busines, get bought, get sold, get merged, change their policies, etc and you heirs will most likely not pay enough attention to such things to deal with them before it's too late.
5. For posterity, the only long term medium is archival ink on archival paper. I know that's old school but when my father in law died I was able to see and deal with images going back to the 1890's (yes Eighteen ninties), but had trouble with computer stored images from the 1980's.

Or you could be a “Skype” user ;-)


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[bcarlson78248]

For whatever reason, my family kept negatives for many years, and I ended up with most of them. I have the negatives for pictures as old as around 1905 and have scanned them in and created jpg photos from them. One positive aspect is that I have also found many of these photos in old family albums, so it helps when I'm trying to figure out the timeframe and context for a negative. Otherwise I have no idea who some of these people are.

 

[Califdan]

Electronically, I'd say the Jpg would be the most likely format to last longer than the others without significant change that would prevent backward compatibility.

But the harder problem is the storage medium. I consider storage using any corporate owned platform or service as less liekly to pass the test of time than storage medium you keep control of yourself. For awhile CD or DVD were the medium of choice but now even that is waning. It's still considered the safest option but I'm not so sure. But I'm also hard pressed to identify anything better. One clue that it is losing it's luster for long term storage is that computers no longer come with builtin CD or DVD drives and even the physical medium has a life span (estimated at 5 to 100 years depending on type).

 

[Gunna]

Thanks Guys, for all your useful suggestions.
For the kids - I like the idea of sorting them into collections & then exporting them in 2 sizes, jpgs - Full res + smaller for media use.
For my archive - As I understand it - I could transfer them to a SSD & LR would keep track of where they are, if & when I reconnect the SSD to my PC.
BUT - If, due to my advancing years [I must update my photo!], I [ or a family member] in the future, can't plug the SSD into a PC with LR on it, is it correct that I would only have the original photo on the SSD, without the LR editing?
If that is the case, is this a workable solution? -
Copy all the photos, in their folders, etc, onto the SSD. Then have a folder on the SSD for those 'hero' photos that I will separately 'Export' to that folder on the SSD, with all the edits done to them.
I feel a responsibility to do this for the next generations, knowing that that 'time-poor' lot may not appreciate the effort taken.
Cheers,
Gunna from Down Under

 

[Califdan]

BUT - If, due to my advancing years [I must update my photo!], I [ or a family member] in the future, can't plug the SSD into a PC with LR on it, is it correct that I would only have the original photo on the SSD, without the LR editing?

I assume this means that the master image in LrC would be in a folder on an SSD where each kid has their own SSD. This would be problematic if the same images needed to go to more than one kid. But in this method your statement is correct unless you save XMP data. You can select all the images in folders on one of those SSD's, and then use "Save Metadata to disk". For JPG's this woul add information to the Jpg specifying what LrC changes had been made to the image. Any image viewing SW that is programmed to look at that metadata would show the edited verson of the image. I do not consifer this your best option.

Rather than transferring them to an SSD, you could export them to an SSD for each kid. This method would create new JPG files with all your edits present at the time you did the export. Optionally you cloud add these images back into the LrC catalog as new images but this is not necessary.. Again, not best option - especially if you want LrC to keep track of which images are destined to which kid .

A third, and best, option is to create a Hard Drive type Publish Service for each kid. Each of these PS's will save the images on a different SSD (one for each kid). then you would drag images to the PS for whichever kid or kids should get that image. From time to time plug in the SSD for each kid and click the "Publish" button on that PS. This will update the JPG's on that SSD with new images added to the publish service and will update any images which have changed in LrC since the last "publish". These SSD's will thereby offer visibility as to which images are going to which kid, and provides an easy wat to add new images and apply new edtis.

 

[johnbeardy]

A third, and best, option is to create a Hard Drive type Publish Service for each kid. Each of these PS's will save the images on a different SSD (one for each kid). then you would drag images to the PS for whichever kid or kids should get that image. From time to time plug in the SSD for each kid and click the "Publish" button on that PS. This will update the JPG's on that SSD with new images added to the publish service and will update any images which have changed in LrC since the last "publish". These SSD's will thereby offer visibility as to which images are going to which kid, and provides an easy wat to add new images and apply new edtis.

This is the approach I was going to suggest.

 

[Gunna]

Thank you Dan & John.
I'm not familiar with method 3 - sounds good - Could you please refer me to an article or Youtube that I can follow, step by step.

 

[clee01l]

Thank you Dan & John.
I'm not familiar with method 3 - sounds good - Could you please refer me to an article or Youtube that I can follow, step by step.

Publish Services are just like Collections and Smart Collections with an automatic export to a destination folder when the {Publish} button is clicked.

Further more any new images that are assigned to these Publish collections, mark the Publish Service as needing a new {Publish}.

 

[Califdan]

I'm writing up the steps. will post later today

 

[Califdan]

OK, see the steps in the attached PDF. The set up is a bit long but once set up the ongoing use is quite simple.

 

[Gunna]

Thank you, everyone, for your helpful suggestions.
Dan - I will follow your detailed instructions when I'm ready to process the 1st batch.
Gunna