Future proofing LrC

[mstrathmore]

Lightroom Version Number

15.1

Operating System

1. macOS 15 Sequoia

Bit of a new year riff folks.

Over the Christmas period I was going through some of my old photo albums and printed photos and it occurred to me how "bullet proof" they are - looking at photos from my parents in the 1960s and '70s it's amazing that you can toss these things in a shoebox and they'll still be there decades later - sure, a little yellowed, but still there. I have negatives and slide film strips that I could print tomorrow and those prints would be good for a lifetime.

For some time I have been worrying about the incredible risk associated with having every edit you do locked into Lightroom's proprietary catalog. As we can see from frequent posts on these forums, the most random of things can happen and your catalog can disappear, leaving you with essentially "undeveloped film" lacking any of your edits. And, when that happens, you are literally at the mercy of the goodwill of a few very knowledgeable folks here, or the Lightroom FAQ we all know and love. The problem is, often, despise that, you learn what you shouldn't have done only after the die is cast, and sometimes it's almost impossible to reverse out of it.

I'm not thinking of jumping ship to another piece of software: they all have their pros and cons, but I am conscious of the fact that Lightroom needs constant tending to ensure everything is backed up and running in good order: even then, there's always that random thing that can happen.

At first, I thought I could insulate myself by writing to sidecar files, but based on comments from several folks whom I respect here on these forums, that doesn't seem to buy you much. Ironically, in my case, the first time I tried it, it corrupted my catalog! Additionally, writing changes to sidecars means every single change triggers an update to those sidecars and a consequent upload to my BackBlaze cloud storage backup and my NAS backup.

What if Adobe goes out of business in 10 years (we've all see companies do exactly that when it was thought impossible)? What if LightRoom classic is deprecated over time, which must surely be the plan in favour of the newer versions of the software? What if the subscription model becomes unaffordable over time? What if a competitor software appears that is a complete no-brianer to switch to? What if Apple starts taking photography seriously again (I'm fully plugged into that ecosystem for everything else)? All of these questions have answers that range from "So What" to "It'll never happen" to "It'll all be ok, they've surely thought of that" - and I get it. But, still, I worry.

Has anyone got a foolproof method of ensuring their photos *including all edits* are safeguarded, in the absence of LightRoom Classic?

I'd love to hear folks' take on this.

Cheers and many happy photo opps in 2026!

Mark.

 

[Zenon]

What happens to other developers that don't use a catalogue system? Let's use DXO PL as an example. Are your edits there forever to export when you need to. Even PL needs to talk to the servers once a month so if they go under so does the app. Not sure about others. There are no guarantees that any company will survive with what is coming down the road with AI. That includes paying all that money for an app when an upstart can do it as well for a 5th of the price. It's already slowly happening.

I don't know. Pick up a few inexpensive ED's and export all your edited files as TIFF's or DNG's. At least you have your edited files you can still work on. All your exported jpegs saved take up no space.

 

[Replytoken]

I do not think that you are easily going to find a "foolproof" method that includes all edits, just as those photos that you tossed into a shoe box did not contain their edits. You can make your edits and then save copies in a TIFF or JPEG format with the belief that these are commonly used and readable formats, as well as make prints of images on archival paper. And, of course, save your original files in their original format, but I am assuming that is a given in your scenario.

I guess I would also have to ask the value of your edits after you are no longer alive. Are you planning to to create an estate for marketing and/or selling your images? And what would the value of the edits be when most folks are primarily interested in buying the final product, which could be printed from a TIFF file?

You could use open source software, but that does not really guarantee you anything other than the code may be available. My personal take is to find tools that allow you to do what you want to do, and if the time comes for a migration, then address it then. Photographic tools have changed over time and photographers have adapted accordingly. When papers, film and/or developers were discontinued, photographers moved on to what was available, albeit with a bit of grumbling and romance for their tried and true tools of the past.

I am sure other have differing opinions, and as my personal odometer keeps adding miles, I do ponder a bit more on how much energy I want to expend on preserving my images. I would love if they lived on beyond me for folks to enjoy, but I also know a number of very talented professional photographers with large bodies of work who have not given much thought to this other than to create an estate and then let the trustees figure it out, and they have a good 10-15 years on me.

So I wish you luck as you explore your options.

--Ken

 

[Gnits]

I have made a first attempt of flagging what I consider to be my personal 5 star pics. I plan to print these myself on high quality fine art archival paper and personally make a hand bound book. If I get that far, I might make a few handmade copies of the book and offer them as gifts for friends and family. I might leave a cd or thumb drive of the finished 16 bit adobeRGB tiffs in a slip cover or presentation box.

Dealing with catalogs, proprietary software, 150k raw images … awaiting inspiration….

 

[Califdan]

I have an idea! Print the edited images using archival paper with archival ink, put in sealed container, store in cool dry place, Designate an heir in your will or trust to take posession after you die with instructions on how to maintain the trove and a requirement to pass the responsibility forward to the next generation. Hope that someone 100 years from now will care.

As an extra measure export Edited JPG's to a Portable external drive using ExFat file system. JPG's have so far faired fairly well through a progression of new hardware and new operating systems and will probably stay viable as a lowest common demnominator for quite sometime. However, you should add a calendar entry to whatever calendar you use to revisit this every 5 years (move to new drive, if ExFat looks threatened change file system and if JPG is on the way out convert to the next best one).

Here's where I'm coming from. I inherited many thousand images printed on paper, and as many negatives and slides with images going back to the 1800's which were all very usable even though they were not carefully stored or on archival media. However, I was unable to recover some digital files (videos actually) from the 1990's that were saved in some arcane proprietary format from a long defunct company.

In case anyone is interested I recently posted a Looooooooog 2 part article related to scanning the family archives which is tangentially related to this topic. If can be found here: https://www.danhartfordphoto.com/bl...nning-Family-Archive-Film-Based-Images-Part-1

​

 

[mstrathmore]

What happens to other developers that don't use a catalogue system? Let's use DXO PL as an example. Are your edits there forever to export when you need to. Even PL needs to talk to the servers once a month so if they go under so does the app. Not sure about others. There are no guarantees that any company will survive with what is coming down the road with AI. That includes paying all that money for an app when an upstart can do it as well for a 5th of the price. It's already slowly happening.

I don't know. Pick up a few inexpensive ED's and export all your edited files as TIFF's or DNG's. At least you have your edited files you can still work on. All your exported jpegs saved take up no space.

Hey Zenon, thanks for commenting; yep I'm leaning to just exporting them as TIFFs and saving onto something inexpensive (and probably backing that up to Backblaze).

 

[mstrathmore]

I do not think that you are easily going to find a "foolproof" method that includes all edits, just as those photos that you tossed into a shoe box did not contain their edits. You can make your edits and then save copies in a TIFF or JPEG format with the belief that these are commonly used and readable formats, as well as make prints of images on archival paper. And, of course, save your original files in their original format, but I am assuming that is a given in your scenario.

I guess I would also have to ask the value of your edits after you are no longer alive. Are you planning to to create an estate for marketing and/or selling your images? And what would the value of the edits be when most folks are primarily interested in buying the final product, which could be printed from a TIFF file?

You could use open source software, but that does not really guarantee you anything other than the code may be available. My personal take is to find tools that allow you to do what you want to do, and if the time comes for a migration, then address it then. Photographic tools have changed over time and photographers have adapted accordingly. When papers, film and/or developers were discontinued, photographers moved on to what was available, albeit with a bit of grumbling and romance for their tried and true tools of the past.

I am sure other have differing opinions, and as my personal odometer keeps adding miles, I do ponder a bit more on how much energy I want to expend on preserving my images. I would love if they lived on beyond me for folks to enjoy, but I also know a number of very talented professional photographers with large bodies of work who have not given much thought to this other than to create an estate and then let the trustees figure it out, and they have a good 10-15 years on me.

So I wish you luck as you explore your options.

--Ken

Hey Ken, thanks for replying. To be honest I'm not too concerned about what will happen to my images after I'm gone. I'm more concerned about trying to secure a copy of the final, edited, version of my images. I think the only real answer is to export them and just save them somewhere.

Like you, I'm wondering just how much time I want to invest in tending the Lightroom garden, as it were.

 

[mstrathmore]

I have made a first attempt of flagging what I consider to be my personal 5 star pics. I plan to print these myself on high quality fine art archival paper and personally make a hand bound book. If I get that far, I might make a few handmade copies of the book and offer them as gifts for friends and family. I might leave a cd or thumb drive of the finished 16 bit adobeRGB tiffs in a slip cover or presentation box.

Dealing with catalogs, proprietary software, 150k raw images … awaiting inspiration….

I've also stated printing some of my absolute favourites - we have a little gallery going in our hallway - but, like you I struggle with the sheer volume. I like the idea of TIFFs more and more.

 

[mstrathmore]

I have an idea! Print the edited images using archival paper with archival ink, put in sealed container, store in cool dry place, Designate an heir in your will or trust to take posession after you die with instructions on how to maintain the trove and a requirement to pass the responsibility forward to the next generation. Hope that someone 100 years from now will care.

As an extra measure export Edited JPG's to a Portable external drive using ExFat file system. JPG's have so far faired fairly well through a progression of new hardware and new operating systems and will probably stay viable as a lowest common demnominator for quite sometime. However, you should add a calendar entry to whatever calendar you use to revisit this every 5 years (move to new drive, if ExFat looks threatened change file system and if JPG is on the way out convert to the next best one).

Here's where I'm coming from. I inherited many thousand images printed on paper, and as many negatives and slides with images going back to the 1800's which were all very usable even though they were not carefully stored or on archival media. However, I was unable to recover some digital files (videos actually) from the 1990's that were saved in some arcane proprietary format from a long defunct company.

In case anyone is interested I recently posted a Looooooooog 2 part article related to scanning the family archives which is tangentially related to this topic. If can be found here: https://www.danhartfordphoto.com/bl...nning-Family-Archive-Film-Based-Images-Part-1

​

I laughed out loud when I read your reply, Dan. You make good points (though you did neglect to mention that I could buy space in that vault they have somewhere up in Norway or Denmark where they store all the seeds against the advent of doomsday)...

On a serious note though, I do think that exported TIFFs are probably the answer - I feel the days of JPEGs are probably numbered, and if I'm going to do this it might as well be in a format that is lossless and has some chance of longevity (and, at least an easy way to convert through a myriad of software).

If you think about it, once film was printed or slides were mounted, that was it:; final form with all "edits" applied either in the darkroom or just by the print lab. With digital, the risk we face is that RAWs look pretty awful and typically our photos truly benefit from editing. The risk we face is not only of losing the images, but of losing the edits that make those images eminently more viewable.

Having been in the IT game a (very) long time, I've seen everything from the Commodore 64 (and the Aquarius before that, but heck no one will remember that) come and go. I used to be in the business of selling optical jukeboxes, tape streams and network attached storage, and the one thing that is certain is that formats will change over time - if you don't move your data from a dying format to one with some runway in time, you are in for big, big, drama.

I probably will stick with Lightroom until, well, whatever happens in the end, but I do want to mitigate that nagging feeling that I am only one corrupt catalog away from losing 20+ years of editing.

Cheers,

Mark.

 

[jrobnz]

I probably will stick with Lightroom until, well, whatever happens in the end, but I do want to mitigate that nagging feeling that I am only one corrupt catalog away from losing 20+ years of editing.

Yes, I have that fear too. And so I'm anal about backing up my catalog and images in numerous redundant ways. I have way too many copies along with automated backups keeping them updated daily. Add to the fear that whatever cloud-based backup site you are using, they might disappear in a heartbeat too. So much to worry about

 

[johnbeardy]

This future proofing has always been a strong argument for using the DNG file format for the originals in your catalogue.

As well as containing the raw data (unlike TIF) plus the IPTC descriptive metadata, the DNG file's embedded preview can also be safely updated with a full resolution rendering of LR's adjustments. So even if you lost the ability to reprocess the raw data, you would be able to output that rendering and your adjustment work would have a cockroach's chance of surviving the Lehmann Bros moment.

 

[Stanley J]

I have made a first attempt of flagging what I consider to be my personal 5 star pics. I plan to print these myself on high quality fine art archival paper and personally make a hand bound book. If I get that far, I might make a few handmade copies of the book and offer them as gifts for friends and family. I might leave a cd or thumb drive of the finished 16 bit adobeRGB tiffs in a slip cover or presentation box.

Dealing with catalogs, proprietary software, 150k raw images … awaiting inspiration….

I have been printing my "better efforts" for some time. It is my legacy project. I print at 11 x 17 and have tried putting a few in an Itoya ArtPortfolio. Not entirely happy with that. Hence I was intrigued with your "hand bound book" comment. Might you please expand on that a bit. Thank you kindly.

 

[Gnits]

Making personal books shares a spectrum from the most basic to something like the Book of Kells.

Folder a plain a4 sheet in half. Now you have a 4 page book. Folder a second page in half. Fit one inside the other and put a simple staple in the middle. You now have a basic 8 page book. On the front write page 1, and put page numbers on the remaining pages (1-8).

Use this plain 8 page booklet as a template. Decide what images to place on each page. Use a rough sketch or just write comments as to what photograph to use. On the centre page spread you have the option to use an image that covers the whole page, ie crosses the crease.

Now take out the staple and examine the two separate sheets. Using double sided photo paper, work out how to replicate the sheets. You are now dealing with images outside your logical page number sequence. Print the two double sided paper. Fold in the centre and assemble into the correct page no sequence. Instead of a staple, get a needle and thread and do a simple stitch ( ie at inch intervals). This is your first prototype… so you do not have to be precise.

But, you now have your first home made book.

You expand on this by making a series of these… until you have enough pages for your images. These can be individual 8 page folded sets but in practice they can be more, depending on page thickness, materials used, etc.

There is a simple technique to stitch / bind these sets together (not sure of the correct term), with a front and back page. Place to one side for a moment.

You next learn how to make a book cover… very simple but needs crafting skills for best results. Use cardboard and basic paper pattern to make your first cover. You then glue the stack of sets to the front and back of the cover.

You have made your first book.

This is a collection of very simple techniques… and really basic tools and materials. You can start just with plain photocopy paper, no printed images .. to make your own personal notebook.

From there you can gradually advance… but start with a few very small test mini projects.

There are fabulous YouTube series on book binding… which is where I picked up the basic skills.

For a photo book, I would want to use archival materials. That includes the paper, ink, card used for the cover and material for the book cover.

It is my ultimate objective to produce a leather bound book… but an interim milestone would be a book with a linen / cotton hardback cover and if happy with that… go for a leather bound volume.

The key objective is to have my 5 star vip images on archival materials, protected by a hard book cover and easily accessible by simply turning the pages.

I was hoping to get the bulk of this done before Christmas, but other real world stuff got in the way. But… for an amateur photographer, like me, it is a perfect personal winter project.

 

[Zenon]

I doubt I'll be the next Vivian Maier. As much as I hope I also doubt the grandkids, etc on a Saturday night will say lets look at Grandpa's images instead of watching the latest movie or whatever they will be into. I'm going the hard cover book route and create a few with my favourite shots. My only request is to not put them somewhere on a bookshelf. Leave them on display so one may get picked up once in a while.

As for files. They will be on EDH's as you never know what can happen in the cloud. I will not have control over what happens to them .

 

[camner]

Making personal books shares a spectrum from the most basic to something like the Book of Kells.

Now THERE’s a reference that many (most?) won’t immediately get I actually saw (a little bit of ) the Book of Kells in my one and only trip to Ireland (three lovely weeks in 2016). A very memorable trip, full of so much history (the majority of which, alas, felt tragic… I came away, thinking, “I knew the history of Ireland was full of difficulty, but I didn’t really understand the half of it”).

 

[Gnits]

"Book of Kells" .... my apologies for a possibly vague reference.

This simple link will explain most.

https://www.visittrinity.ie/blog/why-is-the-book-of-kells-important/

It is viewable in the Long Room in Trinity University in the centre of Dublin.

It has been an inspiration and deeply embedded into the fabric of Irish culture...

Long Room (screen grab).

Screen grab of a portion of an example illustration .. viewable with better info via link above.

But we can create our own real world books more easily than imagined... and the effort is amply rewarded ...

So we do not need to be the next Vivian Meyer or aspire toward the Book of Kells... just be proud of the fruits of our own labour.

 

[camner]

@Gnits No need to apologize! In this case I understood the reference, but even when I don’t understand references others make, it typically inspires me to look it up and learn something new. The day I stop doing that and enjoying doing so, I will be ready for the. “…to dust” part.

 

[clee01l]

"Book of Kells" .... my apologies for a possibly vague reference.
.

It should not be a vague reference. Just something to see who’s on their toes


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[clee01l]

However, FB is the last place I'd consider to archive my photos.

I've considered what will happen to my photos after I'm gone. My conclusion is that there is no one in my family that is interested enough to preserve them. Adobe and Lightroom will in all likelihood still be around after I'm no longer. There are other discussions in the forum on that topic.

 

[Stanley J]

Oh my goodness, I did not imagine such a full response. I appreciate and thank you for your time. My next step will be to start watching YouTube vids on book making. ..........and including The Book of Kells......well I liked the use of imaginative language. I have been to the Long Room in Trinity College and seen "The Book". I did take a few photos, but there were hordes of people. I should go back and re-visit those photos as the remove tools have improved significantly since I looked at them last.

 

[clee01l]

Oh my goodness, I did not imagine such a full response. I appreciate and thank you for your time. My next step will be to start watching YouTube vids on book making. ..........and including The Book of Kells......well I liked the use of imaginative language. I have been to the Long Room in Trinity College and seen "The Book". I did take a few photos, but there were hordes of people. I should go back and re-visit those photos as the remove tools have improved significantly since I looked at them last.

Improved but not enough.

 

[Gnits]

My conclusion is that there is no one in my family that is interested enough to preserve them.

Or would have the skills to understand evolving products such as Lightroom /Photoshop, etc.

That is exactly my conclusion…. but this discussion has triggered a few thoughts for me to explore further.. and I am very happy this discussion has given me some ideas worth chasing.

 

[Gnits]

Improved but not enough.

View attachment 27899

A pity so many book shelves were empty due to refurb…

 

[clee01l]

A pity so many book shelves were empty due to refurb…

As a bibliophile, just being there was humbling and awe inspiring.

 

[mstrathmore]

This future proofing has always been a strong argument for using the DNG file format for the originals in your catalogue.

As well as containing the raw data (unlike TIF) plus the IPTC descriptive metadata, the DNG file's embedded preview can also be safely updated with a full resolution rendering of LR's adjustments. So even if you lost the ability to reprocess the raw data, you would be able to output that rendering and your adjustment work would have a cockroach's chance of surviving the Lehmann Bros moment.

Hi John, that's actually also a good suggestion - I hadn't considered DNG but based on what you've said it sounds like a better idea. One question - how would you update the DNG file's embedded preview as you describe? I've not done that before.

Cheers,

Mark.