This is almost exactly how I do it. I lost all my data 17 years ago and it was terrible. Today I also use the 3-2-1 method with a 4TB cloud. So thumbs up for this video!👍🏼
Sorry to hear you lost all your data before, I'm sure that must have felt awful :( and yeah I can't speak highly enough of backing up your files properly!! It's so important
it is so cute when you said backwards hehe most of europ 2023-01-01 (yyyy-mm-dd) always :) but i do have it backwards FASHION -> YEAR -> dates and type of fashion same for PORTRAITS and so on. Your organizasion is GOOD was satisfiying to watch
This workflow, in terms of backup, is the best I have seen in any photography channel (I work on IT). One detail, and I say detail because *she mentioned it in passing*: having an offline copy is super important. In an ideal work, it will be tape, but a simple HDD will do. If you have all your copies online a single ransomware attack could bring the full backup house to the ashes.
From an IT best practice standpoint, your physical backups should be in separate buildings and preferably many miles apart ..to allow for fire, theft, flood, earthquake, etc.
I loved this video! I also have almost the exact way of organizing my folders on my extrnals with the raws, edited, lightroom catalog, and exported. Not sure where I learned it, but it's so helpful. All of my old drives are definitely not that organized. For sending clients your highres and lowres images,, do you send them to everyone or just the more rcommerce, etc clients. Not sure if I should be or not
Thanks Julia. Being a pro photographer is just too much work!! OMG what a detailed saving/filling process. I would stuff that up, every time!! I keep all my RAW images on an SSD drive. I keep my final images (Hi-res and Low-res, filed separately) on OneDrive. I have a NAS backup at home. I keep a rotation of 50 of my favourite hi-res shots on my iPad, to show family/friends.
Haha actually that reminds me that when I first started this method it was a lot to remember and I would stuff it up here and there. I had to make a little checklist to remind me what the steps are to make sure all my files are properly backed up. Over the years, it really becomes second nature and I don't even think about it anymore while I'm organising my files! Also I love that idea of keeping some of your favourite shots on hand to be able to show them easily
Thanks! It was at first, I had to make a little checklist of all the steps to make sure I didn't forget anything. But over the years of doing this over and over again, it becomes second nature
I like to have a top level folder that’s just the year. So “2024”. The reason being that just using yyyymmdd-something results in a huge top-level flat structure. I find it more helpful to break this up. This scheme also allows for one SSD per year (one year per SSD) as a potential physical arrangement. Then, as you rightly say, you need multiple physical copies on different media and in different locations as backup.
After shooting to 2 SD cards, I usually import straight to Lightroom afterwards so I have a cloud back up. Then I backup the files to multiple hard drives. I do all my culling in Lightroom so I can separate the de-selects from the selects with the rating tool. And then export the edited photos to their own folder. Once I'm completely done and backed up everywhere, I delete the photos from Lightroom and SD cards. The end result of backups are: 4 hard drives, currently my computer, and currently my laptop. I will need to get a good online backup service soon as well as a NAS so that I can eliminate my computer and laptop from this process.
I love your style and your videos. A little question: do you have a template for your lightroom catalog? (i think otherwise you have to set up collections, etc again for every new catalog)
Thanks so much! To answer your question: kind of. haha - those photos I used my Amalfi Lightroom Preset to edit, but I used my preset through Imagen AI which batch edits sets of photos for you - I have a whole video showing the process of editing those photos on my channel I uploaded a few months ago, it called the Quickest Photo Editing Workflow if you are interested to see how it works :)
Brilliant workflow Julia, thank you. Which SSD back up external drives do you use? Those in the video marked MacBook 2022 / 23 looked really compact and USB c operated. I also use a MacBook Pro. Thanks Again. (PS: also enjoyed your Sony a6700 Review, so cool:). Seb.
hmm 23.10.16 could also be 1923, right? How about a range? How do you handle this? Like 2023-04-01_to_2023-04-07 - Arizona Spring Adventure? Just curious to compare notes.
Yeah my first couple of years of doing photography was all just for fun too and my photos were ALL over the place lol maybe you could start out by investing in an SSD to at least have all your photos in one place + online backup maybe.
Hi Julia - Great video as always. One quick thing! By any chance, did you test the 50mm 1.4 GM with Sony a7IV handheld? Thinking if A74 is better or A7R5 is using handheld.
Thank you! I only used it handheld for video on the A7SIII, from memory I think the A7RV has better IBIS in general compared to the A7IV though, Sony have been working on it in their recent cameras
I name files and folders with YYYYMMDD, so today would be 20240203. Saves having to do dots/hyphens while keeping files and folders chronological. If I want to have separate folders with the same date I add a letter to the end to keep them chronological (simpler and shorter than timestamp), eg. 20240203a 20240203b 20240203c; and then I add name/description after that.
Have been looking to refresh my backup system and found your video really helpful! A couple of follow up q's for you: 1. How do you transfer your files from your SSD to your NAS? Do you use something like Goodsync or Carbon Copy Cloner? I used to use Chronosync but it got away from me :) 2. When you first sit down to dump your cards onto your SSD, do you backup your RAW images onto your NAS right then as well? Or do you set up your folder system on the SSD and then transfer that to your NAS? And then once you are done editing and delivering to clients, you replace the old files on your NAS with the newly updated ones? 3. Curious about why you use Bridge at the end? I usually just export renamed low and high res files right from Lightroom - wondering what the benefit is here? 4. Laasssst one! Do you keep all of your edited finals in Pixieset/Dropbox and just pay for that storage? I've started to do this with Shootproof but it adds up quickly! Excited to try Imagen AI - appreciate that tip! I never ended up getting into Photo Mechanic but that speed is hard to beat. I'm going to take another look at it haha! Thanks so much for all of this!
Yep, for me the cloud just has the final highres copy. Internet is too slow in Australia to upload all the raws unfortunately otherwise I would do that!
I have a question, do you always keep ALL of the photos you take or would you delete any? I am a wildlife photographer so can take 1000s each shoot and very easily reduce this to 100s if not 10s. Would your method change dependent on this?
Hey Julia, great video! Quick question... so you you never delete any final images from any photoshoot? If a client from 2016 messages you about their images, do you have them on your NAS?
Thank you and yep. I know some photographers delete their deselect raws and only keep the culled raws. Some photographers delete all the raws after a certain amount of time. And then there are file hoarders like me and I just keep everything 😅
very useful. yet one remark, why expose two separate NAS to ransomware or else if you are not going to be editing out of them. I would think you can unplug from the internet the one closer to you, and just use the offsite one in the remote case you have to access your old photos while travelling. In a way, NAS is "online" but hosted by yourself and hence more risky than if a professional service protects your uploads (like BackBlaze)
Isolating the NAS physically and logically from the network is a smart strategy. However, if you had ransomware on one storage device, and then duplicated that to a second (whether a second NAS, backblaze, or something else), you'd also be copying the ransomware over. Backing up to two different kinds of systems, with different types of operating systems, would help to protect against this, since the ransomware would likely not be able to execute on different types of platforms.
I shoot a lot of digital, but I have a lot of negatives in all formats from the late 1970s up to now. All properly fixed, washed and most of them treated in a weak solution of Kodak Hypo Clearing agent and Kodak Selenium Toner. They will out last me by a 100 years, they cost very little to store in archival sleeves and folders. This is a lot more than I could say about thousands of digital files that I have saved on my Lacie back up units. Zeros and ones will be erased someday no matter what, sadly.
How do you keep your negatives stored? I have an A4 folder with sleeves and I write the same folder format I talked about in this video at the top of the sleeve haha so I know the date, camera and film stock used at a glance. Not sure if there is a better way though!
I never bother sending images to my phone, that just clutters up the storage. Just use a card reader to transfer images from CF/Sd cards to my computer. Then just review them and transfer the keepers to, modestly priced, G drive storage.
Yes! I have and do use Bridge for culling occasionally, my only problem is that it is too slow and images load or flicker as you're moving through them which wastes too much time even with my specced out mac studio/any of the image load settings available in Bridge. I only use it to cull if I have a really small amount of images to go through. PM is better for me as there is 0 loading in between all images even in a folder with 5000 photos. I also use Adobe Bridge to do all file organisation!
If you can afford it don't go for a single brand, but two different (in terms of the substrate), that way if one has a bug of is subject to premature degradation will be safe.
24-01-24 it is difficult to recognize the date format. Is the year at the beginning or at the end. Therefore i use this date format yyyy-mm-dd for file names 2024-01-24_projectname.
In Brazil 📂 2024 -> 📂 01_Weddings -> 📂 mm.dd.yyyy_name_and_name_dd.mm.yyyy. A folder with all catalogs backup: 📂 2024_Catálogo_Lightroom - > mm.dd.yyyy_name_and_name_dd.mm.yyyy. backups: SSD internal 4TB + 01 HDD external 4TB + cloud BackBlaze and 2TB Google Drive jpeg HightRes and vídeo 4k. Make a material delivery term with a deadline for complaints and exemption from responsibility for maintaining a backup after the material has been delivered and aproved 😉.
It's always better to do whatever works best for you! I think because I've been doing this method for so long I already know the year is at the front without questioning myself, but good point.
This is almost exactly how I do it. I lost all my data 17 years ago and it was terrible. Today I also use the 3-2-1 method with a 4TB cloud. So thumbs up for this video!👍🏼
Sorry to hear you lost all your data before, I'm sure that must have felt awful :( and yeah I can't speak highly enough of backing up your files properly!! It's so important
I am not into photography but I love watching your videos.
Thank you for watching, I appreciate it!
it is so cute when you said backwards hehe most of europ 2023-01-01 (yyyy-mm-dd) always :) but i do have it backwards FASHION -> YEAR -> dates and type of fashion same for PORTRAITS and so on. Your organizasion is GOOD was satisfiying to watch
This workflow, in terms of backup, is the best I have seen in any photography channel (I work on IT). One detail, and I say detail because *she mentioned it in passing*: having an offline copy is super important. In an ideal work, it will be tape, but a simple HDD will do. If you have all your copies online a single ransomware attack could bring the full backup house to the ashes.
If you use a single online backup you are also vulnerable to your backup provider going out of business.
From an IT best practice standpoint, your physical backups should be in separate buildings and preferably many miles apart ..to allow for fire, theft, flood, earthquake, etc.
Awesome and Beautiful Work Julia ❤ Thanks for Sharing Such Beautiful Tips and Valuable Knowledge 😍🥰👶😊😇🧿❤
As a beginner freelancer this is extremely helpful thank you SO much!
I'm so glad you found this helpful!
I loved this video! I also have almost the exact way of organizing my folders on my extrnals with the raws, edited, lightroom catalog, and exported. Not sure where I learned it, but it's so helpful. All of my old drives are definitely not that organized.
For sending clients your highres and lowres images,, do you send them to everyone or just the more rcommerce, etc clients. Not sure if I should be or not
Thanks Julia. Being a pro photographer is just too much work!! OMG what a detailed saving/filling process. I would stuff that up, every time!!
I keep all my RAW images on an SSD drive. I keep my final images (Hi-res and Low-res, filed separately) on OneDrive. I have a NAS backup at home. I keep a rotation of 50 of my favourite hi-res shots on my iPad, to show family/friends.
Haha actually that reminds me that when I first started this method it was a lot to remember and I would stuff it up here and there. I had to make a little checklist to remind me what the steps are to make sure all my files are properly backed up. Over the years, it really becomes second nature and I don't even think about it anymore while I'm organising my files! Also I love that idea of keeping some of your favourite shots on hand to be able to show them easily
This is the best back up workflow I've watched so far. Thanks for this!
I love photography, great passion ❤️❤️
Awesome Julia ❤
Thank you!
wow, great work. i can imagine its hard keeping track of everything
Thanks! It was at first, I had to make a little checklist of all the steps to make sure I didn't forget anything. But over the years of doing this over and over again, it becomes second nature
I use a PC with Synology drive which allows a large storage hard drive on my PC to be continually synced with the NAS.
Thank you for this.
Your one of the best Aussie photographer 😂❤
You're too kind, thank you
Do you use iCloud or Google Drive/Photos?
Great ideas, thank you!
So creative and organized!
Thank you!
I like to have a top level folder that’s just the year. So “2024”. The reason being that just using yyyymmdd-something results in a huge top-level flat structure. I find it more helpful to break this up. This scheme also allows for one SSD per year (one year per SSD) as a potential physical arrangement. Then, as you rightly say, you need multiple physical copies on different media and in different locations as backup.
After shooting to 2 SD cards, I usually import straight to Lightroom afterwards so I have a cloud back up. Then I backup the files to multiple hard drives. I do all my culling in Lightroom so I can separate the de-selects from the selects with the rating tool. And then export the edited photos to their own folder. Once I'm completely done and backed up everywhere, I delete the photos from Lightroom and SD cards. The end result of backups are: 4 hard drives, currently my computer, and currently my laptop. I will need to get a good online backup service soon as well as a NAS so that I can eliminate my computer and laptop from this process.
Impressive! You are so good.
I love your style and your videos. A little question: do you have a template for your lightroom catalog? (i think otherwise you have to set up collections, etc again for every new catalog)
Watching from Malawi
Hey Julia! Is there any chance you could do a 35mm comparison between the Canon 35mm 1.4 II vs the Gmaster 35mm 1.4?
Awesome! Nice content!!
You are one of the reasons why it's such a pity that Australia so far away from Europe. Wish i had you as a neighbour. :-)
Australia is so far from everywhere :( but I travel to Europe quite often, my partner's family lives in Poland so we go there every few years!
What online backup do you recommend?
this is invaluable. thank you so much for this
So glad you found this helpful!
Great ideas, pro or hobbyist!
Best workflow video I've seen on RUclips so far! Thank you! Is the coloring you did on the photos at 7:55 a preset that you sell?
Thanks so much! To answer your question: kind of. haha - those photos I used my Amalfi Lightroom Preset to edit, but I used my preset through Imagen AI which batch edits sets of photos for you - I have a whole video showing the process of editing those photos on my channel I uploaded a few months ago, it called the Quickest Photo Editing Workflow if you are interested to see how it works :)
@@juliatrotti Thanks!
Awesome!
Thanks so much
Brilliant workflow Julia, thank you. Which SSD back up external drives do you use? Those in the video marked MacBook 2022 / 23 looked really compact and USB c operated. I also use a MacBook Pro. Thanks Again. (PS: also enjoyed your Sony a6700 Review, so cool:). Seb.
I see, it's a UGREEN unit, thanks anyway.
hmm 23.10.16 could also be 1923, right? How about a range? How do you handle this? Like 2023-04-01_to_2023-04-07 - Arizona Spring Adventure? Just curious to compare notes.
I’m more of a hobby photographer and I have SD cards coming out of my ears because I never know where to store all the photos without losing them.
Yeah my first couple of years of doing photography was all just for fun too and my photos were ALL over the place lol maybe you could start out by investing in an SSD to at least have all your photos in one place + online backup maybe.
@@juliatrotti what service are you using for online backup? Also price..?
What are the SSD you have?
I don't have any interest in photography....i just watch all of your videos just to see you 😂❤
Hi Julia - Great video as always. One quick thing! By any chance, did you test the 50mm 1.4 GM with Sony a7IV handheld? Thinking if A74 is better or A7R5 is using handheld.
Thank you! I only used it handheld for video on the A7SIII, from memory I think the A7RV has better IBIS in general compared to the A7IV though, Sony have been working on it in their recent cameras
I name files and folders with YYYYMMDD, so today would be 20240203. Saves having to do dots/hyphens while keeping files and folders chronological. If I want to have separate folders with the same date I add a letter to the end to keep them chronological (simpler and shorter than timestamp), eg. 20240203a 20240203b 20240203c; and then I add name/description after that.
That sounds good too, I also love the lettering idea if you do more than one shoot on the same date! I might implement that into my workflow too :)
Have been looking to refresh my backup system and found your video really helpful! A couple of follow up q's for you:
1. How do you transfer your files from your SSD to your NAS? Do you use something like Goodsync or Carbon Copy Cloner? I used to use Chronosync but it got away from me :)
2. When you first sit down to dump your cards onto your SSD, do you backup your RAW images onto your NAS right then as well? Or do you set up your folder system on the SSD and then transfer that to your NAS? And then once you are done editing and delivering to clients, you replace the old files on your NAS with the newly updated ones?
3. Curious about why you use Bridge at the end? I usually just export renamed low and high res files right from Lightroom - wondering what the benefit is here?
4. Laasssst one! Do you keep all of your edited finals in Pixieset/Dropbox and just pay for that storage? I've started to do this with Shootproof but it adds up quickly!
Excited to try Imagen AI - appreciate that tip! I never ended up getting into Photo Mechanic but that speed is hard to beat. I'm going to take another look at it haha! Thanks so much for all of this!
Hi Julia can you explain how to down load my sd card straight onto a ssd drive. Thank you
I don't do that, I always plug my SD card and SSD into a computer and transfer it that way.
Question:
3 backups… 2 in the NAS that has all of the photos and LR content, the cloud is just the final high rez only?
Yep, for me the cloud just has the final highres copy. Internet is too slow in Australia to upload all the raws unfortunately otherwise I would do that!
I have a question, do you always keep ALL of the photos you take or would you delete any? I am a wildlife photographer so can take 1000s each shoot and very easily reduce this to 100s if not 10s. Would your method change dependent on this?
Hey Julia, great video!
Quick question... so you you never delete any final images from any photoshoot? If a client from 2016 messages you about their images, do you have them on your NAS?
Thank you and yep. I know some photographers delete their deselect raws and only keep the culled raws. Some photographers delete all the raws after a certain amount of time. And then there are file hoarders like me and I just keep everything 😅
Forgot to mention: in your NAS setup bitrot protection if you can. In the case of QNAP if you have QTS hero you are set.
very useful. yet one remark, why expose two separate NAS to ransomware or else if you are not going to be editing out of them. I would think you can unplug from the internet the one closer to you, and just use the offsite one in the remote case you have to access your old photos while travelling. In a way, NAS is "online" but hosted by yourself and hence more risky than if a professional service protects your uploads (like BackBlaze)
Isolating the NAS physically and logically from the network is a smart strategy. However, if you had ransomware on one storage device, and then duplicated that to a second (whether a second NAS, backblaze, or something else), you'd also be copying the ransomware over. Backing up to two different kinds of systems, with different types of operating systems, would help to protect against this, since the ransomware would likely not be able to execute on different types of platforms.
I shoot a lot of digital, but I have a lot of negatives in all formats from the late 1970s up to now. All properly fixed, washed and most of them treated in a weak solution of Kodak Hypo Clearing agent and Kodak Selenium Toner. They will out last me by a 100 years, they cost very little to store in archival sleeves and folders. This is a lot more than I could say about thousands of digital files that I have saved on my Lacie back up units. Zeros and ones will be erased someday no matter what, sadly.
How do you keep your negatives stored? I have an A4 folder with sleeves and I write the same folder format I talked about in this video at the top of the sleeve haha so I know the date, camera and film stock used at a glance. Not sure if there is a better way though!
I never bother sending images to my phone, that just clutters up the storage.
Just use a card reader to transfer images from CF/Sd cards to my computer.
Then just review them and transfer the keepers to, modestly priced, G drive storage.
You are currently using Photo Mechanic - Have you ever considered to use Adobe Bridge? And if so, why did you choose to use Photo Mechanic?
Yes! I have and do use Bridge for culling occasionally, my only problem is that it is too slow and images load or flicker as you're moving through them which wastes too much time even with my specced out mac studio/any of the image load settings available in Bridge. I only use it to cull if I have a really small amount of images to go through. PM is better for me as there is 0 loading in between all images even in a folder with 5000 photos. I also use Adobe Bridge to do all file organisation!
@@juliatrotti got it, thanks for sharing your point of view on this. I appreciate it 😊
Do you have a preferred brand/ model of SSD? The ones you show look nice & compact and seem to have an SD slot. Thanks!
If you can afford it don't go for a single brand, but two different (in terms of the substrate), that way if one has a bug of is subject to premature degradation will be safe.
Hi first comment ❤❤
Thank you for watching!
Love your accent 😂😂
siempre estas hermosa
I bet you that this is some sort of play for leverage. In any event, it will never happen.
Adopt new thinking. Be brave. Get external SSD and preferably online storage. Do not keep anything in your PC as your main storage of data.
Did you watch the video?
24-01-24 it is difficult to recognize the date format. Is the year at the beginning or at the end. Therefore i use this date format yyyy-mm-dd for file names 2024-01-24_projectname.
In Brazil 📂 2024 -> 📂 01_Weddings -> 📂 mm.dd.yyyy_name_and_name_dd.mm.yyyy.
A folder with all catalogs backup: 📂 2024_Catálogo_Lightroom - > mm.dd.yyyy_name_and_name_dd.mm.yyyy. backups: SSD internal 4TB + 01 HDD external 4TB + cloud BackBlaze and 2TB Google Drive jpeg HightRes and vídeo 4k. Make a material delivery term with a deadline for complaints and exemption from responsibility for maintaining a backup after the material has been delivered and aproved 😉.
It's always better to do whatever works best for you! I think because I've been doing this method for so long I already know the year is at the front without questioning myself, but good point.
That's a great way to organise your files too!@@Feliperoehefotografia