Ask HN: How to you browse, store, sync, and backup your family photos? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to you browse, store, sync, and backup your family photos?

8 pointsstevesearer7 comments

Since Google is no longer supporting the Picasa desktop application, I'm looking for a replacement solution and thought I'd ask what other people do for browsing, storage, sync, and backup.

My previous setup was to import and browse using Picasa. And then backup and sync those photos across devices using Dropbox. Because I organized with a folder-structure, the Dropbox app was good enough for mobile photo-browsing. I feel somewhat old school in that I like having local copies of my photos so cloud-only solutions like Google Photos aren't quite what I'm looking for.

Anyway, what do you all do for your all-around photo needs?

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There are many cloud storage solutions for photos such as Dropbox, Amazon or iCloud. Here you can find their review http://www.cloudstorage101.com/best-cloud-storage-for-photos.... Also, for personal use you can try out OwnCloud, Pydio, Ceph, Cozy and my personal favorite, Seafile.

I shoot all RAW with my Canon 60D. All photos are stored in a single Lightroom library. Everything is stored on an external 2.5 inch hard drive, which I clone to a second external drive.

The entire library and all RAW files are manually synced to an S3 bucket whenever I added new photos.

I export JPEG files of the best photos of each set and upload them to Google Photos to share them with friends and family, and show them on Chromecast.

I use Lightroom for viewing, organizing, and editing photos. I have local NAS for backing up entire drive.

Then I am using SmugMug for cloud backup. It let me create private albums that I can share with anyone. I can easily sync photos on SmugMug with Lightroom.

(Lately, I am thinking Backblaze should be better option for me. I can share photos on Facebook and email full resolution photos to anyone if they want.)

Whatever you use, I strongly recommend backing up to more than one cloud and also having a local copy of file history (Time Machine on OS X, FileHistory on Windows).

For the second cloud, you might want to look into BackBlaze.

Depend on what mobile eco system you use.

If you use iphone/ipad and mac/windows icloud photos give you more or less what you want.

The photos are offline on your computer, available on demand from you devices.

I was thinking about Google photos but is there a way to backup the whole thing offline.

Also how can a whole family combine all their photos in one place?

Nobody wants local copies anymore, Google Photos is the solution really.

But if you want there's also OneDrive, Dropbox and the likes that keeps a copy in your HD if you want.

Best,

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