[quote=“felix-insects, post:19, topic:34764”]
You should not reduce the file size on you computer
[/quote] No absolutely not. A camera RAW file is the digital negative. This contain all or most of the information from the image. It is not possible to edit or crop on a computer. Lightroom is a RAW editor on which you can crop, increase brightness etc. The changes is kept in a file adjacent to the RAW file.The last step is to export it to a iNaturalist ready jpg, maximum 2048 x 2048. or as above to a DNG or a 16 bit TIFF (but the last is large and possibly overkill coming from a 10 or 12 bit Canon Raw file (My old work computer was taking ages just to open those large TIFF files)). The original RAW file is untouched and if I decided I must do it differently (for a different purpose, print or magazine) I can do it as it is not damaged as a JPG would be.
Yes a NAS is a great option if you can justify the expense. I have a Synology NAS that I bought six or seven years ago and it’s still going strong. It currently has a 5 TB capacity across four physical disks, and only now is the first disk beginning to fail.
Another nice thing is that the Synology iOS app backs up my phone’s camera roll to the NAS too.
I second this
Still, creating two files of different size is too much and creating small one means you won’t have a normal one when you need it, as you can’t just get to the same editing after you moved files and deleted those from Lightroom.
What environmental concerns arise from storing all your photos in the cloud? I keep almost all my photos on google drive, one drive etc…
Me too tbh, I hate having a cluttered photo archive.
I cannot upload my RAW image. It will be large and unreadable. iNaturalist only accept JPG. I also cannot upload a JPG image. It is 8000 pix wide. It will take much longer and I am not sure what the 4 times reduction in iNaturalist will look like. The reason for cropping is to put the observation in the forefront and to have some control over the quality of the image. I suspect reducing the image in Lightroom with appropriate sharpening etc. will be better as in iNaturalist. In addition Lightroom is also an organizer, archive, allowing you to find and tag images but also to work on it while it is not physically on the computer but on cloud or harddrives. It is creating a preview, saving space. In short it is such a very powerful program that almost everything can be done there (For that is Photoshop but it for the most part integrated so that everything is done from within Lightroom).
I know, and know full well what Lr is, both modern and Classic. But if photo is too large I just copy it and resize in Paint, those smaller ones aren’t needed anywhere else but iNat, so I delete them afterwards, constantly changing Lr export settings can lead to wrongfully small files when you didn’t need it, but forgot about.
You can have different Lightroom exports for different purposes. Using Paint is like using a spade for surgery instead of a surgical blade. Also as far as I know no batch processing in Paint so it would be taking a long time extra.
Most full files are uploading easily, if you somehow have each files 8000 wide, that’s different, but not the case for me.
Who cares what I use if iNat has files in bad quality anyway? I don’t see a difference and people looking also.
Clearly @broacher and most of the identifiers struggling with observations will think differently. But I think this is veering of topic.
I’m one of top identifiers and I don’t see what you’re trying to say here, not sure if others will actually agree on that, change in 1% of size doesn’t make object unrecognizable. https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/106941578
If anything, if you mention iders, it worth mentioning that people should do more cropping if their file is too large and object is still too small, export a bigger version for archive and then a cropped version that you’d upload on iNat.
I usually crop my photos for iNat, upload them, then immediately delete the cropped version of the photo from my computer. Just keeping the original.
Edited to add: I highlight all the files I want to upload in a file manager window about half the size of the screen then drag and drop them onto full screen browser window in the back (iNat upload page). After my observations are all uploaded, I go back to the file manager window and the files I just uploaded are still highlighted. Then I just hit the delete key on my keyboard.
I take a similar approach to @tiwane and @lappelbaum and prune my photos. I use the iNat app for interacting and once they’re in the iNat cloud, they’re off my phone forever.
Maybe with higher quality cameras and the workflow of photograph, transfer, edit, and upload, it lends itself to “someday…” thinking:
- Someday, I’ll need these…
Not unique to iNat. Have you ever saved the leftover piece of pipe, wire, etc. from a home improvement or repair? Do you know any car enthusiasts with cars in their garages that’s been sitting taken apart for decades, etc. because “someday…”?
It’s normal to be more ambitious about the possibilities for something that’s available than to look honestly at the reality that most “someday…” collections just sit there unused for years.
One solution? Use a 5-year (1-year, 1-month, etc.) rule. If you haven’t had to go back to the data for that long, it’s not worth keeping and the odds of needing anything that old may be outweighed by the effort of managing the data.
Would still enjoy hearing about counter-examples where holding onto the data for such a long time was helpful!
Because the servers have to be constantly running in order for your files to be available whenever you want them. If you save your files at home on external hard drive you can put them away when you don’t need them. And of course turn your computer off (or hibernate) when you aren’t using it.
I’ve heard rumors that the bearings may go bad just sitting there. Do you power up the drives and read all the data back ocassionally so that the drive’s error correction can do it’s job and fix any minor storage problems that could have developed while drive was sitting there? Hopefully someone who knows more about long term magnetic storage issues can comnent…
Sure, I use them to check things, so far no errors were ever found by the system, I had problems with internal disk many years ago, but not these.
Unfortunately early on with digital photography (2004) I didn’t think about the future and resized my photos so they would fit my computer screen to use as a wallpaper or screensaver. I didn’t save the original and later regretted it when screen resolutions became bigger and I started printing my own photos. Photos I took with that same camera a few years later that I didn’t resize are big enough to print an 8x10 photo. The ones I resized are only good enough for a 5x7. I had a couple really cute animal photos that I didn’t save the original size and I regret it. That set me up for the tendency to save the original and do resizes and crops as needed.
I’m glad I kept all my sort of bad photos (when I didn’t get a better one of the subject) because they became very useful for iNat years later. But that was back when my cameras made smaller image files and I could just burn like 3 months of images to a single blank DVD.
Unfortunately I made the mistake back then of not backing up files to a memory stick while waiting to have enough photos to fill a DVD. My laptop and camera were stolen in 2008 and I lost some really great bird photos I had taken during a trip to High Island and Bolivar Peninsula (opposite side of the bay from Galveston, Texas). I had also taken a lot of photos and some video at the Vet School open house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I have been to the open house several times but usually I was too busy at the table for the pet rescue I volunteered with. That year we had a lot of volunteers so I was free to spend a lot of time exploring. Also the Mississippi river got really high that year and I got some cool photos from the top of the levee showing the river water nearly to the top on one side and cars far below driving down the road next to the levee on the other side. All gone except for maybe half a dozen photos I had posted online or emailed to family and 3 videos I had uploaded to my YouTube channel. After that happened I was much better about making back ups and when my new laptop got a terrible virus I just wiped the hard drive and started over. Sorry, I guess that was slightly off topic.
I don’t store any photos online just in case google locks my account and destroys my life because they misread the word ‘insect’ when they scan my stuff.
I have images dating back to when I started using a digital camera way back in 2003. As I have all the images with accompanying metadata stored in Lightroom, managing them and finding a particular image when I need it are absolutely not a problem. And yes, I have actually found it extremely useful, both for personal documentation and also at times for more serious research involving third parties.
In the very beginning I too made the terrible mistake of deleting the raw files and keeping just a relatively low-res copy. I’ve had many an occasion to regret this bad choice, which fortunately I rectified before losing too much potentially valuable data.
Unless storage is really a BIG problem, I can’t think of any reason for deleting images which could potentially be useful. Maybe now you can’t imagine what use they could be, but interests and needs change. The future’s not ours to see ;-).