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‹ Photo Notes · 18 listopadu, 2015
No, today it won’t be about a photographer who has lost his marbles, but about the use of modern technologies that make everyday work easier, and not just for photographers.
When, not so many years ago, people talked about the cloud (storing data online, working with it and sharing it) as the near future, for some it was an exciting dream, for others the threat of Big Brother and a clear decision: „I’ll never go for that, I’m not just handing my sensitive data to anybody“.
Cloud solutions didn’t arrive in a leap, though; no cyber revolution took place. Clouds in the most varied forms began to appear in everyday life in a completely unobtrusive and inconspicuous way, as online applications, accounts at Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft and others. Our smartphones and tablets get markedly dumber when the internet isn’t available. And conversely, once connected, they often nicely link up with our desktop computer by themselves and we don’t have to worry about which device to continue the work we started on. Lots of people therefore don’t even suspect that they are in fact using clouds.
Evernote
A nice example is right under my hands now. I’m writing this article, like all the others, in the Evernote application. It isn’t a typical cloud in the form of a drive, it is rather a cloud notebook, a depository of notes and documents. Right now I’m writing in it on my desktop computer, but I started the article on the tram, on my phone. At the place where I had put down the virtual pencil, I have now smoothly carried on in the comfort of a keyboard and a big monitor, and it’s possible that in an hour I’ll continue from the sofa, where I’ll open the same application on a tablet or log in online from anywhere else.
Evernote is nicely integrated into any device (phone, web browser etc.) and lets you quickly and easily save for later, for example, an interesting article, plane tickets, travel tickets or a hotel confirmation, a picture, a contact, or you can create your notes and documents directly in it (like writing this article).
There’s no need for any Save or Open button; folders in Evernote are called notebooks and individual notes are inside them. So you can have, say, a notebook Thailand 2016, where you’ll put aside interesting tourist information a year in advance, as well as PDF documents with plane tickets and the like. Into a notebook Choosing a camera you can drop various reviews and tests with a single click; other notebooks you can name Household, Work, Recipes, Inspiration etc. The number of notebooks and of notes in them is unlimited. I have, for example, a folder Workshop. In the morning I write something into it on the computer, go to a workshop, where I pull out the tablet and have the texts with me. Practical and comfortable.
Each note can moreover be given any number of tags (keywords), which also makes searching and sorting easier. For example, the keyword Italy shows me all notes with this word, even though they are saved in different notebooks (say Rome, Milan April, Milan June etc.).
As if that weren’t enough, you can share any of the notebooks with colleagues or friends and work in it together (great for work teams or for planning a family holiday together).
Evernote is free, though of course you can pay extra for a „richer“ version. But what the free version offers is amply enough. There are also a number of add-ons for it.
Try Evernote yourself, it’s great.
Eternally full mailboxes
Remember the time when the size of an email attachment was limited? We complained that 500 kB or 2 MB wasn’t enough, but there was something to it. Almost every day people send me photos, PDF files, ZIP archives etc… Without limits. They often don’t hesitate to send photographs in full resolution, and it is common for 2 photos in an email to take up 20 megabytes.
On the other hand, I’m often asked for high-resolution photographs (by publishers etc.). It’s convenient and pleasant that today I can „drag“ almost any attachment onto the window of the outgoing message and send it without further adjustments or work.
But after a few weeks of such activity I get a warning message that my mailbox is 96% full. Then there’s nothing for it but to sort messages by size and delete and delete.
At every workshop I already ask photographers not to send me photographs by email, but as a link to some cloud. Still, now and then someone instead uses various, from my point of view hair-raising, solutions like Úschovna or a password-protected file on Uloz.to. In both cases I have to download a zip, unpack it somewhere and so on and so on…
Yet there is a very elegant solution, and that is precisely the cloud, or rather disk space in the cloud. Let’s look at some of them.
Cloud drives
In principle all cloud drives are the same. After installing on your computer, a folder is created (sometimes it really looks like a drive, even though it’s still just a folder on your disk). In this folder you can create any structure of your own folders and save your files in them. All of it is automatically synchronized with your online space and with the other devices on which you have the same application installed and are logged in to your account. Thanks to that you can work with the same file at home, at work, on the road on a phone or tablet etc.
The main benefit is precisely the synchronization. A file you started in the office, you open at home and carry on working. There is no need to email yourself a copy of the file before leaving work, and other tasks that only add work and as a result are also a source of confusion and mistakes (do I have the right version of the file?). Your files are always up to date and always at hand.
A matter of course is the option to log in to your space from a web browser. So you can work with your files even on someone else’s computer, where you don’t have the possibility or don’t want to install an application.
Google Drive
Google Drive is probably the best-known cloud. Among its main advantages is the integration into other Google products, such as Gmail or Google Docs. I consider it a disadvantage that I can’t choose where on my computer its folder will be; it is automatically tied to the system drive C. But that one has the smallest capacity in my computer and I’d welcome the option to move it to another drive.
In the past I used Google Drive mostly for work: I had all my work documents in it and so could work from home too. Today I use it mostly for Google Docs.
Free capacity: 15 GB (can be extended for a fee)
More information, sign-up and installation: Google Drive.
Dropbox
Although it offers the smallest space, it is my favourite. I can’t explain the reasons exactly, but that’s how it is. Great integration into the system on computers and mobile devices, a likeable interface, simple and fast file search, a very easy way of sharing and so on. It automatically saves (if you agree) screenshots from your monitor and also offers synchronization of photos and videos from your phone (I don’t use this function, another service does it for me). I use it for almost anything, mainly in connection with sharing.
Free capacity: 2 GB (can be increased for a fee; further free increases come from installing Dropbox on more devices – phones, tablets… or inviting friends etc.)
More information, sign-up and installation: Dropbox.
OneDrive
OneDrive is a Microsoft product and, like Google’s services, follows the philosophy of one account across all services. It is nicely integrated into Windows and mobile devices. I use it mostly to synchronize photos from my mobile phone. It works like this: for example I come back from holiday, switch on the computer, change clothes, and when I then sit down at the computer, the photos are already uploaded and synchronized. Synchronization starts immediately after the phone connects to wi-fi.
Free capacity: 15 GB (can be increased for a fee; another 15 GB free for synchronizing photos from your mobile, more space for inviting friends)
More information, sign-up and installation: OneDrive.
Yandex Disk
If you don’t suffer from Russophobia, try Yandex Disk. It reminds me most of Dropbox, but because Yandex in Russia is something like Google elsewhere in the world (or Seznam here), it offers integration with other Yandex services. It offers more free space and even in the paid version is a strong competitor.
Free capacity: 20 GB (can be increased for a fee; there is a possibility of further free space, I don’t even know for what, but at the moment I have 210 GB at my disposal)
More information, sign-up and installation: Yandex Disk.
Mega
I don’t know how it could have fallen out of this list, and thanks for pointing it out.
Free capacity: 50 GB (can be increased for a fee)
More information, sign-up and installation: Mega.
Copy
Another cloud on the same principle as the others. Neither better nor worse, it may come in handy.
Free capacity: 15 GB (can be increased for a fee, by invitations etc…)
More information, sign-up and installation: Copy.
Box
The last mentioned and again similar cloud is Box.
Free capacity: 10 GB (can be increased for a fee)
More information, sign-up and installation: Box.
All in one?
Does it seem pointless and confusing to you to have so many clouds? Try to imagine you have work things in one, music in another, photos you want to share in another, and into yet another you might save installation files of your favourite programs.
Services such as Odrive can moreover join all the clouds mentioned above and a number of others into one, as it were. Try it…
The magic of cloud sharing
When I need to send photos to a client or a publisher, I use almost exclusively Dropbox. I create a folder, copy the files into it and then put into the email only a link to this folder or even to a specific file. In the case of photographs, on clicking they are displayed in web resolution, but can easily be enlarged or downloaded to the computer in the original resolution.
Photographs can also be commented on there, so when someone, say after a workshop, sends me a link to photos they want to discuss, I can write comments directly on specific photos. It is far more elegant than replying to an email in the style of „third photo…“ or „photo DSC4012…“.
Example of sharing on Dropbox here
Not enough for a complete backup
I know. Your photo archive filled several terabytes long ago and none of the clouds described above reaches such capacity. Some do, but unfortunately not for free. Some Chinese services offer up to tens of TB, but you have to wade through Chinese and reckon with a very frequent requirement for a Chinese phone number, needed for verification. I managed to wade through the registration at Tencent Weiyun with the help of an Italian phone (the Czech prefix isn’t on offer). I got 1 TB and an offer of another 3 TB for installing apps on a mobile phone. The Chinese interface is unfortunately on my computer too, so I’m rather testing this service for now (long-term).
SurDoc gives 100 GB free on registration and states that you can get up to 1 TB free. Still not the most, but it’s free. Unlimited space you can of course pay for.
Amazon Cloud Drive offers for the lovely price of $11.99 a year unlimited space for photos plus 5 GB for videos and other files. The problem is the poor interface of the application and the total absence of any automation or the option to connect this space to some backup program. So it’s more for hobbyists than for serious work. But it is currently by far the cheapest.
For 5 USD a month you get unlimited backup space e.g. at BackBlaze. BackBlaze isn’t a „living“ cloud like e.g. Dropbox, it really is only an online backup of your data. If your disks fail, you can download your backup as a ZIP or, for a fee, have a disk „FedExed“ (after „to Google“, another American verb).
Rated as the best cloud at present, offering unlimited disk capacity, is Carbonite. Like the previous one it costs you 5 dollars a month and offers markedly greater comfort when working with files.
Adobe Creative Cloud
You can’t talk about cloud solutions for photographers without mentioning Adobe’s Creative Cloud. It offers a sophisticated online connection of Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator etc.) with your data, for which it also provides online storage. That’s it in brief; the possibilities of Adobe CC would deserve an article of their own.
As I mentioned at the start, gradually and inconspicuously we use cloud services more and more. Even now there would be many more of them than I have described here, and more will keep appearing.
Have a lovely day and flawless synchronization 🙂