You print for everyones else, but do you print for yourself?

[ux4484]

Just now, everyone we know is still verrry analog when it comes to pictures, and I spend a lot of time scanning\printing old pics for copies for them, or reprinting .jpg's I've taken/made over the last 5 years. What I really prefer is to archive them and then be able burn a .jpg CD by Event, year, or (as with my kids) to show the passage time. I greatly prefer this method, but only a handful of folks with DVD players are aware if they play .jpg's or not. And of those with PC's only those with XP (with it's much improved photo viewer) can easily slideshow with a .jpg disk (well, a Mac can too, but even fewer of those than folks who know what kind of DVD player they have). While all this great tech is out there, only a handful us really know how to put it als together. Kodak had a great idea with their picture CD, but the proprietary format and high cost is a turn-off that the public clearly decided not to bite on. HP is pushing a similar idea on it's new PC's with the "HP Memories Disk" shortcut on the desktop (and the app popping up when you double click a .jpg until you check the right box ;)).
I've sold my Mrs on only printing the Gems off our digital collections for display and to give to others, but that still leaves mountains of good shots we have of our kids and good times. For those, I'm archiving and organizing for photo CD's and hoping that upgrading to the next digital standard will not take nearly so much effort.

How about you?

[Jason Dunn]

Great post! There's a slow but steady march forward with DVD players, and now I find that *most* players purchased in the last 24 months are capable of displaying JPEGs and VCD/SVCDS, so I find that there's a fairly high level of compatibility with what I give people. I tend to use something like Photo Story and burn a VCD rather than give people raw JPEGs on the CD, and the results are usually better (from my perspective at least).

I'm really encouraging my relatives to go down to Costco or Wallmart and get digital prints - and so far it seems to be working quite well. :-)

[aroma]

One thing to be cautious of is the sometimes unexpectedly sort life-span of optical media. I was recently reading some articles which expressed concern over some CD's lasting less than a year or two. Expecially if you put adhisive labels on the CD's. This seamingly can shorten the lifespan of the media quite a bit. One rule of thumb. Stick to the name brands. In testing, name brand media had quite a big long lifespan than no-name brands.

- Aaron

[Suhit Gupta]

Interestingly, I am in a similar quandry. I scanned in about 4K pictures a few months ago and have spent many months now trying to crop, rename and generally organize them in a nice SQL db. Once they are all done, I will be able to (or hope to) search for any jpg quite easily. But viewing them, probably on the web, is going to be a pain because of the multiple clicks involved per picture. It would be nice to have a DVD type format that supports jpgs.

When it comes to printing (and I don't print pictures that often, i.e. once a week or so), I usually print them out at work :twisted: or if I am at home then I copy images to my SD card and go to the neighborhood CVS pharmacy that gives some very nice 4x6 prints.

Suhit

PS - My boss just wrecked her HP OfficeJet D145 and I have inherited it. I think I will be able fix it and will then enjoy some nice color prints at home :)

[Jason Dunn]

One thing to be cautious of is the sometimes unexpectedly sort life-span of optical media.

Indeed - I only truly trust my hard drives, and even then I have two levels of backup, and I always move my media with me when I upgrade drives every year or two. Memories are too precious! :-)

[aroma]

I have copies of most of my digital images on two separate machines, in addition to cd/dvd backups. Many of them I keep a hard copy stored away as well, just in case.

[marlof]

I keep a copy of my favorites on a notebook, everything on a desktop (twice, on two different harddisks), on a removable hard disk, and on CDs. I'm still worried that my house will burn down.

But I don't print images for myself. I just carry my iBook and use iView Media Pro to find and slideshow the pictures I'd like to share.

[Suhit Gupta]

I have copies of most of my digital images on two separate machines, in addition to cd/dvd backups. Many of them I keep a hard copy stored away as well, just in case.

Haha, that makes sense. I have my stuff on two separate machines, plus my home machines, my portable HDD (i.e. the iRiver iHP 140) and one DVD.

And like Marlof, I pray that my office and/or my house don't decide to spontaneously combust :), although I would have bigger problems if that happened ;-).

Suhit

[Jason Dunn]

And like Marlof, I pray that my office and/or my house don't decide to spontaneously combust :), although I would have bigger problems if that happened ;-)

Find a friend with a big hard drive and set up an FTP server on his computer. That's what I do. :D

[Suhit Gupta]

Find a friend with a big hard drive and set up an FTP server on his computer. That's what I do. :D

Haha. Though it turns out that I am that friend for most people since I am the one that has the big RAID setup. But you know how machines have that uncanny propensity to die.

Suhit

[Honda_Civic_Si]

My parents just bought this really cool new all in one video player that plays DVDs, CDs, VCD, VHS, and it has a plug in the an SD Card! I have a lot of images on my SD card that I show to my parents on our TV upstairs!

Technology eh?

-Justin.

[Gary Sheynkman]

at least you are going to show them the pics....i am yet to print my New Years pictures :lol: :oops:

[ux4484]

Thanks for all the great input!

I've done the VCD route, and it does give you much more control on how the pics look, but even recent DVD players can be very picky about VCD compatibility (I usually burn 1.0 as not all players support VCD 2.0). I prefer a .jpg disk as it gives more ultimate control to the person who receives it, and saves me a lot of time setting up before burning. My current rack DVD player (a Medion DVD+R/+RW) does a great job at making a slide show of a .jpg disk (goes automatically to a 3 second (each) slide show for a .jpg disk until you hit pause), and much like XP's photo viewer it only requires a quick remote touch to rotate the pic if taken vertically. This makes life easier providing quick and easy disks (eventually) for both people with DVD's and PC's.

Concerning archiving: Presently I backup my pics, music and videos to a spare hard drive on my daughters machine (I'm all IDE/SCSI deviced-out on my PC) and make a redundant backup to DVD+RW's.