I've found the time this morning to renew my backups: first all the digital photos I have stored on my computer from November and December. Once I have transferred photos from my cameras to my computer, I reformat the memory cards. So if the SATA drive the pictures are stored on fails I will loose the lot. Then I backed up my downloads of programs. Again if the C drive fails I will loose all the new program files and updates that I need to restore my computer. I know hard drives are very reliable but we did have quite a few fail at the school where I worked.
Making backups is a pain in the a*** to do but very necessary.
Next up I have an Epson AcuLaser c900 colour laser printer which I use to print out most of my stuff with but for photographs it just doesn't cut the mustard. The prints are on plain paper and the colours are not quite right.
So for photographs I used an Epson Photo 870 inkjet. This printer was showing its age though. I only used it occasionally so each time I had to go through the cleaning cycle several times to get the ink back to the print heads. Even then the colours were "off" with prints showing a distinct magenta cast. Correcting them in Photoshop helped but took forever.
So I have treated myself to a new HP Photosmart D7360 printer which arrived from HP Espana last Friday. Not only is it very accurate in terms of colour it is a lot faster too. As a bonus I can print directly from either camera using the Pictbridge connection or by inserting the memory cards into the slots on the printer. Although I've tried it using Olmec Optimum paper which I already had, I understand that for best results HPs own Advanced paper is the one to go for. I can't wait to see how good the results are using the "right" paper.
HP claim that their Vivera inks are fade resistant for 200 years. I won't be around to check on that but hopefully my heirs will thank me for making the right choice.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
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3 comments:
I know that recommending software is always a dangerous business Keith, but have you considered using Google's Picasa tool if you don't already? It has matured into a very nice program now for cataloguing all the images in your collection, which you can then caption, label and search if you want to.
It also makes a nice front end for printing and managing the photos too. There are basic editing tools so things like colour correction can be done in a snap, and the reason for my mentioning it is that it now has a backup feature that will burn the images straight to a series of DVDs and remember which ones are backed up and which ones aren't so incremental backups are easy too.
Well worth a look.
Google's Picasa is a brilliant piece of software and best of all is free.
I already have Canon Zoom Browser Fuji FinePix Viewer and HP Photosmart Premier all trying to manage my photos. For printing to the new printer I use the HP software which is excellent. From time to time I use the Canon raft of software especially to find information about the EXIF data. The Canon software even shows me which focus points I used to take pictures with my EOS 350D.
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