Project – Finishing

Backups

I always copy images directly to a 1TB external hard drive into a ‘download’ folder with subfolders by date captured.

Also on this ‘Photographs’ drive I have an ‘in progress’ folder, which is where I have all the images I’m working on – also with subfolders – e.g. OCA. All ongoing work done in Photoshop, Lightroom, On-one etc is saved there, rather than on the main PC.

The ‘Print’ folder on the external drive contains all the finished, flattened images again in subfolders – e.g. OCA > DPP > Part 3.

Doing it this way, I always have my images separate from the main computer hard drives.

I also have another 1 TB external hard drive – Photographs Backup – Every fortnight I format this drive and copy the whole of the contents of the ‘Photographs’ drive. So this gives me a complete backup of all my images should the ‘photographs’ drive fail – at worst I’ll have only lost images from the previous fortnight.

My third external hard drive – 2 TB ‘Backup’ – is used to back up my main computer once a week, so saving everything I have worked on, including Lightroom catalogue and any images located for easy access in learning logs / blogs etc.

So I think I’ve got the backup system pretty well boxed off – I had to use it last month, as my PC hard drive broke down. I was so pleased that it was in place – transferring it to a new machine saved me days of hardship. I’m not too concerned about saving documents remotely – if the house were to burn down, I’d have more pressing things to worry about and I can always take more images.

Prints:

I have a 24 in Dell monitor which I calibrate at least every 4 weeks, using a Gretag Macbeth eye-one display 2 calibrator. This is set up for a 4 weeks reminder, but if there is a significant change in lighting conditions I recalibrate it anyway.

I have two A3+ printers – Canon i9950 and Epson Stylus Photo R2880 – using a variety of papers – Olmec, Fotospeed, Hahnemϋhle, Ilford Galerie, Harman. I create ICC profiles for the individual papers for each printer using a datacolour Spyder 3 print calibrator.

I feel that my prints generally have a good resemblance to what I see on the screen.