Image proccessing & storeage

Hi

I have just purchased my first DSLR (K200D). I am looking for advice on imaging software to purchase. I am thinking of Photoshop elements but keep also hearing about a package called, I think, Lightroom. Does anyonye have opinions about either of these. I would want whatever package to be able to manipulate raw images. I am also looking for ideas on the best way to store my images on my PC, I guess if I purchased Photoshop there would be the option of storing on the software. What about web based storage, any thoguhts on that. Finally what is a good way way of backing up images in case my laptop crashes and all is lost, DVD, CD, Memory sticks etc..?

Most people on this forum use Silkypix for raw development. It is an excelent piece of software which I am only just starting to get to grips with. In most cases it more or less eliminates the need for Photoshop or similar, certainly to the extent that you can get away with something like GIMP (IMHO, and since GIMP is free, why not give it a try?)

In terms of storage, IMHO there is no substitute for a sensible directory structure. Software is available which can classify pictures by all manner of things and this is very helpful, but you have to ask yourself, what if that software goes down? What if Windows goes kaput and all I can recover is the directory containing my image files?

If that's one big directory which relys on software to help you find your pictures, you're stuck. If all the pics are split up into sub-directories with sensible names, it's not as easy as the software would make it but you'll get by. For this reason, I advocate using both a software solution AND setting up your file storage in a sensible manner. I have mine under year>month>event description, but whatever works for you is good.

As for backups, I have one major recommendation :

Have at least 2, on different types of media. I use DVD+R and removable HDD. My reasoning is that they have very different failure modes, which hopefully makes it unlikely that both will fail at an awkward moment and loose the same file. I recently had to restore from backup and my system was vindicated. Both backups had some corrupt files, but in no case were the same files corrupt on both such that I would actually have lost something.


I have seen grown men break down and cry when I've had to tell them that their HDD is unrecoverable. It's not pretty, don't let it happen to you.

I use Photoshop Elements 6. I like it a lot though the RAW developer is pretty basic. One of these days I plan on buying Bibble to do that as I really like it.
Photoshop Elements comes with an organiser - but it still relies on you having a good file storage organisation to work well.
PSE also enables you to do backups easily.

I back up to DVD or archive quality CD (depending on the photos) and to a separate hard drive.

I use lightroom, you can download a trial version free for 30 days.

I download my images from the camera to a 'pending' folder. I import the images into lightroom, select the discards and delete from disk. I move these images to a day folder inside a month folder inside a year folder. So I have 2008, January, and various folders for the days on which I took pictures. Then I delete the images from the camera.

I backup automatically from my macbook to my wife's iMac, and then automatically from there to an external hard drive. On the first day of the month I back up last month's images to DVD.

Have a go with the free trial versions of Silkpix and Lightroom (and any other programs) to see which you prefer.

Lightroom has some more powerful features, but personally I prefer Silkypix's user interface and I'm happy with the quality of the results.

For storage on your PC, just an ordinary large hard drive (internal or external) will do fine. For backups I use external hard drives and DVDs. Online backup is expensive for large amounts of data.

Hope you had a camera with you. It's an ill wind.... etc.

G

I understand that the Pentax Photo Browser software that came with the K100D super is based on Silkypix. Can anyone speak to the differences between these, and the benefits of trying the "real" Silkypix? Thanks!

The "engine" might be silkypix but the functionality and appearance bear no resemblance to the silkypix product.

Silkypix Developer Studio has a much bigger and better user interface, and provides many more and finer controls. It's like a fine cheese compared to the stump of chalk that is Pentax Lab.

Pentax Browser is a different program - used for viewing images only. Lab and Silkypix is for processing and RAW conversion. Silkypix can also process JPEGs and TIFFs.