What to do with all of those photos?

[pierces]

I have been on a bit of mission lately. I am revisiting the folder listed below and culling the too-blurries, scrapping the ones that fall into the why-the-heck-did-I-take-that category and trimming the redundant images from burst sequences.

 

I re-started the project after running this little report:

 

Considering that I really don't keep everything and have done culling and reorganization in fits and starts over the years, that's still a metric crap-ton of photos to go through. I have also been keywording them and using Lightroom's facial recognition to tag people known to me. (I will do a separate commentary on the hilarious mistakes the facial recognition makes at a later date.) While going through the Family directory (39,209 Files, 437 Folders), a light bulb went off and I actually did something with the idea rather than filing it under "someday". Since all of the grandkids' images have a high percentage of tags associated with them, I thought that doing a small birth-to-now history would be fun for their parents and the Wonderful Wife. I realize that making use of 0.112% of the photos isn't exactly deserving of an end zone dance, but it was fun and made me feel more optimistic that the organization project won't outlive me. I was also sort of thankful for digital. Doing all of the indexing on 4x6 prints and slides would probably have ended up with a dumpster rental. (I only have about 5,000 of those left to sort and scan...)

 

Grandkid Project (pptphoto.com) if you want to take a look at the results.

 

 

More to come as I make progress and try to come up with more ideas to justify keeping thousands of old photos...

 

Dave

[mskaufman]

I use an external hard drive and organize my photos there.  I do not worry about keeping more than 1 TB of photos.

 

[pierces]

More old photo work. This was a sad task as my son-in-law's uncle passed away last week and they wanted a portrait for the service. John always favored the outdoor life and cared for the horses on his property, so his sister wanted to use a picture of him with his cowboy hat. Unfortunately, the photo found on his phone was just not suitable for the size needed. Their family is not photographically inclined, so my daughter asked if I had any pictures of Uncle John from various family events. I was able to find a few, and they decided on the one below from her wedding.

 

...but with a cowboy hat added.

 

Darling Daughter asked if it could be done, and I put my foot down just like when she was living at home...and said "yes" (with some strong CMA caveats).

 

Here are the steps:

 

 

I prepared a 16x20 aspect crop in Lightroom and re-sized it with Topaz Photo AI (fantastic program, BTW).

 

 

His sister wanted it to be his hat and since she is an absolute saint of a woman, I had her bring it over and I took several shots of it at various angles to match to the chosen image. 

 

 

After loading the images into Photoshop, I cut out the hat, pasted it onto the portrait as a layer, resized to fit, made it semi-transparent, aligned it carefully and trimmed it to reveal the covered parts of his head and face. 

 

I spent a little time in the adjustment menu to match up the exposure and level of blur so the two layers looked like parts of one photo. After merging the layers, I cut him out of the frame and cleared it before pasting him back in. I found a background that she liked and fiddled around to adjust the color to her taste. I lightly feathered and trimmed the subject layer so it didn't look like I just Scotch-taped it to the background, then added some shadow under the hat and against the background, I finished up with a final exposure adjustment before flattening the image and doing a small endzone dance.

 

I liked it. She liked it. That's good enough for me. 

 

Those old photos often seem to have a hidden reason that made you take them.

 

 

Dave

 

Edited May 10, 2023 by pierces

[boeckli]

7 hours ago, pierces said:

I liked it. She liked it. That's good enough for me. 

 

 

Those old photos often seem to have a hidden reason that made you take them.

 

Dave

 

 

Great job Dave! 👍

[eileeshb]

I’ve done photo books for various collections of images over the years. It’s the handiest way to turn all those digital images into something tangible. The first year I had a dSLR the rugby team I support won the European cup so the very first photo book I did was pictures from that season and a smaller one of just the final. I got the opportunity to get the squad and management of the team to sign that book of the final which makes it a unique and special keepsake for me.

I’ve done a few for friends weddings and I wasn’t their official photographer but the brides loved them as I got shots of far more people and longer into the night than the wedding photographer would. 
back in the print days I used to order doubles of prints from rolls of film I used at weddings or sports so I always had duplicates to share. 

[pierces]

What's worse than going through all your old photos? Going through someone else's.

 

The portrait I assembled in an earlier post ended up being the tip of the iceberg. The memorial slideshow seems to be a thing now and I just finished up-rezzing, blemish removal and tone correcting about a hundred scanned images. The originals were not what I would call "cared for" and many were faded with the cursed orange cast of poor rinsing when processed. Some were somewhat out of focus or stained/scratched/folded (I think one actually had tire tracks on it). Topaz PhotoAI, Photoshop and Adobe Premier Elements allowed me to complete it in a day, which was surprising.

 

Another surprise was how happy I was to do it. As I said before, Uncle John's sister is a wonderful person and doing favors for good people just doesn't seem like work. 

 

Fade example with AI recovery and tone correction:

 

Bad Polaroid stored in one of those "Magic Adhesive" photobooks. Nothing to do about the adhesive artifacts, but uprezzing, face recovery and tone correction made it good enough for a 1080p slideshow.

 

 

I guess I really am The Family Photographer! 🙂

 

Dave

 

[eileeshb]

Ohh.. that’s fun! I had to do two 50year anniversary slideshows of photos and videos that wound up being hours long. The first was Irish Surfing’s 50th anniversary and then my local surf club. It was some fun converting old TV news footage into something that would play on a random laptop and integrate with scanned photos as well as digital images of varied quality. 
I spent about a week scanning all the old print images, thankfully I was able to reuse a lot of the scans for both anniversaries.  Thankfully I didn’t have to do any colour corrections since the print images were loans from old school pro photographers who had kept them stored perfectly. 
The most time consuming activity was the format conversion on the videos dating back to 1972 and making sure everything fit onto an external drive for the National anniversary. 

[gottagoacruzn]

On 5/10/2023 at 1:41 PM, pierces said:

More old photo work. This was a sad task as my son-in-law's uncle passed away last week and they wanted a portrait for the service. John always favored the outdoor life and cared for the horses on his property, so his sister wanted to use a picture of him with his cowboy hat. Unfortunately, the photo found on his phone was just not suitable for the size needed. Their family is not photographically inclined, so my daughter asked if I had any pictures of Uncle John from various family events. I was able to find a few, and they decided on the one below from her wedding.

 

...but with a cowboy hat added.

 

Darling Daughter asked if it could be done, and I put my foot down just like when she was living at home...and said "yes" (with some strong CMA caveats).

 

Here are the steps:

 

 

I prepared a 16x20 aspect crop in Lightroom and re-sized it with Topaz Photo AI (fantastic program, BTW).

 

 

His sister wanted it to be his hat and since she is an absolute saint of a woman, I had her bring it over and I took several shots of it at various angles to match to the chosen image. 

 

 

After loading the images into Photoshop, I cut out the hat, pasted it onto the portrait as a layer, resized to fit, made it semi-transparent, aligned it carefully and trimmed it to reveal the covered parts of his head and face. 

 

I spent a little time in the adjustment menu to match up the exposure and level of blur so the two layers looked like parts of one photo. After merging the layers, I cut him out of the frame and cleared it before pasting him back in. I found a background that she liked and fiddled around to adjust the color to her taste. I lightly feathered and trimmed the subject layer so it didn't look like I just Scotch-taped it to the background, then added some shadow under the hat and against the background, I finished up with a final exposure adjustment before flattening the image and doing a small endzone dance.

 

I liked it. She liked it. That's good enough for me. 

 

Those old photos often seem to have a hidden reason that made you take them.

 

 

Dave

 

Hey he looks good in his cowboy hat!!!

[SandyT99]

On 5/4/2023 at 5:16 PM, pierces said:

I have been on a bit of mission lately. I am revisiting the folder listed below and culling the too-blurries, scrapping the ones that fall into the why-the-heck-did-I-take-that category and trimming the redundant images from burst sequences.

I hear you! With over 2,300 photos I’m trying to sort them into albums on my phone, then I’ll decide if I want hard copy albums  or not. I don't have grandkids so it’s scary how large a collection I might have had!

[Host Bonjour]

On 5/14/2023 at 6:14 PM, eileeshb said:

but the brides loved them as I got shots of far more people and longer into the night than the wedding photographer would. 

 

Same thing happened to me. The bride loved my images more than the ones by her hired photographer. They just wouldn't have enlarged as great since it was all on film while I loved this camera, it didn't have the capacity to shoot at the level (nor did I have software that would make any decent adjustments) that would have produced brilliant enlargements for a traditional album, but it nevertheless made for a smaller, portable album.

 

I was following the photographer for some of the shots, but I also went for different angles and compositions from within the same area that I guess just worked better. Standard wedding shots turn out to be...standard wedding shots. 

 

Love the signed winning euro cup rugby team story! Most excellent way to collate and celebrate at the same time. (Btw do you and Larry Mullen support the same Irish Rugby team, isn't it the Union?)

 

Like you, I had double prints made and so it worked out to be quite an unexpectedly thrilling extra gift!

[Host Bonjour]

On 5/17/2023 at 12:41 PM, pierces said:

What's worse than going through all your old photos? Going through someone else's.

 

The portrait I assembled in an earlier post ended up being the tip of the iceberg. The memorial slideshow seems to be a thing now and I just finished up-rezzing, blemish removal and tone correcting about a hundred scanned images. The originals were not what I would call "cared for" and many were faded with the cursed orange cast of poor rinsing when processed. Some were somewhat out of focus or stained/scratched/folded (I think one actually had tire tracks on it). Topaz PhotoAI, Photoshop and Adobe Premier Elements allowed me to complete it in a day, which was surprising.

 

Another surprise was how happy I was to do it. As I said before, Uncle John's sister is a wonderful person and doing favors for good people just doesn't seem like work. 

 

Fade example with AI recovery and tone correction:

 

Bad Polaroid stored in one of those "Magic Adhesive" photobooks. Nothing to do about the adhesive artifacts, but uprezzing, face recovery and tone correction made it good enough for a 1080p slideshow.

 

 

I guess I really am The Family Photographer! 🙂

 

Dave

 

 

Adobe should pay you.

 

These are astounding and exactly the reason why these products are worthwhile for anyone, setting aside how an image may be completely transformed with the software, this brings it back to what it truly once was.

 

A real time-machine, in the case of this pair of images, getting the polaroid to about as near to what it was at the time, given the available lighting and capabilities of the film.

 

The graduation portrait is nearly flawless? Is it VMA or the Citadel? Both are truly special, well done! 🙂 

[pierces]

14 hours ago, Host Bonjour said:

The graduation portrait is nearly flawless? Is it VMA or the Citadel? Both are truly special, well done! 🙂 

West Point.

[eileeshb]

22 hours ago, Host Bonjour said:

Love the signed winning euro cup rugby team story! Most excellent way to collate and celebrate at the same time. (Btw do you and Larry Mullen support the same Irish Rugby team, isn't it the Union?)

If you mean Larry Mullen of U2, then not at provincial level. He’s a dub so Leinster is his local side, I’m from Munster. There’s the national side Ireland which is the whole island (Northern Ireland and Ireland) and 4 provincial pro sides - Leinster, Munster, Ulster and Connacht. My home county was considered part of Connacht by English invaders but is actually part of Munster. Munster would be my team but Connacht are 2nd, and after that it’s whichever side has the strongest connections to Munster or Connacht with Leinster only supported if playing Saracens or Toulon (2 moneybags teams from England and France respectively). 

Leinster lost this season’s European final to a French team coached by a few ex Munster players. Much to the disgust of the Leinster supporters the Munster fans were almost all supporting Stade Rochelais (La Rochelle). The Connacht supporters also went for La Rochelle as one of their former players is now with that club and then the Ulster supporters had a similar excuse as one of the ex Munster players in the coaching setup is also ex Ulster.

 

Tribal politics are strong in Ireland….

[Host Bonjour]

On 5/23/2023 at 6:06 PM, eileeshb said:

Tribal politics are strong in Ireland….

 

Totally get it. My grandfather emigrated from Clarecastle. But most of his siblings emigrated to England. 

 

Wow, so rather than support ANY Irish side, they went for the French side, which is somewhat shaky ground for an English side to wander onto, if one is getting territorial. And yet...I get it. They're French, not Republicans. A lesser evil I suppose, and not as nearby. 

 

I totally get too how this must have generated some immensely powerful images, whether on the pitch or among the supporters, with being a supporter yourself...and getting to be up close to the action. What a thrill! Understanding it's very much still work, but definitely the best kind. 

 

Appreciate the level of detail re: teams, regions etc. It paints a wonderful picture. 

 

☘️

 

Colleen

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Host Bonjour]

Thought this piece by Sophie Bernard (Feb 2023) from blind photography journal was interesting, as we got into sports photography and this gets into how the genre seems to still not quite broken through gatekeeping of fine art and collectible worlds open to other forms of the work. 

 

(And yes there's a reference to the rugby World Cup coming up soon) 

 

Goes to the heart of the age old debate of who decides what art is, just as what makes something good or not good. There's something great for everyone, we won't all appreciate the same things. (Don't always follow the crowd!)

 

🙂 

[pierces]

I have been spending a little time scanning and cleaning up some old family pictures. The question posed in another thread about yea or nay on manipulation gets a definite "yea" in this case ssince it was used to restore reality rather than trying to alter it.

 

These were restored using a combination of Topaz Photo AI and Photoshop with a final tone adjustment in Lightroom. They were also resized to allow for clear prints if needed.

 

 

I have sent some feedback to Topaz requesting an option to recover more than faces and add the ability to direct the AI (via masking) to sharpen and restore things like cloth patterns, hands, etc.. AI also does a fantastic job of removing textured paper patterns from faces but leaves it everywhere else. A pattern removal option would be incredibly useful when scanning old prints. 

 

Dave

[hombre sincero]

1.63 TB!

 

How do you create a backup and how long does it take?

[pierces]

1 hour ago, hombre sincero said:

1.63 TB!

 

How do you create a backup and how long does it take?

 

I use a now-discontinued Microsoft "Power Tools" program called SyncToy. Very configurable and easy to use. I will eventually move to something else, but it works fine for now. I don't keep any data on the boot drive but have all my data files on "Working" and "Archive" drives. I have it set up to copy the contents of my 1TB Working data drive (D:) and the 6TB Archive drive (E:) to both a portable 4TB USB 3.0 drive and a desktop drive which is also 4TB. The program is very clever in that it synchronizes the drives and only deals with changes. It scans for new, changed or deleted files and only performs the necessary operations on those files. I back up monthly and it takes about a half hour or less to scan and update. I retire the backup drives s about every two years and store the old ones "just in case".

 

I am about to upgrade my backup drives and the first full copy will probably take half a day to copy the full 3TB of data to both backup destinations. 

 

I have only lost data once back in 2002 to a failed 1GB IBM drive and have been mildly of obsessive about it since.

 

Dave

 

 

[boeckli]

Another vote for SyncToy. Dave mentioned it on this forum a few years ago and I've been using it ever since.  Very customisable and user-friendly.

[pierces]

Reorganizing and tagging my photos is becoming a career. A side benefit is that I am running into a lot of shots I really like. Six-month-old Matthew as "Snow Boy" was Daughter Kassi's Christmas card picture 10 years ago.

 

 

 

Dave