Back to the windows world

  In my previous post, I wrote that I got a Lenovo Windows10 laptop, well since then, I've sold it and got another one.  This one is an Acer, the R3, 11.6", touch screen little white clamshell laptop.  The 14" wasn't to my taste as I prefer smaller screens, and I don't need a beast since I don't do, or use anything that really requires a strong CPU.  I have to admit the two core Celeron processor is a bottleneck at times, but I can live with it, since it's a passive cooling laptop, no fans, no noise.  The one thing I wish it had would be an SSD.  The reason I switched back to Windows was automation, and my hobby.  I love and enjoy taking pictures, of nature, life, and family, and I want to make sure those memories are saved, not just locally or on an external hard drive, but in the cloud as well.  I couldn't achieve that with Linux, since I couldn't find a single automated solution to upload my images to google photo's, amazon, or smugmug.  Currently the google photo's is the only fully automated solution, the amazon client is semi-automatic, as I need to tell it which folder to upload, as is the case with the smugmug solution.  I'm happy with this as I have a great workflow to check out my images, edit if needed, then just drop the pictures in a folder which then get's uploaded. The Chrome-book had one disadvantage, I couldn't sort, and pick my pictures it would just automatically upload all, then I would need to go and pick and choose online.  The linux laptop didn't do the auto backup for me (except when I used Crashplan for backup) but with that I couldn't retrieve and view my images easily as with both the google photos, and amazon photos.  All in all, I am happy with this little laptop, and to my surprise, Windows10 isn't bad either. I stopped actively using windows with Windows XP.  So I could say that Windows10 is a step in the right direction.  I would say I wish they had good tablet offering when I bought my Android tablet, and maybe even a decent phone offering starting to lean towards getting a Lumia, as it's would be well integrated with my laptop.  The Apple eco-system is great, phone/tablet and laptops work great together, but their prices are a bit high to my taste.  This little laptop I got is 1/3 the price of the 11" MacBook Air, and it can do everything the MacBook could, though slower no doubt.
  I think my next move will be either to change my tablet to a Windows10 one or replace my phone.

Google Photo's new service

  Google decided to yet again give the world a new service called Google Photos not to confuse this with the Google+ Photos. This new service is separate from the old picasa web, and the google + photos.  The idea is great, all your images in one place, from all your devices. Now that I have a chromebook it makes sense.  But interestingly, I need to use the web version of google photos, maybe in a future update the OS will have a new app for it.
  This new service if you will does finally give a URL to share, which I will use to insert a picture here (for testing Purposes) NOTE: it doesn't work on blogger :S
  I usually like uploading my images to my SmugMug account, which does give a shareable link that works just fine on my wordpress photoblog, and here on blogger. I like the fact that so many services are offering free photo storages, but not all are created equal. Flickr, SmugMug (this is not free actually), Google+ Collections, iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive.
   Be aware though even though they say it supports resolutions up to 16MPixel, I've yet to figure out how it's stored.  As I upload via my browser on the chromebook, edit on my tablet.  The resolutions are mixed, I believe that it downloads/edits photo's to the max of the system you use to edit it.  So if I edit using my tablet, I get a 1920x1080. If I edit on my chromebook, using online apps, such as picmonkey, I get yet a different resoltion.  If I use snapseed, or pixlr on my tab, I get mixed resolutions, I can't figure out how it decides/what size to edit/save as.  I know I can manually save the file at a given size, but snapseed doesn't ask, with pickmonkey, and pixlr I save at max size, but I still get small picture sizes.  Which is ok great for web sharing, I still want to have the full resolution incase I want to print.  So experiment, try before you go full Google Photos.  I'll probably stick to using my SmugMug storage for full size images, that stores it at real full resolution.
Just my two cents... happy to hear your experience.

In my quest for photography workflow with Chromebook

  I've been complaining in my blog about Chromebook not being fit for photography. And by all means I am not a professional, so this is from the perspective of an amature, for fun photographer.
  I started a new workflow. I upload my images to Google Drive, then I add a prefix to the file name, usually a -up, for upload. I then open these pictures up in Picmonkey.  I add a watermark, and I resize it for the web, no need for a full blown 16 Megapixel image for a blog. Then I upload to my PhotoBlog.  I have other blogs on blogger as well, that I am experimenting with to find out what works best for me. Personally I find WordPress more powerful than blogger, but that's my opinion. I also have a SmugMug account where I upload images, better for sharing than Google+ or drive, but doesn't integrate into my workflow like google drive. You just can't have it all :)
  So far I am really happy with my Chromebook, which is causing me this headache with photo workflows. I plan to upgrade to a new one in a year or two. I would definitely get one with 4GB or RAM as I feel the pain when I have too many tabs open. I knew this C720 isn't the top of the line, but it works fine with me. I enjoy using it , it fits the bill perfectly for my home use.
  Until I find a workflow that fits/works for me I'll keep searching and trying new ways, methods to work with my pictures.

Things I miss in the Amazon Cloud Drive

  I've made the switch to the Amazon Cloud Drive for my photo's backup which I wrote about the other day. I did find a few drawbacks, that I wish are implemented in the future, metadata/keyword support, and support for my Olympus and Panasonic RAW files.  There is a work around for the RAW files, if I convert them to DNG, the Cloud Drive identifies them just fine. But the metadata/keyword, and the exif info viewing should be a basic option, but it's not. Why does this matter? Well it makes it easier for me to find my photo's if they are tagged, and sometimes I like to see all my EXIF info, not just date created, both these features are implemented well in Flickr and Smugmug.  So I hope these features will be implemented soon. Oh and the other thing I found so far. There is a nice feature to see what you have shared, but the preview doesn't work, just an annoyance, nothing more. I've also uploaded all the photo's and video's from my tablet, I would have never thought I had 5GB worth of short video's of our baby, but I do. So I need a new strategy for storing my video's probably at Smugmug. Sooner or later, all my photo's will be online, and in the cloud. Fits in nicely with my use of Chromebook at home :)

Cheap photo storage/backup hint new Amazon announcement

  I am sure everyone has a backup plan. If not you should. Photography is my hobby, and I have about ~300GB of pictures, RAW and JPEG collected over the years.  I've been using crashplan since it has a linux client, but recently Amazon announced a great plan, just for photo's, at $12/year, it's dirt cheap for unlimited photo's. It also supports some RAW formats, my old CR2 (Canon RAW) format is supported, I have not tried my new Olympus RAW, or Panasonic RAW, so that test will be later. You also get 3 months free trial as well, and it has an iOS and an Android app, so I can upload my phone/table pictures, having a kid sometimes forces you to grab what's near by, and not necessarily your camera. 

  Currently Google Drive, and Photo's, which I guess is being moved into Drive, has one big drawback, that it can't give you a link to send or embed into a blog or webpage, except blogger. I use WordPress for my photoblog, and I also have a little gripe about posting from WordPress to facebook. If I upload the images to WordPress, and post using it's publicize post, the images get uploaded to Facebook. I want to keep the pictures in one spot. For that I use Smugmug, but this Amazon Cloud Drive can change all that, we'll see.

  Amazon's Cloud Drive has an unlimited plan for $59/year, which is almost what I pay for Crashplan, but 99% of what I backup are images, the rest, documents, and other random files are on my Google Drive, or OneDrive, or dropbox, as you can see I don't keep them in one place :)

  Since I'm using a Chromebook, which is basically a cloud laptop, this whole idea of not storing locally is becoming more convenient, and efficient.  If I ever upgrade/change my Chromebook to a Chrome Base, or a newer Chromebook, I don't have to worry about my content, it's all up there in the cloud, safe and sound.

  I remember in the past, you needed an external drive to backup all your content, so you can format your machine (when I used Windows) and then copy things back it was a pain and a long process. It looks like in the future you won't really need a hard drive or local storage, specially if prices keep dropping so fast. What's your storage/backup strategy?