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?  

home user in a browser

  Being confined in a browser for all my computing needs, does have it's frustrating moments. I can't batch edit pictures, or add watermarks.  I thought I had a work around for this.  I select the images I want to upload, upload it to my Smugmug account, then I have to open each one to add my watermark to it, this process works fine when you have less than 10 images, but when you have more it can get annoying.  A second mistake I had in my workflow, is replacing originals, after adding my watermark with picmonkey, one of my favorite online image editors. As I realized after adding my watermark, and editing the same image again, I can't undo, or bring that layer to the top :( well, it was a lesson learned.
  Now my photo processing workflow will look like this, Select the images locally, using the built in gallery-viewer in chrome OS.  Add a -up to the filename.  Then go to Smugmug's upload, select all pictures with -up in the photo's file name, and upload.  When editing, I should always save a new copy, rather than replacing, since Smugmug offers unlimited storage anyways. I also use G+ photo's mostly for sharing with family and friends, but that also has it's limitation, as I can't get a link to it, that I can use in my WordPress blog.  Otherwise in general I am happy and satisfied with my Acer C720, but starting to realize more and more what it's not a good fit for, mainly photo editing and manipulation, and that's not due to it being underpowered, rather not having good tools available. It does cover my 90% of usage, the 10% is the photo editing part that annoys me. I can figure out workarounds, and I hope in the future this will change, by the time I upgrade my chromebook.

Working with todays tools

What ever you want to call it, the Internet of Things, or Cloud computing.  Todays tools/apps are amazing.  I just found a new useful app/tool/extension, or what ever. It interconnects your digital world. It's called  Pushbullet, which is an extension, and a phone app, as well as a local app on your Operating System. Why is this app useful? Well, it pushes your phone notifications, and SMS to an extension on your browser or computer. I wrote earlier that I started using Chromebook full time at home, "The Chromebook Experiment", and "5 Months using a Chromebook" . This fits in nicely. When I receive an SMS or a WhatsApp message it get's pushed to my Chrome Extension notification on the chromebook.  It also notifies me on my work computers local OSX Application (there is a windows version as well, and a community made Ubuntu version) I use whatsapp to communicate with my family, since we have a wifi Internet connection at home, and at work, and I usually have my phone set on vibrate or silent (I do miss some messages). I like the fact that I can receive notifications on my browser, or OS, let that be work, or home. It also has a nice way of sending url's, notes, files, or images to your devices, so all your interconnected web of phone, tablet, laptop, desktop can receive a broadcast of what ever you want. File-sharing is another story, this app isn't really for that. Anyhow, check it out, let me know what you think.

Headphones

 

Skullcandy Hesh2

  This post is not about Linux, or Chromebook, it's actually about an accessory.  I've been on the hunt for a headphone which is a good fit for my head, it's not an easy task. I have a hard time finding sunglasses that fit too. I've tried some of my co-workers headphones at work, some were great, some just plain old annoying. Today I listened to some online radio, using a really old and basic headphones, but the music sounded so different, which is when I realized my headphones at home was out of date.
  So I went and looked for a new headphone.  At the store there was a setup to test headphones, naturally this one wasn't between them.  But I've read good reviews about the skullcandy brand. I tried the usual suspects, Sony, Philips were the one's out on display and trial, they sounded pretty good, but they weren't comfortable. I saw this one on the shelf, and decided to buy it, worst case I'll just return it.  I gotta say, it's a perfect fit on my head, and perfectly covers my ears. Music sounds great, it's comfortable, and since it fully covers my ears, I can't hear other noise around me. So far I would recommend it, though I think you should try them on before buying, I didn't have that option, yet I feel happy about my purchase. I may write a follow up after using it for a longer time.

Re-living the windows OS pain

Today, I had to re-live the pain of re-installing a windows laptop for family. At 1.6 GHz single core with 2GB of RAM. It's been updating the system for 7 hours, and it's not done yet.  This is truly when you appreciate a chromebook. Wish they were cheaper in Hungary, I would recommend replacing this painfully slow laptop, with a chromebook in a heart beat.