When I got into photography, one thing I didn’t think of was data storage. I shoot in RAW, and I don’t like to delete stuff. That’s a combo for large files.
The Problem
I got into this hobby near the end of last year. And in just four months, I took 86GB of pictures. A hair over 20GB per month.
My Mac would be pretty unhappy in just a few months. And, having every photo on one machine, is not a good feeling. I need storage, and redundancy. I want recent photos local on my Mac, while having everything else be readily available. And every photo should also be on two machines.
My Workflow
When I’m done with a shoot, I import everything into Lightroom Classic. That’s where I process things, and turn RAW files into something usable.
My Lightroom folder is kept is kept in iCloud Drive (both the photos and the catalog). Any time a photo is added (or edited), finder backs it up to iCould (the folder is also set to stay downloaded). So yay, two copies, one off site. But that’s only one of the things I need. I need to keep my Mac from filling up1.
Every month, I export the last month into its own catalog. And upload that to iCloud as an archive. But that archive isn’t easily accessible, and that was one of my requirements. Take another look at the Lightroom screen shot. A Lightroom catalog can be split over multiple locations.
HardLight, is a share on my Synology. As well as making an archive in iCloud, I also move the photos to HardLight. They are still available my catalog, but no longer on my Mac2.
So, if it’s the current month, the photos are on my Mac, and backed up to iCloud. If it’s an old month, the photos are moved to the Synology, and an archival copy is made to iCloud. Everything is easily accessible, and there are always two copies, with one offsite, with only the current month local to my Mac.
Thoughts
Data management isn’t something I thought about when getting into this hobby. Sony RAW files are 50ish MB, double that if you denoise a photo3. So I’m glad I have a workflow worked out. This hobby really is a rabbit hole. Oh look, an owl!
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I can’t off load a month as is to iCloud, as when Lightroom looks at it, it’ll auto redownload. LrC isn’t ment to work with iCloud. ↩︎
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The little green light next to “HardLight” will go out if the volume isn’t mounted. Lightroom handles that extremely gracefully. The catalog is local on my Mac, but the photos can be on a network volume. ↩︎
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A denoised copy of the photo gets made. LrC is a non destructive editor. ↩︎