Photograph storage/editing

[HEPZIBAH]

I'd be interested to hear suggestions of photograph storage and simple editing programmes (preferably free ones) that I can put on my laptop. I used Picassa 3 on my old laptop and got on well with that but I don't think it exists any more.
I don't plan on doing anything too complicated with my photographs but it is good to have a few basic options.
Looking forward to reading some suggestions.

[John Landon]

There is a software package that is native to Linux named Gimp.
It is now available for Windows as well.
This is a very good package and gets great reviews. Comparable to Photoshop.

Go here and select the version that suits your operating system.

https://www.gimp.org/downloads/


As for storage, you can pick up a USB portable hard drive very cheaply these days.

I prefer these to plain USB sticks, as they can be easily misplaced, and don't have the same capacity.

A 2 Terabyte USB drive, small enough to fit in your top pocket costs a shade over 50 UK pounds.

This will be ample storage capacity.
A 1 Terabyte drive is about 38 UK pounds.

They both power themselves from the USB port via a lead that is usually supplied with the drive.
Just plug it in and wait a few seconds and then you can drag and drop your files to it.

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/computing ... 1-pdt.html

This is probably the easiest way of doing things.

Hope that helps Hephzibah.


If you want a drive that is accessible from anywhere and you don't want to carry a USB drive about with you, then read on..

There are what is called NAS drives, these are a tad more expensive, and the idea is that you leave them at home and they connect to your home router. You can then access this drive via the internet. From there you can upload your photos to this drive from wherever you are, and obviously you can view the files from the internet as well.

Of course, if you have a Gmail account, then you will also have storage on your GDrive.
My phone automatically backs up all my photos to there via my Gmail client.
These are then accessible from the cloud by logging into Google.

[HEPZIBAH]

Thank you John Landon. My heads a bit mushy at the moment (more than normal) so will read properly later.

[BBLUX]

[quote="John Landon"

Of course, if you have a Gmail account, then you will also have storage on your GDrive.
My phone automatically backs up all my photos to there via my Gmail client.
These are then accessible from the cloud by logging into Google.
[/quote
Hepzi, do not read this bit
John, that is what I have always done. However over the last week or so mine has stopped backing up. I just cannot get it to work without a lot of faffing about manually copying to OneDrive then downloading to my laptop. I tried Bluetooth but that says phone and laptop are connected but always get error message saying file not copied. Internet is a bit slow here in Ireland so I now have a backlog of around 45 images to upload. Think I will wait until home again as have plenty of SD capacity.

[John Landon]

OneDrive is a Microsoft product that comes with office 365 as I recall.
We used to get 1TB of storage per licence..

The main problem I would imagine is being signed in correctly to Microsoft ? Or issues with the internet as you say.

I have no issues with Google drive on my mobile device. It backs up regular as clockwork at 2am. Plus it automatically transfers the photos to the Google drive as soon as I'm connected to broadband. I don't allow backups over mobile data, though I'm thinking of instating that feature because I hardly use up my 12 GB allowance as it is, especially since covid.

[BBLUX]

John, I do not usually use MS OneDrive for this purpose because, well it is Microsoft, but Google Photos sync has just stopped working for me here.
Don't use MS Office anymore because they deleted my Office XP license. Nothing wrong with it but when I removed it from previous old laptop and tried to reregister it on this one under Windows 10 it was denied. Changed over to Apache Open Office as that still does the job for me.
Now this HP laptop is 5 years old and I am in the market for a replacement. Any suggestions please?

[John Landon]

Hi Barry

Open office and Libre office are really good. I used them all the time.


I'm not sure what you are looking for in a laptop, but my son wanted one and I looked around and recommended this, which he bought.

Great screen resolution and detail, 144hz, 1ms response time. 500 GB SSD drive and will do games, which means it has excellent graphic capabilities. Also has 8gb ram which should be all you need. He loves it.

https://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/gaming/pc ... 1-pdt.html

[BBLUX]

Thanks for your suggestion John, that is the sort of spec I am looking for. Unfortunately that little sentence "sorry this item is out of stock" appears alongside availability. I have found this here in Ireland as well. No store seems to have stock at the moment. With the apparent arrival of new models with Windows 11 next month I am going to wait and try for a late model Windows 10 version which I hope they will be selling off. Never moved to a new OS until it has been around for a good length of time and bugs are sorted!
I think I will end up with an AZERTY keyboard model from a French supplier at this rate maybe by Christmas!

[John Landon]

Hopefully it will be back in stock soon. It was 600 UK pounds when I first saw it, then the price went up, so we paid the price you see there.

There are other online outlets for this laptop.
I have also seen some good HP laptops of a similar specification. The NVidia graphics card is the way to go, and SSD drive.

Most laptops are now coming with a free upgrade to Windows 11, given that the release date is imminent, so they don't want sales crippled while customers hang on for that release. Though I never have adopted a new operating system as soon as it has been released, as generally there are flaws in them, so I usually wait until the first service pack has been released and look at what users are saying about it in forums.

Anyhow good luck with the search.

[BBLUX]

Exactly my thinking on new OS releases. Remember Vista?
Definitely an SSD, my existing HP has 128Gb one as well as a 1Tb HDD. I have seen 1Tb SSD models now at reasonable prices. just have to be sure the OS is of a spec that can eventually accept Win 11.

[John Landon]

Vista, millennium edition. Windows 8
All bad operating systems.
Windows 10 was handed out free because it was just windows 8 fixed.


That laptop I recommended earlier is now 700 quid in curries. ! Given the specification, I thought it was priced rather cheaply, even when it went up to 629.

[Who2]

Just pushing in here..
On my roof in the old pigeon loft covered in tarpaulin are 17 boxes of a VHS collection from The Cairo Film Club
dating from 1920's up till the 1st Revolution. When there was a mass exodus of Cairan European ex-pats.
Hence over 2000 films and since being here I have picked up two VHS machines..

I have always had a fear of their storage conditions since being stuck over here...
Things don't bode well for a film buffs collection of 'silver screen history...

[Who2]

Sunny up there the pigeons loved' it, but vhs's not so much, me thinks..

[John Landon]

This is not ideal storage for your video tapes sadly. But if the temperature doesnt fluctuate too much too quickly, then they may be ok.

[BBLUX]

I fear for those tapes up there. I suspect the cases will have warped out of shape. Back in my Uni engineering days a lecturer brought my some of his irreplaceable tapes which he had left in his car one summer day! Completely warped out of shape. I transferred the tapes into new cases and spools and managed to save them.
Something of an ask with that huge collection.