christopher_auman__archivi

Yes, the answer to the archival question on CD does involve purchasing from a quality

manufacturer and the gold CD's do make a more reliable burn. (more on that in a bit) The

bottom line is that you should never trust your valuable images to just one type of media

at this point. Even if you buy the best media there is a lot more that can affect that media

as it is stored. Humidity, temperature, if you store them flat, plus the speed of your initial

burn affects the quality of the burn, etc. We can go on and on. What you really need to do

is store your images on hard drives locally (yes, more than one) and then back them up to

a high quality CD, DVD or portable hard drive off site. Obviously there are many more

solutions but this is just one that the average photographer can use.

Regarding the gold in the CD...

Behind the information area is a reflective layer used to detect the change in reflected light

intensity every time the laser spot moves from the pit onto the land (the area between

each pit) and vice versa. The change in light intensity is used by the CD player to represent

the data that is stored on the CD.

The most important thing to come away with knowing is that gold disks, although they will

cost you much more, have shown greater permenance in many tests and are the highly

recommended solution for users such as ourselves that are interested in maxium archival

time. Silver corrodes through reaction with sulfur dioxide, an environmental pollutant that

can migrate through the disc with moisture causing the disc to reduce the reflection of the

laser and resulting in the data becoming unreadable. Therfore, silver is a good solution

but for longer therm storage, it is not the best choice for obvious reasons. Gold is

obviously the best choice but is traditionally more expensive. For our purpose here I would

recommend buying nothing but discs manufactured with gold reflective layers and

ensuring that you have taken that extra step to preserve your data.

Yeah, CDs are universally accepted by the mainstream so they won't be going anywhere

soon. I'm guessing that you will be able to read CDs for a very long time. The bigger issue

is the environment that you store you media and how you treat it. Even the best CDs will

start to degrade in the wrong environment. I would suggest making more than one copy of

each CD, storing them in a cool dry place and also keeping the images on a hard drive

somewhere just to be safe. Store your images on multiple media in multiple places (on and

offsite) and you should be in pretty good shape.

Yeah, basically you set up your batch process with a starting file and a destination file. The

start file should stay the same and then all your new TIFF files will end up in the

destination file. Before doing a batch process though always duplicate the original file just

to make sure that there are no weird mistakes that overwrite your original images.

Hopefully I answered your question. If not shoot me an email.

I haven't had much experience with Picasa but I would enjoy further conversation on the

subject. Anyone with experience or opinions please post away!

Hans,

I'm not a big fan of archiving in RAW format at this point. I would consider batch

converting your images to TIFF and storing them that way until there is a universal RAW

format suggested like the new Adobe Digital Negative format. Imagine trying to open

those images 10-20 years from now. TIFF is universally accepted and safe.

Yes, I would say that you should never make your adjustments before archiving your

images. The responses above are sound. My two cents... I don't like the idea of archiving

images in RAW at this point. Wait until Adobe get the new DNG format accepted. (See link

below) Since each camera company has their own RAW format it just

lays the groundwork for possible problems in the future when you want to open those files

10-20 years from now. The same goes for jPEG2000. It has not been fully accepted yet as

a format that will stand the test of time. Be safe and save your files as HIGH res TIFFs. As

far as arching goes I am always looking for possible problems in the future. I would like to

believe that Adobe will keep making Photoshop and you will be able to open layered files

in the future but to be on the safe side, don't count on it. I would recommend saving the

RAW file as a TIFF and then modifying another version of that TIFF and saving it. That way

you are sure that your images will stand the test of time.

http://www.archivingdigital.com/blog/2004/09/discussion-about-new-adobe-raw-

dng.html

Has anyone tried Picasa from Google? I just stumbled over this today. I am a Google lover

and tend to think that anything they do is great. As I said though I know nothing about it

and would like some opinions. Maybe we could give it a spin and open a separate thread

to discuss the results.

http://www.picasa.com/

Yes, iView Media Pro is a great product. It might be a little overkill for you though if you

are just interested in viewing and browsing. There are a lot of great products out there

though. I am personally using iPhoto on the mac which is a decent program and getting

better every time. I keep waiting for Apple to start offering their software on the PC

platform like they have with the iPod.