Moving photos and backing up.

[billharden]

I need to make some room on my computer (laptop) so I am thinking about moving my photos to a mini external drive. I have a small 60gb portable western digital. The problem is that I'm afraid to move my photos because some of them are linked to slideshows. How should I go about making the move in a way that I won't get the dreaded "missing image," notice when I load up a past show? Oh, and yes, I plan to back-up my mini external too. Suggestions, please.
Thanks
Bill Harden

[briancbb Profile Private message]

Bill

Can't think where it is off hand but there is a 'Collate' function that moves all a shows resources to a given location and maintains the links. However it only moves resources that have been used in the show . If you have a set of images some used and some unused in a directory, and you may want to include the 'unused' at a later date, these are not moved. You would have to move these manually to the new location.

Brian

[billharden]

Thanks Brian,
That sounds like an good idea. My biggest concern is to keep the shows intact. Any extraneous related files are not an issue, because I keep my photos fairly well organized with Adobe Lightroom. Is this 'Collate' function, a part of ProShow, or Windows?
Thanks
Bill

[briancbb Profile Private message]

Bill

It is in Proshow, in PSP it is under <File> <Collect Show Files>. Sorry it is 'Collect' not 'Collate' as previously stated.

Brian

[billharden]

Thank you Brian,
If it was a snake it would have bit me! It's right there in the File drop down menu.
Didn't know what it was before though.
Thank you
Bill

[gpsmikey Profile Private message]

Actually, I sort of do the reverse -- all my pictures are organized by
year and month (folders) and the picture names also include the date/timestamps
in the name. That is my master copy of the pictures. Any shows I
create, I create a folder for the show, and a number of sub-folders
in there for sound, pictures, clipart etc. I copy any pictures I want
to use in the show into the local folder for that show. I can then
backup an entire show and everything in that show is in the primary
folder for that show. It is a bit tougher with a laptop, but for desktops,
disk space is cheap -- I just recently picked up a 500 gig (retail)
Seagate, 7200 RPM, 16 meg cache for $99 on sale.

Trying to link into the images in a "master" location never seems
to work right for just the reasons you state - things move, you
want to make a change to the image (without modifying the
original) etc. Simpler to just make copies of the ones you want
to a folder local to that show.

Just my $0.02

mikey

[billharden]

Wow you guys, I caught this just in time before I had a really big mess. In the last two weeks, I was jammed into doing five shows (real estate related). I had been keeping everything fairly well together, but all scattered in folders on my computer desktop. After the mad rush was over. I took a deep breath, then decided to clean up my desktop by throwing everything into subfolders. Well you can guess what happened when I just now started to go back and collect the files as Brian taught me. Yep the beginning of a nightmare.
At least when I find one of the missing files, everything else associated with that show is USUALLY there with it. Thanks for your help.
Bill Harden

[briancbb Profile Private message]

Mikey

Once again I do the same as you. Having seen how the 'Collect' function works and the subdirectories it creates, I do this manually for a 'Project'.

I give the top level folder a 'project name' and then subfolders of 'images', 'audio', 'resources' etc. The image directory contains images used in the show AND any images that are likely to be used in a re-run. I also ensure PSP puts it's working files here as well. As you say HD space is cheap, as are DVD's for backing up the 'master folder'.

Brian

PS It seems odd for me to be organised, but it does help the memory.