iPad Photo storage in a Post-PC world...

[slimbek]

So I want some thoughts on the processes being used by folks when editing photos on their iPad...

For me, I see where Apple is going with the Post-PC era (it's great!) EXCEPT... storage.

I love the fact that I can simply edit my photos with my finger, and then share them etc. Awesome. But then what?
The biggest iPad is 64gb - that's about 10,000 SLR photos (with nothing else on the device!)... that's not enough for the next 10 years of digital photo taking (or new device swapping)! I already have 11,000 running in iPhoto!

So what do you do for storage in a Post-PC world?

Is it all about the cloud? If so, there'll have to be only one copy cos I'll still run out of room on my device! And one copy is not sensible. So where do they go?

Right now, I take my photos and transfer them to my laptop for editing and storage - but I only use iPhoto/Photoshop for basic edits, and they both have decent iOS Apps now - so I have the opportunity to move my photo processing into the Post-PC era (with an iPad, Apps, and camera kit), but I've nowhere to store them! What's the go?


Interested in hearing people's thoughts on this, or if you have a system in place already.



PS: the same principle now applies to home movies too.

 

[scarred]

I think you answered your own question. There are definitely still reasons to have a typical 'pc'. You identified one of the reasons.

I do think photo management should be handled by the 'cloud'. Right now, no one wants to maintain your thousands of full res pictures. They'll do it, but it will be costly. And none have the proper interfaces to make it work seamlessly. Not only that, but I would not trust the 'cloud' folk to maintain the sole copy of my photographs.

...someday it'll happen though! Just like you could now pay apple to maintain all your music and movies, they (or someone else) will find a way to manage your photographs in a cost effective way.

For my purposes, I use a Macbook Air (which has only 128gb) for my photographs. I use iPhoto mostly. With the mac version of iPhoto you can have multiple libraries, so I create a new empty library every so often, and move the large one off to a NAS for backup. I wonder if you could do something similar with the iPad version of iPhoto.

 

[Ste Nova]

one copy to icloud one copy to a flickr pro account?

 

[RelentlessFruit]

You could do what I do - transfer them off the iPad onto a wifi HDD.....without the need for a Jailbreak

I have a Seagate Satellite 500GB HDD that has a built in wifi router effectively. I'm running custom firmware on it which allows me to run WebDAV / FTP / samba services.

There are loads of software packages out there that allow you to access WebDAV folders from your iPad. They're built for the Internet but they work just fine with a wifi HDD too

So, what all the above means is that I can record video / photos and load them onto my iPad for editing (using the camera connector kit SD card reader). Once I'm happy I can then upload them direct from my iPad to the seagate sataellite using the app "Photosync" as it allows uncompressed transfers including multiple files

My 32GB iPad hard limit is thus bypassed in effect. Admittedly I can't load all my video / photos at the same time but I can batch load / edit / upload and remove from my iPad ready for the next import.

If you're interested take a look at the website of the chaps who package the firmware for the seagate satellite. It's not for everyone as it does require a fair bit of terminal / telnet work to load the custom firmware and then of course set it all up. I'm a tech so it's fine but I couldn't give it to my parents for example.

You can find their site here: Clicky

Oh and the other upside is that once all the photos / videos are on the satellite I can use "Goodplayer" to watch on the iPad or use the HDMI connector to steam them to TV

Hope that's useful! I love it as the seagate satellite if completely self contained including a battery that will run the unit for upto 3 hours - total wireless freedom

The only real downside is that the seagate uses it's own SSID which means at home you can't connect to both it & your wifi network at the same time. Well, you can but only if you're using WPA which most people won't be these days (WPA2 is more common) as the custom firmware can't handle WPA2 properly just yet for routing purposes. They are working on it though

Oh and the seagate unit is expensive for a 500GB......but is about the same as the price difference to move up a storage level on an iPad so pretty good value!

 

[urkel]

If you have a Google+ account they now allow UNLIMITED photo storage if you choose 2048px maximum size so I installed Picasa and uploaded 15years of photos in there and now I have 28GB of photos accessible through any computer and iOS device for FREE. Sure, they're not the originals but IF I want to find a host then Google pricing does make them a compelling choice compared to Apple.

Apple:
$20 - 20GB
$100 - 50GB

Google:
$5 - 20GB
$20 -80GB
$100 - 400GB

 

[slimbek]

Some interesting thoughts, thanks all.

Urkel:
I do actually use Google Picasa as my online storage and pay the $20 for 80gb. I have about 9,000 full-res photos uploaded into private albums and that is a nice feeling knowing they are online. It would be interesting to see if the iPad could upload straight to that library?

RelentlessFruit:
The wifi harddrive is an interesting option - I hadn't considered that. I guess the same device could be used to hold my movie library too, except that Apple TV needs iTunes!

Maybe there's a larger market opportunity out there for Post-PC external drives and what they can do.

And I suppose we are just headed for the true Post-PC consumer world, we're just not quite there yet.