variety of cloud backup services so pick up the one you prefer.
Here are the ones I recommend:
• Dropbox: Probably the most famous and widely used
one. I use it for my backups but may switch since they are
now one of the most expensive ones compared to what
all other services offer. You can see in the previous image
that I’ve created a folder called “LR Backups” inside of
the Drive and all my backups go there.
• Google Drive: Since a lot of us live in the Google
environment (Gmail, Android, Google Docs, G+, etc..), you
might sign up for an extra 100GB with GDrive and store
all your backups there. GDrive offers 15GB free when
you sign up (you already have a Drive account if you use
Gmail).
• Copy: This is one of the relative newcomers in the field
and they’re doing a great job with competitiv e prices and
fast uploads.
By having your backup separate from your original catalog
location, and synchronized to to cloud, you’ll feel much safer
and won’t be afraid of losing all your precious editing.
On a side note, I’d like to mention that, as you backup regularly,
it’s worth getting into the habit of going back to your backup
folder and deleting the older ones. As they stack up, they’ll
start taking a lot of space (especially if your photo collection is
growing), so go ahead and delete the older ones and keep at
least the 2 or 3 most recent backups.
So now you’re thinking that once you’ve done this process, all
is well and everything is backed up? Wrong!
This process above backs up your LR catalog only. What is not
backed up yet?
• Lightroom settings
• Presets
• Templates (Web, Print)
• Plugins
• Previews
• All your images
Backing up
templates
settings,
presets,
plugins
and
Settings, presets and templates are saved inside the Lightroom
folder (where it is installed). Plugins are saved wherever you
decided to save them. I recommend creating a “Plugins” folder
inside the Lightroom folder and put everything there (so you
don’t end up with plugins all over the different drives).
Lightroom doesn’t offer a way to backup these folders from
inside the software. You’ll have to do it manually. Go to your
Lightroom folder, copy the newly created “plugin” folder and
the “Lightroom Settings” folder (check inside, it contains
presets and templates) and back them up in one of the above
mentioned cloud services. You’ll have to remember to do that
regularly though.
There is another way that is much easier and safer in my
opinion. I usually use 2-3 different cloud services: one contains
my backups and the other contains… my Lightroom Catalogs.
If you scroll back up to the Catalog Settings image, you’ll see
that my Lightroom location is in Dropbox. Why? Because every
time I use a LR catalog, it syncs automatically in Dropbox.
Most cloud services have the option to go through saved file
version up to 30 days, so if anything ever happens (like a
corrupted catalog or files), I can always check the older file
version and recover it.
Another advantage of having your catalog saved online is
that if you ever format your computer, you can just reinstall
a fresh Lightroom and point it to use the catalog in Dropbox
and you’ll have all your edits back again!
A third advantage is when you work on different computers,
your work is constantly synced and up-to-date, all you need
to do is unplug your HDD containing your images and plug it
to your other computer and the same edits are all applied.
Backing up your images
As I mentioned before, Lightroom doesn’t back up your
images. It just creates a database of previews, which you
can work on in a non-destructive way (as in it doesn’t touch
your images).
Previews are created on-the-go (or during import). Is it
important to back them up? In my opinion, no. Don’t even
worry about them. They can be recreated at will whenever
you want to, so don’t waste time and space backing them up.
However, if you’ve saved your catalog in the cloud like I’ve
mentioned above, you won’t need to worry anyway since
they’re already synced.
What about images?
Again, I cannot stress enough the importance of having
an efficient backup workflow. I usually have all my images
backed up on 2 separate external HDDs and all my edited
images are also uploaded on my Smugmug website.
But having ALL your images and especially RAW files also
backed up on the web is essential since an accident can
happen (fire, flood, burglary, etc..) and you could lose all
your different HDDs altogether.
What I recommend is to have a cloud service that
automatically backs up your files in the background without
you having to do it manually. Here are a few that are well
known:
•
Crashplan: This is the one I use and strongly
recommend. Crashplan, unlike other services
below, does not throttle your bandwidth after a
certain amount downloaded, and most importantly,
they keep all your file versions forever (instead of 30
days like most).
• Backblaze
• Carbonite
• Mozy
Keep in mind that your initial backup will take a very long
time (mine took 3 months to backup all my essential files
and images) but after that, it will keep backing up regularly
every day. This solution is important not only for images,
but also for all your computer files and documents. You can
basically backup your entire computer to the cloud (and you
should).
NM CliQ Magazine | March 2016
77