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Would you mind sharing why these photographers can't use Dropbox/Photoshelter/etc? Photoshelter looks to have a $50/month unlimited cloud storage plan[0], whic

Would you mind sharing why these photographers can't use Dropbox/Photoshelter/etc? Photoshelter looks to have a $50/month unlimited cloud storage plan[0], which seems pretty cheap if they're going to really take advantage of the "unlimited" aspect. For a professional photographer $50/month to not have to worry about carrying around this stuff seems like a deal (and less if they don't have that much to store). [0]: https://www.photoshelter.com/signup/subscriber https://www.photoshelter.com/signup/subscriber

pfranz 5y ago
I haven't done serious photography in years, but my guess is that the market isn't quite as big as the parent suspects (the people who want it aren't willing the pay). There's a giant graveyard of push-button photo backup sites targeting photographers. Sadly, I would be suspicious of using any service (since it would mean uploading 100s of gigs of images for the kinds of people who would use it) since they shut down so often. I've never heard of Photoshelter, but it sounds like you upload high-resolution final images that are ready to view and print--it doesn't seem all that different from Smugmug or Flickr. Most photographers want to archive the source files and edits (project files). I see you can technically upload RAW files, but unless that integrates very well with your photo management software, I'm not sure if it's of much use. Lightroom databases can get relatively large since it includes caches and thumbnails. So you'd need a separate system for backing up those that ties it back to the RAW files. Dropbox might work, but I'm not sure how approachable "smart sync" is and their pricing tiers don't seem like a great fit. My guess is a well-loved open source project that wraps around b2 or AWS might be the best fit. But, honestly, a pile of hard drives will probably win out. You make your investment upfront and it's a simple enough mental-model. Unfortunately, they tend to die and with large data sizes photographers don't always go for redundancy.

pfranz 5y ago

I haven't done serious photography in years, but my guess is that the market isn't quite as big as the parent suspects (the people who want it aren't willing the pay). There's a giant graveyard of push-button photo backup sites targeting photographers. Sadly, I would be suspicious of using any service (since it would mean uploading 100s of gigs of images for the kinds of people who would use it) since they shut down so often. I've never heard of Photoshelter, but it sounds like you upload high-resolution final images that are ready to view and print--it doesn't seem all that different from Smugmug or Flickr. Most photographers want to archive the source files and edits (project files). I see you can technically upload RAW files, but unless that integrates very well with your photo management software, I'm not sure if it's of much use. Lightroom databases can get relatively large since it includes caches and thumbnails. So you'd need a separate system for backing up those that ties it back to the RAW files. Dropbox might work, but I'm not sure how approachable "smart sync" is and their pricing tiers don't seem like a great fit. My guess is a well-loved open source project that wraps around b2 or AWS might be the best fit. But, honestly, a pile of hard drives will probably win out. You make your investment upfront and it's a simple enough mental-model. Unfortunately, they tend to die and with large data sizes photographers don't always go for redundancy.