How Do I Upload Photos to Smugmug?

Photo archæology: How to organize, upload, and share 20 years of photos

Past Ben MacAskill, Head of SmugMug Customer Success

As head of Client Success at SmugMug, and an employee for almost 13 years, I've seen my fair share of large digital projects from customers over the years. Recently all the same, I spearheaded my ain photo archaeology projection at the very special request of an private needing some unique assist. It seemed similar a daunting task at starting time: 500 GB of images (over 130,000 images, to be verbal) needing to be organized and uploaded. I also came into the project blind — no idea what the content was and where it was sourced — simply in the end, had 65 organized galleries uploaded to SmugMug in less than a week. If you're facing a project that seems overwhelming, I'm here to tell y'all information technology's not. Let me show you how I was able to do this and how you tin can besides.

One of the start hurdles that many fear to tackle when dealing with a large epitome organization project is how scattered the epitome locations most likely are. In my circumstance, they were scattered like the wind: 100 photo CDs, seven hard drives, 30 photo libraries, and 30 floppy disks. And that's just the digital images! I also had seven boxes of prints and several reels of moving picture to include also. In total I was dealing with 20 years of precious family photos. To make the process equally easy and uniform as possible, gather together everything yous might accept to tackle.

20 years of photos — quite the journeying dorsum into fourth dimension

A fraction of the storage locations of the 500 GB of images

Once yous've collected all of your image sources, it'due south time to begin uploading. It took me two long, 12-hour days of centralizing to ane location on my computer for 500 GB worth of data. While slow, y'all will find your rhythm and become a repetitive machine by the end. I advise listening to some music while you work to help ease the boredom. If yous accept files on quondam technology, such every bit floppy discs, Zip discs, etc, merely no longer accept the proper reckoner equipment to admission them you lot will need to buy a portable disc bulldoze for whatsoever older applied science your images are stored on. I purchased what I needed very easily and cheaply online — there are lots of online vendors that tin assistance y'all with this after a quick Google search.

The chiliad total of all digital images

Now, for the heavy lifting portion of the project. But kidding! Adobe Lightroom and SmugMug's Lightroom plug-in will do all of the heavy lifting for y'all. I suggest you permit Adobe Lightroom build the catalog and also delete any duplicate photos overnight — then in the morning when you wake up you will find the majority of the organization done for you lot. Why apply Lightroom? It's an easy fashion to simplify your workflow. It saves time past managing your SmugMug site directly, allowing you to create Folders and Galleries through its Publish service. Information technology besides is perfect for piece of cake prototype retouching. If yous are unfamiliar with Lightroom, you can observe out more about how it uploads and sync photos to SmugMug here.

Now that nosotros have a gorgeous catalog without duplicates, we volition brainstorm uploading to SmugMug via our Lightroom plug-in. You can acquire how to install (or update) the Adobe Lightroom plug-in here. I highly propose you set your privacy settings before uploading, in case you might have anything sensitive or personal in the photo library. I decided to catalog the images past year to brand the family history easily searchable and recommend the aforementioned if you are dealing with a similar project spanning many years.

Adobe Lightroom and SmugMug's Lightroom plug-in make organisation and uploading a piece of cake

In regards to the seven boxes of prints and video reels — I sent them to our friends over at ScanDigital to digitize. It was quite a big amount and took them a month to complete, only they sent completed work in batches via hard drive during that timeframe. There is no metadata attached to these photos, so these photos will crave some manual arrangement, but it is far from taxing. A big thank you to them for doing a stellar chore. If y'all would like to bank check out their services, they are offering a 20% disbelieve to SmugMug customers with the code SMUGBLOG.

In the terminate, I had 65 searchable galleries with very little transmission organisation on my terminate — I barely broke a sweat. Just SmugMug offers much, much more than a digital storage solution for your family photograph archive. It's a wonderful way to share moments with friends and family unit far away. Our privacy options allow you to make up one's mind who can run across your precious intimate memories. Our photo tagging solution allows you to add keywords to photos and galleries, allowing for quick search and discovery. We also have many wonderful photograph partners to choose from when information technology's fourth dimension to impress out cardinal memories for dwelling house display or gifting. SmugMug isn't only for photographers — it'south for all retentivity makers.

Anyone with a piddling time and patience can organize and share decades worth of family photos, or any large image collection. I hope this inspires you to tackle your ain personal project that y'all've been procrastinating. Photos are meant to be showcased and shared, not hidden in a box in the attic.

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Source: https://news.smugmug.com/photo-archaeology-how-to-organize-upload-and-share-20-years-of-photos-17cbf70d5cd1

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