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Delete Your Photos? But, Why?

Studies

from the digital-packrats dept

Thu, Aug 25th 2005 3:19am — Mike Masnick
With the rise of digital cameras and virtually unlimited storage, people have been begging their friends and relatives to get better at cutting down huge collections of photos to more manageable levels. Of course, that's just the collection for showing people. Pack rat digital photographers can still store the fifteen different shots they took of the same tree to try to get just the right angle -- rather than just picking the best. It appears that about 15% of people refuse to delete any digital photo they take. They've got the storage, so why not keep them all -- even if no one will ever look at them.
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17 Comments

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  • identicon
    Jimmy Thomas, 25 Aug 2005 @ 6:49am

    No Subject Given

    *takes a pic of this article*

    ha ha haaa! my evil plan to fill the worlds storage devices with useless pictures continues!!


    No, but really... I didn't know that. I usually have trouble *keeping* my photos around.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    dorpus, 25 Aug 2005 @ 7:10am

    Meow meow

    Don't you keep pictures of your baby daughter?

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous of Course, 25 Aug 2005 @ 7:53am

      Re: Meow meow

      I bought a 256Mb jump drive at Wal-Mart. When I got home I noticed the package had been neatly slit along the bottom. It was a used item that had been restocked. I was a little miffed but decided that if it worked I would keep it anyway. I was in a rush hence the trip to wally-world. When I installed the drive I discovered, Lo and Behold! It was filled with baby photos. I guess someone needed to transfer some photos and then didn't have any use for the drive and returned. I'm a packrat photographer... just bought a 160G drive just for photo storage. With each photo running ~22Mb it's really not as much storage as you might think.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 25 Aug 2005 @ 7:44am

    guilty

    I'm one of those people who can't seem to delete pics. A weekend visiting the family (incl the new nephew) means 300-400 pics on my 4mp cam, about 40 of which will later be pulled and passed around.
    But the other 300 still sit in my .../pics/2005/07/pics-2005-07-tripHome directory. No one will ever see them, but I know they're there. I changed my habits from a careful and savage pruner after I deleted a few pictures of my cousin that weren't exactly perfect, and he died in a plane crash before I saw him again.
    So I'm crazy.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Matt, 25 Aug 2005 @ 8:36am

    Picture Hosting Sites

    With picture hosting sites that have damn near unlimited photo capacity, it's a wonder why people use their own hard drives for this in the first place!

    Sites like fotki and things like that...replace any need to keep it on your hard drive...and anyone taking higher than 6 megapixel shots to send to family is a bit over-done. Do they really need a 2048x1600 size photo(5 megapixel)? You can't print em that large or even view em that large on most computers without shrinking them!

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      spam, 25 Aug 2005 @ 8:58am

      Re: Picture Hosting Sites

      My god, what a *terrible* idea. One of those 'free' photo hosting sites (I forgot which one) royally screwed over customers not too long ago.. they either went under, or started charging for space.. something pretty lame.

      It's best to store your photos yourself. Just make sure that you back them up.

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Photoman, 25 Aug 2005 @ 9:35am

    Ya, I keep em.

    I'm a photographer, my wife is a graphic designer. Even before the digital revolution, we kept everything. You never know when that bad shot you took might actually be useful sometime down the road..

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 25 Aug 2005 @ 10:15am

    Keeping images isn't necessarily bad...

    It's not as simple as this headline makes it sound. I do keep almost all of the pictures I take because at some point in the future I'll re-review the photos. Typically, there will be a shot I would have 'chimped'(aka deleted), that now has an appropriate use. Had I deleted that photo, the opportunity to make use of it at a later date would never have materialized. If your a pro, chimping will end up costing you money down the road - not to mention that deleting images in-camera at an event takes your attention away from the action.

    It's just better to just keep them all if you have the storage space.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Dave, 25 Aug 2005 @ 10:36am

    keeping them is the easy part...

    I've found that keeping my photos is the easy part. I'll take a picture and upload it to my computer. then, I'll photoshop-it-up so that it looks normal (keeping original size). Then I'll make a special-size photo for my website (~800x600). Sometimes we email out pictures to the family so we make another special-size photo that's even smaller than that (~500x300). Before long, I'll have anywhere from 1 to 5 versions of the same picture!
    So, what kind of tool is best to maintain such a large collection of pictures? Right now I use Picassa, but is there something out there that basically offers the same kind of features and can help me effectively store my pictures?

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous, 25 Aug 2005 @ 11:07am

      Re: keeping them is the easy part...

      Keep them all! Spare your relatives... only slide show the best.

      To repeat the question above: What's the best workflow/organizing tool for the "best" subset?

      [ link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 25 Aug 2005 @ 4:30pm

        Weird

        I have no problem deleting crappy photos. Back when I used film I would throw out any photos that didn't turn out. I don't need to see 5 versions of the same scene/event, so I just pick the best ones.

        [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Rob Kohr, 26 Aug 2005 @ 8:51am

    How to deal with them all.

    1) I usually fill up my camera for an event then dump all of the images into one album.

    2) Then, pull out the top 15 and only that many and add it to another album.

    You can keep all the crap, but those 15 are enough for any one event, and also it happens to be the limit of the attention span of anyone looking a a photo album.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    jim mann, 20 Jul 2006 @ 10:35am

    can't delete photos

    i have adobe starter album 3. my pc seems to keep everything i have looked at. i can't seem to delete photos. they are many still there after i delete them.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    jim mann, 20 Jul 2006 @ 6:35pm

    can't delete pics

    forget no 14. i deleted adobe photoshop from my pc.
    could not permanently delete various pics from internet or downloaded pics from internet. works fine now. seems like anything that was pulled up was randomly kept and unable to be taken out permanently.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    jim mann, 21 Jul 2006 @ 7:09pm

    can't delete pics

    no. see 14 and 15, pics are still there. i delete them but they are not gone!

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 22 Jul 2006 @ 5:24am

    any image seen on internet or pics downloaded either.

    [ link to this | view in chronology ]


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