> The bad news is that I have over 1TB of photos and the next pricing tier after 1TB ($9.99/mo) is 10TB and that costs a whopping $99.99 per month. So I use Google Photos with the free compressed setting. I don't actually mind since I have my own file backup solution and I use it more for that added layer of intelligence, convenience and utility.
I've tried doing as suggested here, but here's the problem: if it's too expensive to store your RAW images on the cloud (which it is for most people), then your cloud photo library is really just a proxy of your library. That's not to say it isn't useful, but unless it's synchronized both ways with the original files, you're just asking for disorganization - from my experience anyway. You have to be careful and basically only touch the originals to let changes propagate one-way to the cloud proxy.
If it isn't hosting your RAW files, then it doesn't fill the role of a backup, and if your edits or tagging on the cloud aren't applied back to your originals, then any time/effort you put into organizing and editing your library on the cloud is somewhat wasted.
To be honest, I do use Apple Photo Streams for something similar - but I just treat it as a convenience for low-quality output/viewing of recent photos, mostly from my phone. Even then, the Photo Stream part is still a mess. My main library resides on a NAS (as in the article), is backed up to 2 low-cost cloud backup providers (still much cheaper than hosting a single RAW copy on Google Photos), and I use Lightroom for all actual editing and tagging since it applies to the authoritative library.
My point is - I too look forward to the day where at least one copy of my full library can be hosted on something like Google Photos in the cloud, but we're still a ways off from that being practical. Google Photos can be a convenience in some ways, but at current prices it really doesn't fit what I'm looking for.
> My main library resides on a NAS (as in the article), is backed up to 2 low-cost cloud backup providers (still much cheaper than hosting a single RAW copy on Google Photos), and I use Lightroom for all actual editing and tagging since it applies to the authoritative library.
I'm doing something similar, but just backing up to CrashPlan (which has a flat fee for backing up). What cloud providers are you using?
I'm using CrashPlan, along with Amazon Glacier storage via Arq (also mentioned in the article, though it sounds like Paul was regularly accessing photos from Glacier whereas I never plan to access except in a restore scenario).
I've tried doing as suggested here, but here's the problem: if it's too expensive to store your RAW images on the cloud (which it is for most people), then your cloud photo library is really just a proxy of your library. That's not to say it isn't useful, but unless it's synchronized both ways with the original files, you're just asking for disorganization - from my experience anyway. You have to be careful and basically only touch the originals to let changes propagate one-way to the cloud proxy.
If it isn't hosting your RAW files, then it doesn't fill the role of a backup, and if your edits or tagging on the cloud aren't applied back to your originals, then any time/effort you put into organizing and editing your library on the cloud is somewhat wasted.
To be honest, I do use Apple Photo Streams for something similar - but I just treat it as a convenience for low-quality output/viewing of recent photos, mostly from my phone. Even then, the Photo Stream part is still a mess. My main library resides on a NAS (as in the article), is backed up to 2 low-cost cloud backup providers (still much cheaper than hosting a single RAW copy on Google Photos), and I use Lightroom for all actual editing and tagging since it applies to the authoritative library.
My point is - I too look forward to the day where at least one copy of my full library can be hosted on something like Google Photos in the cloud, but we're still a ways off from that being practical. Google Photos can be a convenience in some ways, but at current prices it really doesn't fit what I'm looking for.