Windows Live Photo organizer.. and NAS? Versioning?

hey guys,

We've been wanting to 'organize' our photos for a long time, but as time is tight (we have a 2 year old we've not gotten aroudn to it.... but with a 2 year old, it means we've got a hell of a lot of photos the last 2 years, too

Picassa sounds pretty good from the feature list, but I have no interest in giving ownership of all my photos to the mighty G. Almost a shame Picassa became owned by G..

Anyway, I wondered if any of you have experience with Windows Live photo organizer..

- I keep all my photos on a NAS (DNS-323 for the win!); how does this tool (or others) perform across a remote disk mount? Do they assume everythign is local, or can they handle making links to off-machine data?

- I really really hate apps that presume to modify the original photo; really, I want the app to contain its data (organization, tagging, etc) and not mess with my photos. If my wife does go cropping or something, I'd really like it to create a new photo with the alterations, and leave the old one alone. (Really, I'd like the tool to not even move the photo.. just keep all the data in itself.)

It sounds like WL photo tool does keep a backup of the original, which is half way there.. but I'd really prefer they don't mess with the photos at all. *paranoid*

(esp with every change applied reducing the quality of a photo, given jpg re-re-re-compression)

Anyone have a good ecperience with the latest MS freeware photo tools?

jeff

 

Windows Live Photo Gallary is awesome.

When you make changes, it keeps the original as well and you can redo your changes any time.

You can automatically backup your photos to a free online storage from Microsoft as well automatically. 25GB of it sounds enough for you? LOL

 

Thanks for the reply

Where does it keep the original? Does it rename it, or move it to a sub-folder, or move it somewhere else?

I wonder how it performs over a wifi to a NAS (disk server).

I'm not really keen on remote backups like that.. I'd have to read the license carefully and they're always brutal to really understand. I hate (maybe I'm too old school giving up all my rights on my stuff to take advantage of 'free services'.. right now I keep a couple of USB drives and swap 'em with a buddy, for 'offsite backup'. I'm a kook

jeff

 

In terms of assuaging your paranoia (or, as some would say, justifiable concern), it might be best to make archive copies of the originals that you've burned onto CD/DVD; that way, you'll always have an original (at least until the plastic on the CD/DVD gives way, which won't happen for quite some time, though).

 

It keeps the original in the original file. The modified file contains the original file + the changes.