

Show HN: Raw Image Storage for photographers using S3 and Glacier - jjbohn
http://picnib.com/

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richardkmichael
I do IT support for a few working architectural photographers. Over the years
I've thought about this too (at least, I've worked the numbers a few times).
It's hard to make it work; they need a minimum of 8TB of storage for existing
material, then growth by about 2.5TB yearly (to date, but most are about to
start time-lapse video). Though, your cold storage approach is intriguing.

Napkin calculations:

    
    
      0.04  /GB * 1000 = 40.00 /month (curr) =  480.00/yr
                * 2000 =                     =  960.00/yr
                * 3000 =                     = 1440.00/yr
    
      0.004 /GB * 8000 = 32.00 /month (cold) =  344.00/yr + 48.00/yr/TB
                                                          + 100.00/yr/2TB
                                                          + 175.00/yr/3.5TB
    
      1 shoot = 25GB (stills only) or 50GB w a 30 sec TL (add 25GB)
    
      ~100 shoots /yr ==> 2.5TB/yr @ 25GB, 5TB/yr @ 50GB
    
    

[Aside, that's 5-12 mins to upload (25Mbp/s - 10Mbp/s, only 3 mins @ 50Mbp/s).
So consider additional internet cost.]

Without frequently juggling current to cold, or doing yearly compounding
calculations, I'd eyeball this at ~$1300/yr, with growth of $150/yr, each
year.

One way to make this more attractive is to leverage the online storage to
build other recurring-revenue generating services, but most photographers
don't go for that type of thing. (In my experience, stock image sites, etc.
are primarily the realm of hobbyists.)

You also have the trust/confidence problem. I suspect every photographer will
want to maintain their own backup as well. So, they won't "save" money (even
if online storage was less expensive, but I suspect it's not) because they
still need to pay for local storage. Of course, for apples to apples, you need
to factor in time to maintain those backups, either my hourly rate or their
own; things like disk-testing, data juggling (downsizing 1TB -> 3TB drives,
etc.). But again, it's still 'extra' cost, because they won't (IMO) switch to
solely online storage.

A question:

Are you providing tools to allow photographers to leverage their online
storage? E.g. Dropbox-like sharing with clients (even just contact sheets?),
integration against online print services, store-fronts for image sales, etc.?

All that said, I'm interested in seeing your private beta though. I think this
can work, one day. :)

~~~
jjbohn
Definitely want to let them leverage the storage eventually, including contact
sheets, psd storage, etc. Starting with just the basics for now to see where
it goes.

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benjamincburns
Couple of things...

First, I really dig the "Made with ♥ in Nashville, TN" footer. Way to have
some pride. People need to pimp their non-SV residences more.

Second, I've been mulling over doing something like this. Since you're doing
it already, please steal my idea. Make a connector for LightRoom and make it
stupid simple to link a RAW with exported JPEGs.

~~~
xvrl
If you're looking for Lightroom integration, mosaic
([http://mosaicarchive.com](http://mosaicarchive.com)) provides an almost
identical service and already has a plugin.

~~~
benjamincburns
But was mosaic made with love in Nashville? ;-)

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davidroetzel
There was a story on HN a few weeks ago by a photographer wanting this kind of
service. I found the discussion very interesting.

Is this in any way inspired by that? Or is this a coincidence?

~~~
jjbohn
Very much inspired by it. Wish I could find the post actually. I had some
services running for my wife's photography business, but nothing that could
really be released in any way. Seeing that other post though made me start
taking the steps to turn it into a SaaS.

~~~
tekseven
I believe the article you are looking for is here:
[http://paulstamatiou.com/storage-for-
photographers](http://paulstamatiou.com/storage-for-photographers)

Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6020969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6020969)

~~~
jjbohn
Thanks!

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tghw
We applied to YC with this idea last year. I wrote about it in the last thread
on this topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6021507](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6021507)

Overall, your two biggest challenges are going to be convincing people they
need backups (they still don't know, we tried) and pricing. Currently,
Backblaze gives me unlimited backups for $5/month or less. With nearly half a
terabyte of photos, it's cheaper for me to back up everything with them than
use a service like this, which doesn't back up the rest of my stuff.

That said, I hope you guys can find a way to make it work!

~~~
jjbohn
Great posts. Thanks for sharing them. Will definitely keep all of what you
said in mind.

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mieses
I've been using the FastGlacier GUI client and paying $0.01/GB/mo. Of course
Glacier pricing increases for retrieval, early deletion, etc. But there is
only one middle-man (Amazon). On OSX, Arq looks like the best client.

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deanclatworthy
I found your pricing to be unclear. You say it starts from $0.04/GB, but is
this for the cold storage or active storage. If I uploaded 50GB of photos to
"cold storage" immediately, what would be the monthly cost? What if I then
uploaded another 10GB into active storage, what would the monthly cost be for
50 cold and 10 active?

I've signed up though. Email is similar to username ;-)

~~~
jjbohn
Yeah, I'm a pretty terrible copywriter. Let me see if I can make it more clear
on the site. Thanks for the input.

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Paul12345534
I don't use Smugmug but what possible advantage does this have over Smugmug?
Even their top tier plan with lots of features is only $300 a year. All their
plans have unlimited storage. $300 a year would only cover 625GB at $0.04/GB.

~~~
dagw
Smugmug only backs up the jpegs you upload for display. If you want to store
your RAW files on smugmug you have to use their separate smugvault service
which costs $0.09/GB/month

~~~
Paul12345534
ahhh ok, I didn't notice that :) I stand corrected

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geoka9
If you're content with the 2048x2048 pixel limit for your stored photos,
picasa is ulimited and free. (You do have to sign up for Google+; without it,
the pixel limit for photos that don't count towards the quota is smaller.)

~~~
Groxx
And if you're content with JPEG only (I assume it's not RAW, though I have no
real way to test it).

Though tbh I've begun recommending Flickr over Picasa. Better (significantly)
3rd-party app support, 1TB is more than the vast majority will use in a long
time, and it's easy to default everything to private if desired.

~~~
geoka9
I find working with Flickr more cumbersome if you only use the web UI. For
example, Flickr has a limit of 200 photos that you can upload in one batch,
which is a problem when you have a slowish upload link (ADSL/cable).

~~~
Groxx
Yeah, there are definitely some problems. But then G+ has problems too. I've
had marginally better luck with Flickr's uploader fwiw (faster, fewer fatal
errors for no reason), and the browsing experience is slower.

But if you're uploading _lots_ of photos there are _lots_ of tools out there
for only Flickr that put both web UIs to shame, automatically retry, etc. The
Picasa application is... surprisingly decent, but I've had worlds of pain with
its buggy syncing, and it gives off a feeling of almost-abandonware.

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StavrosK
If someone open-source, encrypted backups at that price, I would buy it in an
instant. What I want is, basically, rdiff-backup on EncFS, but I haven't found
a way to hack the two to work together.

~~~
slashdotdash
* Arc [http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/](http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/)

* JungleDisk [https://www.jungledisk.com/](https://www.jungledisk.com/)

Arc supports encrypted backup to Amazon S3 and/or Glacier, works with
occasionally connected external hard disks perfectly. I use this to backup RAW
photos from Aperture stored on an external USB hard disk (at least 50GB
worth).

~~~
davak
Can you describe your workflow for aperture?

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slashdotdash
It's nothing too special. I use a separate Aperture library per year, each
stored on an external hard disk. It's a Western Digital "My Book Edition II"
with 2 x disks in RAID1 configuration for redundancy. This is configured to
backup to Amazon Glacier using Arq, which is clever enough to only backup when
the drive is connected and only uploads the new or changed files. Works quite
effectively and once configured I don't really need to think about it.

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JimWestergren
Looks good, I signed up. You only support photos?

~~~
jjbohn
Right now it's photo centric just to make sure we get that experience down.
Eventually I could see it move to other areas though. My wife's a photographer
and I saw a need for this kind of service that was focused on photographers.
There's lots of other photo backup, but the only ones that do raw files are
more syncs than anything. She needed a place to persist images she was done
with in a cheap way.

~~~
photoGrant
I work for an advertising photographer. We constantly work with 3 local
(seperate) copies of the same data. Would love to find a viable cloud service.

If we could test this that'd be great!

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vadvi
"With our pay-as-you-go pricing, you pay a base rate" LOL

