Camera Craniums: The Photography Community for Enthusiasts

I was recently executor for a Will and almost the last task was to sort out the deceased's photo collection (all prints). I had this in mind when I heard that Lightroom was to change to a subscription based application. My own photo collection is several thousand RAW and JPG files on my PC, catalogued using Adobe Lightroom 5 in a way that makes photos of family members (for example) easy for anyone with password access to my PC to find. However, a subscription based service is likely to cease fairly soon after the subscriber dies. In that case, how would anyone else be able to access such a catalogue? Would it be possible to even see the keywords which had been assigned to each image?

Simon

By keywords, if you mean image tags; they are hopefully stored within the actual image file properties (right click) and by loading files of images into programs like Fuji's My Finepix Studio Viewer etc., keywords/tags will be there & searchable.

Recently I mused about the large number of photo albums and thousands of images that I will ultimately leave stored on computers , DVDs and hard drives. Having watched my wife and her brother largely dispose of the majority of their deceased fathers snapshots keeping only the immediate family shots it made me realise that much of what I have taken is of little value to anyone.  :'(. I got quite depressed about it and my photo taking has reduced lately as i think about what i want to leave behind for others to manage.  I have determined that when on holiday with others I will aim to  get more people shots and less scenery / arty shots and will generally take / keep  fewer images rather than increase the burden on others. I`ve found myself looking at the images popping up on my Facebook photo group newsfeeds  in huge numbers thinking "Why have the bothered to share that at times. very sobering period. One of the first things I realised was that I need to share various passwords with family or they will not even be able to access the images to throw them away  :o
Sorry - ignore me but it was the first time i`d even wondered about what  others would do with my photographs. I need to accept they are for the here and now and we live in a world of too many images. I`ve often felt sad but uplifted  when seeing Abers and Spinner`s images come up on the front page in the random gallery and assume their accounts are somehow still "live". not seen them much lately though.

Lightroom keywords are stored in a separate Adobe specific database, and can only be read by an application that has the necessary template. I imported all of my LR keywords into ACDSee when I swapped over, as there is an 'import LR database' wizard. With 50k+ images from the last 17 years of digital photography it did take a while. ACDSee is still available as a one off purchase, although I am on the monthly plan as it is always kept up to date that way. If they ever stop the one off licence purchase I am hopeful that there will be notice and I can buy a licence then to keep image tags live for the foreseeable future.

I have been going through my old stuff, up to July 2009 now, tagging and frequently deleting images, just to try to get some kind of coherence and to save disk space. I've deleted all the old DNGs and many of the RAW images where there is an edited or simultaneous JPG too.

Stop feeling morbid right now Paul. That's a Christmassy order!

Quote from: Hinfrance on December 23, 2017, 11:09:22 AM


Stop feeling morbid right now Paul. That's a Christmassy order!

OK H- will do  ;) ;D