Best Cloud Storage for iPhoto backup?

And none of these are possible with iPhoto (or Aperture, or Lightroom) as they are currently designed. None are designed for any kind of network access.

I work at a company that makes a product that does this very thing for enterprise systems. It works very well and is used by many video production shops who are mac based. I'm trying to convince our company to get into the consumer market but so far no luck.

Thank you Nate! Picturelife looks like just what I've been needing to find.

Is one able to backup an iPhoto library package and then retrieve it intact as one would from Time Machine?

OT

No it's just another web-based service like Flickr, SmugMug et al. Basically, you upload the Previews...

When you're done try to recover it (don't overwrithe your working copy) and see if it's intact and working. We'd like to know what you find.

Be sure to note the times requied for upload and download.

it seems to be backing up my entire library..

What do you mean by "entire library"?

Is it backing up the SQL database, masters, versions, edit history as well as all the added metadata - keywords and so on? I don't beleive so. It may well be backing up all your photos but that's not the same thing.

Nate here from Picturelife. Wanted to help explain the specifics of the iPhoto and Aperture backup and reimport. But first, as I was reminded to do last time I posted, I should be clear that I financially benefit from the use of Picturelife.

Right now Picturelife imports most all metadata from iPhoto and Aperture like masters, versions, and ongoing edit history (not historic). Of course captions, descriptions, ratings, and albums... I'm having a support page detailing each piece of metadata created as I type.

Then, on export (see this page if you are a user: https://picturelife.com/account/my_archive ) you can opt to re-download "with metadata," where we include a lot of that data in a format that's readable to iPhoto. Some data is readily readable by iPhoto and some data is not. For instance: faces detected in Picturelife can be exported to a format that Picasa reads, but iPhoto has yet to read.

Specifically in regards to master and versions, we import those quite successfully and are planning to include the data in the report to iPhoto as soon as we decipher how iPhoto actually stores them. Right now on reimport they would be reimported as separate photos.

The good news is that we keep finding new ways to tie things back together. It takes ongoing experimentation -- something we're good at! -- and the really good news is that you never have to reupload anything as we find new ways to support this. When we come up with the new features the syncer app simply starts importing the data we can then use and as we find new ways to export it we include it in the export zips.

Hope this clarifies things.

Kindly,
Nate

So, no, you don't back up the iPhoto Library? I can't upload my iPhoto Library Package, and then restore it as a package, launch iPhoto and pick up from where I left off? Like if I back up the Library to an external disk and then restore it?

I'm not decrying what I'm sure is an excellent service, but I'm trying to clarify for the sake of potential users.

When you say you import "most all metadata" what get's left out? How do you import versions as they are virtual? Do you mean Previews? And on "reimport they would be reimported as separate photos" means that the link between the Master and the version is broken?

Terence you are absolutely correct. This does not directly handle the package or completely reconstitute the package. The emphasis is on importing/backing up as much data as possible, with a focus on the photos themselves, and then making data portible and accessible via those metadata filled zips as well as an API.

As far as versions go, you're right that historical versions are not possible to fully back up. But once we've backed up current versions, all *future* versions do get backed up. So if you make an edit after it's been backed up, we keep previous versions and upload the latest version (which is why we have a feature to pause imports while iPhoto is open, so it's not uploading with each detailed change).

When I say "most metadata" I mean this: currently the biggest pieces we leave out are events (in iPhoto) and faces. Faces will be next to get imported (we have our own face system and are working on a way to combine the two). Events are trickier because again we have our own event system, but recently we've decided on a way to support those too and will probably have a solution in production in early 2014.

Does this make sense?

Thanks for clarifying that.