How To Create A Workflow That Safeguards Your Lightroom & Capture One Catalogs From Data Disaster

Each day everything becomes a little more digital, reaches higher for the cloud and while becoming simpler, more convenient and at times more affordable the risk of data loss becomes greater. We all make the assumption that cloud based companies like iCloud, Dropbox, OneDrive and Box are going to be around for as long as we are and hopefully longer than we are, but as they saying goes, “shit happens”. So, how do we make sure that the negatives of our Digital era photos are preserved for generations just like the negatives of Ansel Adams, Carelton Watkins and Vivian Maier? By creating an intentionally redundant workflow.

Redundancy in the tech industry isn’t anything new. By definition: Redundancy is a system design in which a component is duplicated so if it fails there will be a backup. Simple right? But how do I apply that definition to my workflow using Lightroom or CaptureOne?

Step 1, Keep Your Catalogs on an External Hard Drive

Both Adobe Lightroom and Phase One’s Capture One programs allow to you to select the location where your photo catalogs are saved. By default they will be created on your primary internal drive, but with a minor change to your application’s preferences you can save your catalogs anywhere, including a…