Storing aphoto files

[P_Monty]

Hi all,

New user here be gentle 🙂

I'm using Affinity photo on a mac (and I'm very pleased with it) which has my photos backed up into an amazon photos account.

Only one minor snag. The amazon account gives me unlimited photo storage, but everything else is "costed"

So far, my workflow is import a raw file > do the necessary work on it (saving a .aphoto file as required) > export to jpg.

To stop the aphoto files using too much of my storage allowance, I want to exclude them from the backup (I know I risk losing my work, but I've still got the original file and the exported jpg safe). I can't find a way of preventing the amazon uploader from including everything in the directory.

I know this is really a question for amazon and I've approached them, but reading round it, I'm not confident of finding a solution so I thought I'd try finding's a solution within affinity.

I can save the files as say,   .image1.aphoto as this treats the file as hidden, so it doesn't get uploaded to amazon. If I do this, the file shows up in the "open recent" menu, but not the normal "open" as it's hidden.

Or, I can save the image1.aphoto to a totally different directory which doesn't get backed up, but I have to remember to change back to the right place for the export.

Have I missed an obvious solution - is there a better way for working?

Thanks

Paul

Happy new year to everyone.

 

 

 

[Chris26]

14 minutes ago, P_Monty said:

Have I missed an obvious solution

Well, I would not give my files to Mr.Bezos.😁  Nevermind.  I have never seen such a complicated way to store and backup files.  May I suggest the following, being ignorant of course about all this cloud and Amazon storage.  That you save your files to a rather big USB stick, I am assuming of course that when you said "Directory" that Mr.Bezos wants all your files, and not just ones from a particular folder, in which case the solution appears obvious.  Nevertheless if amazon does invade all your directory (C:// I take it) then simply save your aphoto files to a USB stick.  I feel nervously that I have misunderstood something giganagorous here, but reading your question gives me a visual image (not a pun), gives me the impression that you simply want to keep your aphoto files seperate from your whole computer and when you want to open them just open them from the USB stick?  

[P_Monty]

Cheers for the reply @Chris26

I'm hoping that dear Mr Bezos isn't getting my files. A bit of basic research suggested (at the time - things may have changed) that Amazon was one of the least bad ways of backing up your photos.

Your assumption isn't too far off.. I've got an external drive with 2 main folders on it:

Import - this is where the pictures go as soon as they come off the camera and

Backed up - this has many subfolders such as "holidays", "friends" etc. This is where the photos go after I've sorted each import - it's also where the photos live as I'm working on them. It's this 'backed up' folder that gets uploaded to the amazon cloud.

Paul

 

[Chris26]

2 hours ago, P_Monty said:

that Amazon was one of the least bad ways of backing up your photos.

Well I do not mean to advise you on your personal choices here, but as for me personally, I have 3 backups, I would rather spend the little it costs to back up my own stuff and be in complete control, rather than store personal stuff on someone else's computer/server where you never know what truly goes on in these so called cloud thingies, and when the internet is not 100% secure and when the intenet becomes inaccessible for who knows how long.  Stay in control of everything and hand nothing over..it's all always a false promise of security that people tend to accept as the norm......on a personal note this is..😉 

[thomaso]

If I understand right you want to

1. backup a certain folder ("Backed up")
2. exclude certain file types (.aphoto) from the backup
3. backup to a cloud volume

I don't know how your cloud service works. If you may feed it with a custom backup software then you might use one which allows exclusions by file type (extension/suffix).

• For instance the open source "http://www.urbackup.org/ seems to support clouds ("internet backup") and also to allow exclusions by file type.

• The well known and comfortable "Carbon Copy Cloner" (mac only) allows to exclude files by file extension. I am not sure but it appears to be unable to backup to a cloud and requires the backup volume to be mounted (e.g. you can use a different mac, accessed via lan/wlan).

• Also "Synchron" seems to offer specific excludes via "wildcards", I don't know if they supports clouds.

• Whereas "Arqbackup" offers literally clouds as backup volumes but I don't know if they offer exclusions by file type.

• Finally on mac you have build in synchronize tools which would allow to configure custom backups (without using the "TimeMachine.app") but require to be set in the Terminal.app. If you type 'man rsync' in a terminal window it will list / explain its commands + options. There is a post with a script to limit a backup to certain file types only (which also would work if you list all wanted); note this post is 9 years old.

However, if you don't need your files via internet it appears a lot more useful to buy an additional external disk + do backups locally, possibly without the need to exclude certain files and using the build-in Time Machine.app. Nowadays disks, even SSD, aren't that expensive and will save the costs for cloud storage. In case you prefer a cloud just because of a possible harm to your local environment and disk, even an additional backup disk can be useful, stored at a different place.

[P_Monty]

Got it in one - that's what I'm trying to do.

I did use odrive for a while, but then Amazon changed the API which stopped it working - maybe I'll give urbackup a try.

Oh - and yes, I do have a local backup on external HDDs which is my first line of defence (and that *does* include the .aphoto files), but that's no use if someone breaks into the house and takes anything that looks IT related.

Thanks

[thomaso]

One more guess: the mac iCloud can be configured to backup the macOS Pictures folder of your user folder, and it only copies certain common file types ("HEIF, JPEG, RAW, PNG, GIF, TIFF, HEVC and MP4") so possibly it ignores .aphoto files. It seems you can define a custom path on your mac, even external drive, for the macOS photos library file, so possibly you also can use a custom path for the related main folder, too, to be used and recognized by iCloud as your Photos folder. (maybe via an Alias?) – That way you would not need a separate backup software and auto-backup your exported jpgs only.