ScuzzBlog: Diaries March 2026
Entry 4th March 2026: Post 1: Image Processing - The eternal challenge of saving all my pictures.
Image Processing - The eternal challenge of saving all my pictures.
Another month and another lengthy process of backing up my images
created and acquired for February. This includes all my logs and
diary stuff. I ran out of space on my sticks so had to get more.
The sticks act a go between between computers and various external
hard drives. They hold work in progress and generally keep the
data till I'm comfortable I have enough backups.
I was reflecting on my processes and to the time this all started
all those many years ago on the Amiga. There was a moment when I
didn't have a single image stored on a floppy or hard drive, but
all that changed in 1993 with the Amiga 1200.
At first it was a case of simply storing DPaint files and viewing
them with the software. I ran into early problems with the sizes of
files I could generate which caused me to buy a 4MB RAM card. This
lead to the need for large file storage so I bought a XL Drive HD
floppy drive for reading/writing 1.4MB disks. Pretty soon I was
filling disk boxes with my images.
Viewing the files and referencing them soon became a problem and
I thought the answer maybe in DTP or desk top publishing. I had
seen numerous article on importing images into documents. Wordworth
came with Desktop Dynamite and was very good for image manipulation.
Sadly all this did was duplicate my files and create even more
storage issues.
The problem in truth was being able to see the files and review
them before loading the files. Fastview was very quick but it did
not let you reference the file before opening. PicView was a very
good thumbnail editor. Problem was it too created more files to
store and hard disk space was at a premium.
Along came InfoNexus which had a handy JPG icon next to images and
let you preview from the software. Soon however I found DOpus and
life on the Amiga would never be the same. A massive leap forward
in the world of file management and reviewing of images. Magic.
Some of the data base software was also catching up letting me
review animations also. With VidiAmiga my moving stuff was growing
faster than the still library.
Up to now I had been focused on IFF Amiga format but I needed to
view and edit other formats. Thankfully PPaint supported most of
the common file types. Sadly it was very slow to open files.
Next up I purchased a PC and for a good while was transferring my
images from the PC via an AmiPC link up using CrossDOS and my HD
drive on the 1200. This kinda made redundant most of my IFF library
and one summer I actually deleted most of my IFF collection in
favor of scanned JPG pictures which were of a much higher quality.
The images I show here of Terese Maxove represents the only disk
that survives from the IFF era. [ fashion archive ].
Quite soon I was switching more and more operations to the PC and
was experimenting with SideKick and Lotus. Thankfully my savior
was soon to arrive in the form of ThumbsPlus which I still use
today albeit in a modern version. Add to that my work in HTML and
I had a way of creating my very own thumbnail file manager. Web
based files could be read on the browser created with Notepad and
this was groundbreaking.
Some time in 1997 I guess I purchased for over 500 quid a copy of
the Adobe Photoshop software, which I still use. Photoshop is
essential for levels and colour adjustment plus the layering system
is a must have with any image manipulation software.
Back to ThumbsPlus and truly the best thumbnail software ever created.
Sadly my Win7 machine holds the last version before the creator died.
His family decided to not release the software into the public
domain so it'll never become freely available. I do have my disk
version number 10 on the Win11 machine, but the downloaded version
is only on the Win7 machine.
Anyhoo... I'm backed up now so I can return to Warcraft. Data loss
is a real fear of mine and something I have suffered a few times in
my life. I try very hard to maintain backups of everything and avoid
the cloud so its generally on drives and PCs here. I obviously have
a full copy of the site online which is beneficial. Just to say that
my Amiga archive is quite massive now and with so many tiny files is
a real headache keeping track of everything. I actually tried to copy
my local file for the emulator and it destroyed the stick. Seriously.
I think the multitude of small Amiga files burnt the thing out.
Going now.
Image Processing - The eternal challenge of saving all my pictures.
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