The Ohanaware Weblog

Today’s I’m gonna talk about something, which I think almost everyone should have. Their own personal Time Machine.

Before Ohanaware was born, I was developing other image manipulation programs. About once every two months, I’d get someone who had done something to their photos and wanted me to undo it. Imagine taking a permanent marker to your photo. I’ve received threats of death and legal action, thankfully neither have come to fruition. In the previous product we gave people multiple warnings, which legally protected us, but ultimately didn’t stop people.

When Funtastic Photos was being designed, this very problem was taken into consideration. We designed it so that your original photo would be protected and it can be recovered even without the use Funtastic Photos. This does only work if you use the Funtastic Photos file format, if you use “Save A”s and replace your original file with a JPEG. Your toast!

In HDRtist, we tried something else. If you try to replace a file, HDRtist offers to take a backup of your file, again you can choose not to and voila your image is gone.

Why do we let people replace files, because at one time we didn’t. We refused to save over people’s files. You got it, this made people upset also.

The solution: Isn’t expensive (providing you’re running Mac OS X 10.5), buy yourself an external hard disk that’s larger than your internal hard disk. Hook it up to your Mac, and it’ll ask you if you want to start the Time Machine. This is superb, as it’ll preserve everything, including your photos! If you overwrite your photo and want to remove the permanent marker, you simply rewind in the Time Machine. I even take mine in the car when we go out, incase, some limey half inches my computer, or anything else happens while I’m out.

Hard drives are prone to failure, it doesn’t matter how old they are. They all fail at some point, photos are precious. So please please back them up and never overwrite the original files.