Check Your Astrobin

[Rodd]

21 minutes ago, gorann said:

The point is that if you saved your image as an 8 bit image (=jpg) you cannot tease anything more out of it from further processing since you lost 99.6 % of the dynamic range. So it is a very poor backup. All processing books will tell you that you should always save in an uncompressed format, like tif (or fits = tif but with some text info on the capture). So, using the normal Astrobin as a way to save your data is not a good idea,

And I cant even upload many of the images again--the page gets locked on the edit form page and nothing I do allows me to upload.  So I have to delete the entire image a re upload.  That sucks

[gorann]

2 minutes ago, Rodd said:

And I cant even upload many of the images again--the page gets locked on the edit form page and nothing I do allows me to upload.  So I have to delete the entire image a re upload.  That sucks

Probably becasue a few hundred are trying to do the same thing right now....

Edited February 17, 2020 by gorann

[Rodd]

23 minutes ago, gorann said:

The point is that if you saved your image as an 8 bit image (=jpg) you cannot tease anything more out of it from further processing since you lost 99.6 % of the dynamic range. So it is a very poor backup. All processing books will tell you that you should always save in an uncompressed format, like tif (or fits = tif but with some text info on the capture). So, using the normal Astrobin as a way to save your data is not a good idea,

But these are final images--no reprocessing needed.  I have the filters I work on and when done--post the final image.   Regardless of anything--its not a good idea to blame the supporters of the page when the page should not have lost everything. 

Since all printers want the JPEG--what's the difference?  The picture hanging on the wall is the final image.

[Rodd]

9 minutes ago, gorann said:

Probably becasue a few hundred are trying to do the same thing right now....

No--its specific images.  Some work and some don't--regardless when I try.--In fact--when I try to open the image from my home page it takes me directly to the edit form, and saving does nothing--I am stuck on the edit form

Edited February 17, 2020 by Rodd

[Guest]

My pictures are also effected, did just visit my data and all of my few pictures are gone..i will try to load them again..

[AbsolutelyN]

I lost all my images too. However it only took an hour to add them back. If I'm going to spend thousands on equipment and hundreds of hours to create these images then I'm going to keep multiple copies and not commit storage to one website. The site is also built and run by one developer, I suspect it only just pays it's way. Unfortunate stuff happens and the site has done so much for the astrophotography community, I think it needs all the support it can get right now.  

[carastro]

Quote

You cant upload files to Astrobin for viewing except JPEGS.  

I never save in Jpeg, all my files are uploaded to Astrobin as PNG files.   

Carole 

Edited February 17, 2020 by carastro

[Rodd]

8 minutes ago, AbsolutelyN said:

I lost all my images too. However it only took an hour to add them back. If I'm going to spend thousands on equipment and hundreds of hours to create these images then I'm going to keep multiple copies and not commit storage to one website. The site is also built and run by one developer, I suspect it only just pays it's way. Unfortunate stuff happens and the site has done so much for the astrophotography community, I think it needs all the support it can get right now.  

No one is suggesting that we shouldn't support it.  Look--I tried saving on my own external hard drive--it broke and I lost all data.  So I said, why not pay to have the images safe...I did and the data is gone.  Come on, what the heck?  Whats next...open my own data storage company?  That's not me.

[Rodd]

3 minutes ago, carastro said:

I never save in Jpeg, all my files are uploaded to Astrobin as PNG files.   

Carole 

I just read that JPEGs are better for photos--PNGs are better for line art and not many colors.   Probably makes little difference.

[carastro]

Salvatore has just asked me if he can use my Staging area to figure out why I can refresh my Thumbnails and it works for me and why it doesn't work for others.  

Watch this space.

Carole 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

1 minute ago, carastro said:

I never save in Jpeg, all my files are uploaded to Astrobin as PNG files.   

Carole 

Carole, Any particular reason?

I too lost mine but only had 8 images so an hour or so searhing about for my original images.

One thing it has done for me is to make me realize how bad I am for organising my own data as 99% of this time was me searching my various drives and small server for the 8 images. Made a mental note "Must do better !".

Whilst I need to be more disciplined I can recommend backing up all your data to one of these small servers. Okay like anything I guess still not totally safe from viruses or corruption but the fact that when you save something to this it automatically copies everything to two hard drives so at least halving the chance of total loss, or at least that's the impression I am under.

Steve

[Rodd]

1 minute ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Carole, Any particular reason?

I too lost mine but only had 8 images so an hour or so searhing about for my original images.

One thing it has done for me is to make me realize how bad I am for organising my own data as 99% of this time was me searching my various drives and small server for the 8 images. Made a mental note "Must do better !".

Whilst I need to be more disciplined I can recommend backing up all your data to one of these small servers. Okay like anything I guess still not totally safe from viruses or corruption but the fact that when you save something to this it automatically copies everything to two hard drives so at least halving the chance of total loss, or at least that's the impression I am under.

Steve

You mention one of these small servers--but did not identify them.

[AbsolutelyN]

6 minutes ago, Rodd said:

No one is suggesting that we shouldn't support it.  Look--I tried saving on my own external hard drive--it broke and I lost all data.  So I said, why not pay to have the images safe...I did and the data is gone.  Come on, what the heck?  Whats next...open my own data storage company?  That's not me.

Every sympathy for your lost images, I've lost many personal images over the years and learned the lessons. These days you can make multiple backups of final images ... upload each final image to Facebook as you go - just share with yourself, or email yourself a copy with a cloud email (or get multiple free emails accounts for backups), instant and free backup for final images spread across your computer, astrobin, facebook (or many other social options), or multiple email accounts ... even get a print. Just ideas for spreading the risk.

[teoria_del_big_bang]

12 minutes ago, Rodd said:

You mention one of these small servers--but did not identify them.

Its one of these DS211J I think I paid about £100 for it.

DS211J

It can be configured as one 4Tb drive or a 2 X 2 Tb drive which is how I have it.

So I just manually back my data from my mount to this drive and also currently to a third drive (I replaced the CD/DVD drive on my laptop for another hard drive). So my thoughts are that by doing this and actually having 3 copies the likelihood of total loss is pretty low (I hope I am right - I am no IT expert).

Steve

Edited February 17, 2020 by teoria_del_big_bang

[Rodd]

3 minutes ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Its one of these DS211J I think I paid about £100 for it.

DS211J

It can be configured as one 4Tb drive or a 2 X 2 Tb drive which is how I have it.

So I just manually back my data from my mount to this drive and also currently to a third drive (I replaced the CD/DVD drive on my laptop for another hard drive). So my thoughts are that by doing this and actually having 3 copies the likelihood of total loss is pretty low (I hope I am right - I am not IT expert).

Steve

I just got a TB SSD drive.  It should be more stable than the HDD drive that broke.  I don't do Facebook.  Do emails last forever?  If I email an image and scroll back through 10 years of emails and find teh one I sent 10 years ago, will the attached file still be there?  If so, I suppose that is a free storage source.  I could create a folder just for that purpose

[JamesF]

I don't use Astrobin, so I can't really comment specifically about that service, but as a general point (and also being someone who works in IT) I would never rely on a third party to keep data safe that was important to me even they were charging for it. These days I just don't believe I can trust a business to do that for me and absolutely guarantee that it will always be available without fail.  Or if they can, it will cost an arm and a leg and so few people will be happy to pay for it that it won't be viable as a business.  Should they lose your data I think the majority of big companies would just say "That's a shame.  Sue us if you dare." and the small ones would just fold either before or after the papers were served.

Offsite (over the network) backups just aren't practical for me anyhow, but if I felt the need to do that (and I appreciate that it is a sensible solution for some people) then I'd back up to at least two completely unconnected organisations, it being completely pointless if, for example, you found that both the companies you chose hosted all their files using the same supplier.

James

[carastro]

Quote

Carole, Any particular reason?

I have always been told not to use Jpeg because the files get compressed and indeed I have seen some horrible Jpegged artifacts on the odd image i tried to E mail to people.

Then I discovered Portable Network graphics (PNG) which many sites will accept and I find from experience they work pretty much the same at Tiffs, to the extent I sometimes don't even realise which i am working on.  I used PNGs for creating my astro book which went to the printers and it worked very well on there.  

So to avoid compression.

Carole 

Edited February 17, 2020 by carastro

[carastro]

PS: the PNG files are a lot smaller than tiffs.

Of course being the old dinosaur that I am I still keep the tiffs on back up drive as well. 

Carole 

[JamesF]

1 minute ago, carastro said:

I have always been told not to use Jpeg because the files get compressed and indeed I have seen some horrible Jpegged artifacts on the odd image i tried to E mail to people.

It's not the compression per se that's the issue.  It's the way it's generally done in this case.  JPEG compression throws data away on the assumption that something reasonably approximating what was thrown away can be recreated from the data that is left.  For daytime photography that can often work relatively well, but as you rightly say when it comes to astro images it can result in horrible artefacts in the regenerated image (and if you take that image and process it further, saving the result as JPEG again, it just gets worse).

PNG does also store images in a compressed format, but no information is lost in the process.

James

[carastro]

Quote

PNG does also store images in a compressed format, but no information is lost in the process.

Thanks for confirming that. 

Carole 

[teoria_del_big_bang]

2 minutes ago, carastro said:

I have always been told not to use Jpeg because the files get compressed and indeed I have seen some horrible Jpegged artifacts on the odd image i tried to E mail to people.

Then I discovered Portable Network graphics (PNG) which many sites will accept and I find from experience they work pretty much the same at Tiffs, to the extent I sometimes don't even realise which i am working on.  I used PNGs for creating my astro book which went to the printers and it worked very well on there.  

So to avoid compression.

Carole 

Thanks, I have no idea why but I never thought of using PNG files. 

[geoflewis]

As Salvatore states that Amazon advise that all missing images are lost, I have no choice other than to reload all my 360+ images to AB one by one - so far I did not find one that survive the loss. I made a start this afternoon and so far have restored about 50 images in something like 5 hours, so perhaps 10 per hour. Most of those already done were easy as they were still available in working folders on my laptop. I have now started working through archive HDs and for sure my planetary images are the most challenging to identify final version, as they are mostly composite of many Tiff images de-rotated in WinJupos, so checking to be sure that I have the correct final version is taking a lot more time than the DSO images. Sadly I have also found that some images initially appear missing from my primary astro image back up of planetary video, so maybe my periodic back up routine missed some. I have multiple versions of back up on different HDs, so hopefully I will find them somewhere as I work through everything over the coming days

Tomorrow I go into hospital for a prostate biopsy under GA, hoping that it does NOT detect any cancer, so right now I definitely have an acute appreciation of what is serious and what is just annoying. The only important result I want right now is no cancer, the loss of images on AB is just noise in comparison....!! I will need to rest for a few days after the procedure, so no doubt I will continue to amuse myself restoring images to AB, but I think I will be fully active post op way before I have restored all 360 missing images......

[gorann]

10 minutes ago, carastro said:

Thanks for confirming that. 

Carole 

Yes, png may be ok since it stores at 16 bit and not 8 bit like jpg so you could have all your dynamic range there. I bet someone like Vlaiv @vlaiv could as usual help us out here. I took one of my 89.9 Mb tif files into PS and saved it as png. File size fell a little bit to 72.4 Mb but when I opened it in PS it was still 16 bit. When I save the same file as jpg in PS (at maximum quality of 12) it becomes 10.4 Mb and when I open it it is only 8 bit - so crap for further processing.

[gorann]

4 minutes ago, geoflewis said:

As Salvatore states that Amazon advise that all missing images are lost, I have no choice other than to reload all my 360+ images to AB one by one - so far I did not find one that survive the loss. I made a start this afternoon and so far have restored about 50 images in something like 5 hours, so perhaps 10 per hour. Most of those already done were easy as they were still available in working folders on my laptop. I have now started working through archive HDs and for sure my planetary images are the most challenging to identify final version, as they are mostly composite of many Tiff images de-rotated in WinJupos, so checking to be sure that I have the correct final version is taking a lot more time than the DSO images. Sadly I have also found that some images initially appear missing from my primary astro image back up of planetary video, so maybe my periodic back up routine missed some. I have multiple versions of back up on different HDs, so hopefully I will find them somewhere as I work through everything over the coming days

Tomorrow I go into hospital for a prostate biopsy under GA, hoping that it does NOT detect any cancer, so right now I definitely have an acute appreciation of what is serious and what is just annoying. The only important result I want right now is no cancer, the loss of images on AB is just noise in comparison....!! I will need to rest for a few days after the procedure, so no doubt I will continue to amuse myself restoring images to AB, but I think I will be fully active post op way before I have restored all 360 missing images......

Oh Geof, that certainly gives some perspective to our minor problems here. We all hope for the best for you! And even if it would be cancer, I understand that it is only 10% of the prostate cancers that are really bad and the rest can be taken care of by your own body defence. It is an really odd form of cancer, or rather multiple forms.

[geoflewis]

1 minute ago, gorann said:

Oh Geof, that certainly gives some perspective to our minor problems here. We all hope for the best for you! And even if it would be cancer, I understand that it is only 10% of the prostate cancers that are really bad and the rest can be taken care of by your own body defence. It is an really odd form of cancer, or rather multiple forms.

Many thanks Goran,

I have had multiple tests including an MRI over the past 2 years, but nothing conclusive which is actually good news, but the consultant, to use his words, 'is not reassured', but latest blood tests, so recommended the biopsy. Hopefully if any cancer is found it will be very early stage, since the MRI done 1 year ago did not detect anything, but it certainly has given me a different perspective on what is important....

My wife and I would just like to know one way or another, as the not knowing has been hanging over us for too long now....