Master cloud-based photo management

As a full-time professional photographer and filmmaker who has worked on advertising campaigns, commercials and short films for a range of corporate clients and luxury brands, Canon Ambassador Clive Booth understands the value of being able to efficiently share work with clients around the world, and to be able to create temporary backups while on a job.

Canon's image.canon service offers a hassle-free way to share photos and videos with clients, work colleagues or friends and followers. The free-to-use cloud-based platform provides a link between your camera and your favourite connected services, and enables you to back up and transfer files while you're shooting – features that were invaluable to Clive during a promotional shoot for a theatre and film production company, as it meant the images and video could be shared immediately on social media.

Clive, who has amassed huge numbers of images during his career, has also learnt the importance of having an effective photo management system. Here, he reveals how he organises his extensive image library, shares his experience of using image.canon on a live job, and outlines the benefits of having a reliable backup strategy. Tibor Szövetes, Canon Europe Product Marketing Specialist, also highlights the benefits of image.canon.

Like many professionals, Clive takes full advantage of both local and cloud-based storage and editing. "I always shoot in RAW," he says. "I use a non-destructive workflow [making changes without overwriting the original image data] across desktop and cloud, so I can jump straight from my laptop to my smartphone and continue to edit. Everything I can do on the desktop I can do from the palm of my hand.

"There's a really great argument for using files this way. I shot some images the other day and I can go through any of the galleries on my phone – all the RAW files sit in the cloud – and the adjustments to the previews are in sync with my laptop."

Version 1.5 of image.canon added Frame.io support, which also now allows users to start exploring cloud-based video editing workflows. "Normally you'd need to buy additional accessories to unlock Camera to Cloud (C2C) connectivity with Frame.io, but our free image.canon service comes with this function embedded," explains Tibor. "Once you've linked your Frame.io account to image.canon, you can have a completely automated transfer of your stills and video files directly from the camera to the cloud².

"Using image.canon's auto transfer option allows you to send your files to the cloud while you carry on shooting or take a break," Tibor adds. "Power cycling the camera – turning it off and on again – triggers the auto transfer. If you've already set up a link to Frame.io, then the files can be automatically forwarded to your account. If you have an Adobe Premiere Pro account linked to Frame.io, then that transfer can happen simultaneously in the background."

As well as Frame.io support, image.canon enables movies and stills to be sent directly to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. Corporate Lightroom accounts are also compatible with image.canon. Additionally, you can forward files that have been uploaded from your camera to YouTube, Flickr, Google Drive™ and Google Photos™. "We have enabled users to automatically transfer files from image.canon to a Google Photos™ account even if they don't have a Google One™ subscription," says Tibor. "So even if you only have the free Google account which comes with 15GB of storage, you can benefit from the auto transfer function."

Clive used image.canon on a promotional shoot for Lipstick Rebel Productions. The theatre and film production company was in the final stages of rehearsing a series of short plays, Women Making Waves. The shoot was due to take place on International Women's Day and required a fast turnaround so that images and video could be shared on social media to celebrate the day.

"Using image.canon, I was able to upload the files directly to Frame.io, and then the production company could start promoting the play straight away," explains Clive.

To speed up the workflow, he switched to shooting JPEG Large rather than his preferred RAW format. "I was at a little theatre company that had fairly slow Wi-Fi," he says. "Although I could have switched to using my phone's unlimited data, I wanted to try a different type of workflow."

Clive set his Canon EOS R6 Mark II to the Portrait Picture Style and did no post-production on the files. He also shot vertical video clips so that the production company could easily share them on its social channels. With Auto send enabled, Clive's stills and videos were automatically uploaded to image.canon every time he turned the camera off and on again. From there, everything was automatically forwarded to his Frame.io account.

"My agent was logged in to Frame.io on his phone, so he was able to do a first look and selection in the background while I was still shooting," says Clive. "He uploaded the selects to a separate folder, which we then gave the producer access to, and she was able to download the files from there. We also sent some of the files to Lightroom as that gave us the capability to edit and share more widely. All the actors, directors and the rest of the company had direct access to the files and were able to download and share them. This was a relatively small production and the whole process really helped to promote the plays. It raised the bar in terms of the quality of their output."

Whether you're working in the studio or shooting on location, Clive stresses how essential it is to make a backup and then a second – and keep them apart, ideally storing one off-site in the cloud. "I can tell you some horror stories," he says. "One photographer had an intricate scale model of an oil refinery built in the desert. After the shoot, the model was taken down. That night their vehicle was broken into and the image drives were stolen. The team had to completely rebuild the model and reshoot it. Imagine how you and your clients would feel if you couldn't reshoot – if it was one-off, like a wedding. My biggest fear is losing data, which is why cloud storage is so important."

More than just a cloud storage service, image.canon brings your hardware and software closer together, enabling you to store, process and share your content, potentially improving many users' workflows. It's a digital hub where you can seamlessly connect your camera to other cloud services and transfer video footage and still images to them without the need for cables, bulky drives or card drives. The service's automatic, 30-day backup provides peace of mind, and using its dedicated app is a simple process.

"image.canon is a way of creating a temporary backup of your files while also being able to instantaneously give your work to clients anywhere in the world," Clive explains. "That's a really powerful tool."

¹ After 30 days original images are deleted.

² Selected cameras only; check function compatibility for more details.

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