#storing art

[sixsans]

Ima0000000000000000000000000000000000000

Im still alive guys trust

[mific]

Fanart storage options

Decided I’ll try cross-posting some thinky posts from DW to tumblr at times.

Since the dread news about LJ, I've been fretting more about where to host all my fanart. They're on LJ scrapbook now, which is an okay interface and pretty easy to use, but who knows what they'll do to it next?

Ordinary photo-sharing sites are no good as the file size is too low, they aim at making your art readily trawled by all (not always what I want) and I also worry that if I opt into a cute new site it'll go belly-up after I've gone through the hassle of moving everything.

What I want in an art storage site is ...

Free - even if I upgrade my experience for now, say to have the interface ad-free, if I can't afford a fee in future I still want all the links to work indefinitely (ha, hubris. Well, until the zombie apocalypse, anyway).

Easy to get a direct link for embedding in AO3 or DW etc. And it  needs to provide a 'clean' direct link without a heap of site-GUI-crap and/or ads all around the edges, like tinypic and photobucket do. This is as I often post a smaller version of a pic and link to the full-size version, and I almost always do a link anyway even for smaller pics  - this is for pads and mobiles, as otherwise the pic won't display fully.

I don't create many ginormous files, but for the few I do, the site needs to be OK with that.

Lots of free storage so I don't run out.

Easy to organise my art - easy to make folders, name and rename them. Photobucket also allows on-site artworks to be named, which is nice, but it's not crucial to me as I only use the site for storage so as to embed works elsewhere.

Ideally I need a site that doesn't care if I store some explicit images. I don't worry about that too much though, as mine are rarely super-explicit, and I figure I'll find another solution for the tiny few that are if LJ goes bust. Meanwhile I'll leave those ones on LJ.

I commented about this here and there recently and I thought for a while that Photobucket was going to be okay. But the links that I figured would give a clean direct link with no GUI-crap turned out not to do so, so that's a bust.

In the end, and partly because of this discussion from

Adam Savage's Tested, I'm going with Mediafire

It does all the above and focuses on storage so people aren't as likely to trawl through the site's images and accidentally hit my porny one of Remus and Sirius barebacking :)  It's not hard to get a direct link to paste in for immediate display and also to link to - you do have to click on the thumbnail to call up the actual image, then R-click on it to get "copy image url", but that's no more work than with LJ.

Notes:

the top choice from the Adam Savage site above was actually Minus - but the article dates from 2012 and Minus doesn't seem to exist any more (cautionary tale there). Mediafire, on the other hand, has been around for ages.

another good thing about Mediafire is that the link doesn't alter if you reorganise and move the art to another folder later on (I tested this). So no need to edit the AO3 or DW post. This is a big plus over LJ, where it would break the link.

So that's where I'm at with this. I haven't actually moved many pics across so if anyone out there knows anything better, or sees flaws in this cunning plan, please set me straight!

[karadin]

how should I store my art?

no cardboard folders or boxes! Cardboard is highly acidic, which over time makes the items you store turn yellow and get little brown spots called acid burn. Buy acid-free storage materials, or if you can’t get that, buy acid free paper to wrap your items.

never store in plastic, or plastic sleeves, even if archival, these can trap moisture

Keep artwork out of the light and in a climate controlled area, no real highs and lows in temp, keep away from damp, check condition of your art periodically, making certain it’s dirt and dust free.

Keep artwork flat if possible, if you have to roll an item, make sure it’s in as large and sturdy a tube as you can find, and the same rules apply, no cardboard, or wrap in acid free paper

Anything signed must be kept in the dark, or under UV glass or plexi, even if it’s ‘permanent’ marker, these are the first things to fade.

You can get acid-free storage materials in most craft stores, as well as archival mist, which helps prevent paper products from yellowing and becoming brittle, these are good for tickets, articles, etc, but always test in a corner first, and don’t use on the front of valuable original pieces.