Time Warp Backup
Time Warp Backup is a new kind of backup for photos, with great advantages over traditional backup.
The Trouble With Traditional Backup
When using traditional backup systems, the backup job is never done. Even after you've backed up your photos, whenever you edit a photo it needs to be backed up again. If you don't backup again, and the photo is deleted or lost, then when you restore the photo you'll get back an old version, without any of your editing changes. This might not sound terrible for one photo, but what if you've just spent a month editing the photos from your big trip to the Galapagos Islands? You will be so sick and tired of looking at giant tortoises that you'll just throw your hands in the air and give up rather than have to edit all of those photos again.
Traditional backup systems make you face a dilemma: when to backup the photos? If you backup the photos immediately after you transfer them to your computer from the digital camera then they'll be safe, but your future editing changes won't be backed up. Therefore, you might decide to complete all of your editing work first, and only then backup the photos. But in that case, if something happens to the photos in the meanwhile then they'll be lost.
How Time Warp Backup Works
Time Warp Backup solves this dilemma. You only need to backup your photos once, immediately after you've transferred them to the computer, and yet all of your future editing changes will backed up as well, even though they'll be made after the initial backup. It's like time travel for editing changes, which is why this feature is called "Time Warp" Backup.
Centico Photo Album remembers every editing change that you make to your photos, and saves these changes in a database. It's capable of applying these editing changes to older versions of the photo in order to recreate newer versions. Therefore, if the latest version of the photo is lost, Centico Photo Album can take an old version from the backup CD and apply the editing changes to it, resulting in the latest version.
An Example of Using Time Warp Backup
Suppose you were on a trip to Italy and took many photos (as you should; Italy is very beautiful). After returning home, you transfer all of the photos from the digital camera to the computer.
One of the photos you took is of Bernini's famous elephant sculpture in Rome. The sculpture is topped by an Egyptian obelisk:
This is the Original Image. Right now, it's saved at C:\Photos\Bernini.jpg.
Since you're using Time Warp Backup there's no reason to delay the backup, so you perform it immediately. Now the Bernini photo has two copies:
- On the hard disk - C:\Photos\Bernini.jpg
- On a backup CD - E:\Albums\Italy\Rome\Bernini.jpg
After backing up the photos, you start editing them. When you get to this photo, you decide to make the following changes:
- Auto Color Levels - to improve the brightness of the photo.
- Crop - to make the photo include only the sculpture.
Here's what the photo looks like after these changes:
At this point, you still have two copies of Bernini.jpg, but now each of the copies contains a different version of the photo:
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Original Image On a backup CD: |
Current Version On the hard disk: |
But now, disaster strikes! Bernini.jpg is accidentally deleted from the hard disk. Perhaps it was a virus, or a hard disk error, or plain bad luck. We may never know. What we do know is that we want the photo back, pronto!
Once Centico Photo Album realizes that the file C:\Photos\Bernini.jpg doesn't exist anymore, it will change the photo's status to Offline, since it can only be found on a CD now. This is indicated by placing the icon of a CD over the thumbnail:
If you try to use the photo (e.g., by double-clicking it), then Centico Photo Album will automatically restore it from the backup CD. It will ask you to insert the CD, and then it will read the Original Image from the CD and apply the editing changes to it. Here's the dialog that appears when this is done:
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+ Auto Color Levels, Crop = |
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The Current Version of the photo has just been recreated, even though only the Original Image had been backed up. The Current Version is now saved on the hard disk and can be viewed and edited as usual.
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