Collect and Backup Photos from Multiple Photographers

Question

I have a few photographers working under me ( well, not exactly under me, but I say it anyway just for illustration purpose), so they shoot a lot of photos, the problem is that they all store their photos on their hard disk, and I have no way to retrieve them unless I pass them an USB and ask them to fill it with their photos.

Very labor intensive and inefficient!

Is there any other better ( more automated) ways of doing this? For the fear of losing the resolution, I don't really favor a online-synch approach, because I think all the photos uploaded to any website will suffer a resolution loss, which is the last thing I want.

Is there a better idea?

Edit: Being artistic as they are, I can't guarantee that they all use PC and Windows; so the software must at least be able to run on Mac.

Answer 1

You may want to have a look at Microsoft Sync toy using UNC shares (if on same network)

If spread out across the internet, take a look at Microsoft Live Mesh and Dropbox

Answer 2

You can use online-sync approach without resolution loss. Your are exchanging raw files, not modified files.

One service that you can use is, for example, Live Mesh or DropBox. You can use them with Microsoft Systems or Mac Os.

Answer 3

Try sharing a private Picasa web album with sync to web enabled. The files are not compressed.

Answer 4

DropBox and LiveMesh would be great. But I think they both have some pretty small (relatively for raw photos) limits on total size you're allowed to have on the cloud.

Perhaps consider creating an ftp server that can be set up on other computers as an accessible ftp folder. I know Windows can do this, but i'm not sure about Macs.