Open question - Using the Imgur plugin, how secure is it, into the future?

[Smithy]

Having used Obsidian for almost a year, and it has become an essential part of my daily life, there is however one nagging question which I decided to put out here into the forum.

The whole point of Obsidian, for me at least, is that it is local, markdown, and ‘future-proof’ (whatever that might mean), under my control.

My setup is to have my vault in Dropbox (free version 2GB), encrypted via Cryptomator. I work with a lot of images, the sensitive ones I keep local, encrypted in Dropbox, and the non-sensitive stuff I upload to Imgur, all via the Imgur plug-in (my vault stored in Dropbox so I can access it from various workstations).

Shout out to @Kir for the fantastic plug-in, and @santi for helping me find and appreciate it.

However, going forwards, what am I doing, storing my images in Imgur? Is it such a good idea to have them there away from my control?

What happens one day if Imgur shuts down, or morphs into something no longer suitable? If the whole point of Obsidian is to ‘have my data under my control’, am I making a big mistake by storing my images, in effect, out of my control?

How do you store your images?
What do you think of Imgur for hosting your images?
Is there a more secure (under your control) way?

Many thanks in advance for all contributions

[Smithy]

No ideas or thoughts anyone?

[Olondre]

I can only tell you from my point of view, i would never use a service like Imgur as a solution. As you ask yourself: Is it such a good idea to have them there away from my control? I would give you a resounding NO as an answer. No matter if it’s non-sensitive images.

Also FYI, if this below is still the case, you should stay away from Imgur, like you would from the plague, anyways:

Compress images when pasted into Obsidian

Keep in mind that Imgur deletes un-viewed images after 6 months. I have lost multiple images that were hosted on Imgur over the last 10 years. I will never use their service anymore unless it is for a temporary image share.

Regarding your last paragraph, unfortunately I can not give you an alternative, as I will have to figure this out myself in the future.

[Smithy]

@Olondre

I can only tell you from my point of view, i would never use a service like Imgur as a solution. As you ask yourself: Is it such a good idea to have them there away from my control? I would give you a resounding NO as an answer.

Thanks @Olondre, really helpful points

@Olondre

…, unfortunately I can not give you an alternative, as I will have to figure this out myself in the future.

As I mentioned in the thread that you linked to, yes that is the next big question for me too. Compress images when pasted into Obsidian

I enjoy visually interesting notes, so how can I continue this without massive files sizes.

As I wrote in the other thread, I use ShareX - The best free and open source screenshot tool for Windows because you can set it to save in .jpg and set the compession size.

Hmm, any other alternatives to Imgur? Saving images to gdrive?

[bryan00]

Instead of using Imgur, i’m using imagekit. Its free plan offers 20GB storage and another 20GB/month of bandwidth , which is enough for my personal vault. Though there isn’t any plugin to auto-upload a pasted image from Obsidian to Imagekit

Or you can also try Cloudinary, though its free plan (25GB storage and bandwidth combined) is not as generous as Imagekit. There’s also a plugin to auto upload image to Cloudinary when pasted into Obsidian, similar to the imgur-uploader plugin.

[Smithy]

Right, let’s see if I can address some points here:

@Compress images when pasted into Obsidian

Keep in mind that Imgur deletes un-viewed images after 6 months.

Yes this is definately a (further) reason to avoid Imgur, and any similar concept.

@Olondre

Regarding your last paragraph, unfortunately I can not give you an alternative, as I will have to figure this out myself in the future.

I’m still working on this. I downloaded my entire image collection from Imgur. Around 800 images and 250MB. Now that will be a long day of re-pasting images, when I work out what my new system will be.

@bryan00

Though there isn’t any plugin to auto-upload a pasted image from Obsidian to Imagekit

There is that app SyncThing which I believe you can use to encrypted sync folders between devices.

Thanks for your suggestions @bryan00, when I work out my new system I will be posting my workflow in a new thread

Thanks all

[Smithy]

@Smithy

when I work out my new system I will be posting my workflow in a new thread

Started my new workflow thread here ‘One Year On’ thoughts - Imgur, Images, Dropbox syncing, Regrets, Future-Proofing! - Share & showcase - Obsidian Forum

Many thanks to @Qwxlea for drawing my attention to the plugin Local Images:

@Qwxlea

For images the “Local images” plugin is great. It will fetch all images linked in your vault, stored elsewhere.

[Smithy]

I’m going to close this thread.

IMO, the answer: Imgur is not a long-term solution for 2nd Brain PKM.

It is a great short-term solution maybe for some kinds of uses, but for any serious long-term work, I would strongly advise against it

Thanks to @Olondre and @bryan00 for your insights