Workflow - Folder Naming Convention

Covey

Well I'm ploughing ahead with my new year's resolution of getting a handle on my workflow. Thanks to Elven for a great solution on my last issue of mass deleting files btw. Works a treat.

So what Folder naming conventions work in your opinion. I always thought that Year - Month - Week - Day was a bit useless really, but am coming more and more around to it.

Bearing in mind, I'll be tagging all files comprehensively ( come back to that at a later stage) and will have different versions of all files i.e. Raw, Tiff, Jpeg ( numerous versions, size dependant, B/W, etc).

Other constraints/requirements are;

1. Little possibilty of accidental deletion or overright
2. Fast retrieval of files ( by Tag)
3 Reasonable folder Size - important for Raw Processing.
4 Anything else I've overlooked.

Apologies if this is basic stuff for most of ye, but this has nearly led to me quiting photography altogether, so assistance most appreciated.

Thanks

T.

Paulw

I have mine as follows --

Drive\photography\year\month\event

So ...
e:\photography\2008\jan\leinster-toulouse
or
e:\photography\2007\aug\laytown_races

That works for me. I can then work through things. I seldom have more than 5-10 events in a month, so not that hard to find events/images.

I have separate workflow directories.
e:\photography\processed-PSD
e:\photography\processed-lrg-jpg
e:\photography\processed-web-jpg

I would then move the files from my processed directories in to sub directories of the parent they came from.

I hope this make sense, but it certainly works for me.

GristlyEnd

I usually have a folder named for the event, eg. 'boards meet - balbriggan'. Within this folder I have sub-folders for RAW, PSD & JPG. I then have a seperate folder for my website images (resized). Everything is then backed up overnight on 2 external hard drives.

I was lucky enough to start a workflow when I went digital.

rymus

more or less the same as Darren.. I have it organised so my filing system is completely indecipherable to any other human being so that in the event of my untimely demise, nobody will know where to look for any photos... Thereby keeping them safe as houses.

mikeanywhere

rymus wrote: »

more or less the same as Darren.. I have it organised so my filing system is completely indecipherable to any other human being so that in the event of my untimely demise, nobody will know where to look for any photos... Thereby keeping them safe as houses.

Likewise, its even known for me NOT to find my own images HAHAHAHAHA

Covey

Paulw wrote: »

I have mine as follows --

Drive\photography\year\month\event

So ...
e:\photography\2008\jan\leinster-toulouse
or
e:\photography\2007\aug\laytown_races

That works for me. I can then work through things. I seldom have more than 5-10 events in a month, so not that hard to find events/images.

I have separate workflow directories.
e:\photography\processed-PSD
e:\photography\processed-lrg-jpg
e:\photography\processed-web-jpg

I would then move the files from my processed directories in to sub directories of the parent they came from.

I hope this make sense, but it certainly works for me.

Thanks Paul, sounds good.

Just wondering if you're tagging your stuff though, I wonder if your need the final level of folder Leinster-Toulouse etc.. Will the Tags not get that for you,? Trying to be as efficient as possible here.

Also, do I take it that your e:\photography\processed-PSD etc are your back-up files? Sound nifty.

T.

Paulw

Covey wrote: »

Just wondering if you're tagging your stuff though, I wonder if your need the final level of folder Leinster-Toulouse etc.. Will the Tags not get that for you,? Trying to be as efficient as possible here.

Also, do I take it that your e:\photography\processed-PSD etc are your back-up files? Sound nifty.

T.

I don't do a lot of tagging. I generate the directory on import from memory card. It's after that I go in and start tagging and flagging. The directory name just helps me organise a bit more.

The "processed" directories are only used as a workflow directory, and very handy for batch processing. I then move the processed files to sub-directories under the event name.

elven

Wow, does that mean I made sense?

I promised myself to do the tagging thing too but it's sooooo slooooow running bridge with the files on my NAS

I have a question, though - hope it's not thread hijacking since it seems relevant:

I use a similar directory structure as above - E:\photos\bots dec 07, E:\photos\bots jan 08, E:\photos\charleville oct 07 etc etc - if I were to tag them in bridge, when I want to search based on a tag can i search so that it goes into all the subfolders in 'photos' rather than having to search through each one individually?

Paulw

Firstly, I'm not sure. I just ran a test, using the Find option in bridge, and you can set it to search all subdirectories.

Hope that helps answer the question.

Covey

elven wrote: »

Wow, does that mean I made sense?

I promised myself to do the tagging thing too but it's sooooo slooooow running bridge with the files on my NAS

I have a question, though - hope it's not thread hijacking since it seems relevant:

I use a similar directory structure as above - E:\photos\bots dec 07, E:\photos\bots jan 08, E:\photos\charleville oct 07 etc etc - if I were to tag them in bridge, when I want to search based on a tag can i search so that it goes into all the subfolders in 'photos' rather than having to search through each one individually?

Thanks a lot for the deleting option, I've adopted it already and its great. Don't worry about thread hijacking, I'm going through this
as systematically as I can and I'll get around to tagging and searching soon :cool:

Seems to me that putting specific names on folders, is a good idea if you shoot events or large amounts of the same topic. For someone like me who doesn't it may very well be unneccessary and searching tags may well be the answer.

It answer to your question Elven, I'm pretty sure you can search all directories.

Thanks again to all who answered.

T.

Hugh_C

I rename all files in the form 2008-01-01_DSC_3326.NEF and then I file stuff by year/month directories. Tagging is for people with too much time on their hands!

I use LightRoom which builds thumbnails of all images. I only ever store NEF files (that's RAW to you) and I never keep jpegs because they can be rebuilt at any time anyway. If I edit stuff in PShop, it gets saved (with a -edit suffix) in the same directory as the original NEF file.

Everything is backed up automatically by Time Machine on an hourly/daily/weekly basis, but that's more a function of using the Mac OS than any discipline I might or might not have. Everything is also backed up to two alternating sets of optical media. I don't throw anything out because media and drives are so cheap these days.

mervifwdc

It depends on what software you use. If your using something like bridge, LR, iview etc, then you can just use buckets.

my directory structure is BUC_001 where the 001 increases after every big shoot. A BUCket can contain anything from half a dozen to a thousand shots.

I then tag every shot I download using the IPTC keywords using Photomechanic with the details of the shoot for example "Sport, rugby,naas, Tullamore" would give me 4 keywords. That takes all of about 10 seconds to do to any number of files, I've got time to do that :-)

Then, I can search by team name or by sport using LR when I import that bucket.

Also, I archive the buckets in numerical order, so if the last one I archived is 203 for example, I'll archive 204 up the latest one when I decide to do that. If your doing events by name, you cannot do that, and if your doing them by date, then you must download in date sequence to be able to do that.

I've about 80K images stored, and can usually find anything I want in less than 30 seconds. Works for me!

Oh I save any stuff that I've heavily photoshopped in another directory, named master_001 (and increase that from time to time). I have a seperate catalog for that to make it faster to search.

For tons of info on this, google "the dam book" for a good look at this dam technique.

Merv.

rymus

elven wrote: »

I promised myself to do the tagging thing too but it's sooooo slooooow running bridge with the files on my NAS

Sounds like someone needs to invest in a gigabit switch

Fenster

I use a script to import photos onto my hard drive. They got straight into Pictures/Imports/YYYY-MM-DD, ie, 2008-01-16.

I save the full size psd of the final processed photo in it's import folder and a full-sized jpeg copy under Pictures/<Subject>; ie, Pictures/Animals/Cats.

trishw78

mmm looking at how some of you take such care in name files I guess my approach of just putting them in one folder and hoping for the best must sound like madness.

I've recently got an External HD with the in tentions of backing up work, now that I have the scanner I'll be electronically keeping a record of all the film I've taken. I guess I better read this thread or come up with a system that works best for me as with regards filing

ThOnda

I use folders:
YY-MM-DD-description

No tagging so far, but it'll be the next step soon.