how do you organize your photographs?

fguihen

im having a difficult time organizing my photos.

initially i organized them by event. eg : trip to botanical gardens, trip to bray etc. this doesnt work when you get to a folder called Trip to Bray_6. so i was thinking of categorizing them, eg : flowers, birds, Bugs, buildings. but then id have to also break it down by species: eg: robin, dunnock, heron, starling....etc. info overload.

also i have a problem of how do i store the original along with an edited version.i dont like throwing away the original just because ive fixed it a bit in photoshop ( i intend to get better at photoshop so im sure il be able to do even better with the originals in years to come).

so im having a tough time organizing it all. how do you do it? im sure pros have been through this.

5uspect

I also organise by event. Usually I shoot in RAW so I'll have a subfolder of processed Jpegs in the event folder too. If you use Adobe Bridge you can add tags that let you add things like flowers etc also. I haven't tried it myself yet but I'm beginning to think its time!

photo_gaa

5uspect wrote: »

I also organise by event. Usually I shoot in RAW so I'll have a subfolder of processed Jpegs in the event folder too. If you use Adobe Bridge you can add tags that let you add things like flowers etc also. I haven't tried it myself yet but I'm beginning to think its time!

this is great software Photo Mechanic
used my sport/news photographers

it can load all your pics in 2-3 sec.....

nilhg

I do it by date ie 2008/may26, I use Lightroom to import and add keywords when I'm importing, global ones to all the pictures in the folder first then individual ones like names ect later.

bradnailer

badly :d

TutuKaka

Lightroom too. Very handy.

5uspect

Must look at lightroom... hmmm

Roen

Lightroom makes all of that a breeze. Just tag batches on import or at any stage and hey presto.

I could go on for ages about how you can narrow down your searches to a particular folder, on a particular day, for a particular species etc etc.

Well worth the asking price!

Fenster

I go by: YYYY-MM-DD

nilhg

This is a decent video overview of importing and organising using Lightroom.

fguihen

lightroom looks nice, but its currently out of my budget, and seems aimed at pros with millions of images. il try tagging with adobe bridge.

haz

Fenster wrote: »

I go by: YYYY-MM-DD

Me too, YYYY-MM-DD sorts correctly on every system.

Then you could use any EXIF editor / cataloguing software like Lightroom, Photoshop, Paintshop or whatever open source (jhead, the next version of Gimp) to retrieve images by tagged content.

Fajitas!

I start by the YYYY-MM-DD method, then a seperate folder named after either the client, location, etc, then seperate the file types and sizes.

ThOnda

YY-MM-DD_description
IT helps even with pictures from my mobile phone :-)

Paulw

Folders - YYYY\mm\event

Aside from directory structure, I use Lightroom.

JMcL

Lightroom as well. I import them into a directory structure of yyyy/mm/dd, though Lightroom can filter by shooting date anyway.

decsramble

fguihen wrote: »

lightroom looks nice, but its currently out of my budget, and seems aimed at pros with millions of images. il try tagging with adobe bridge.

I use photoshop elements 6. Much cheaper than CS or Lightroom and does pretty much everything I want since I'm not much of a photoshopper. I store my RAW photos into an auto generated folder, import my photos into it Elements and then tag/rate them. Works well for me at the moment, I can find all my files quickly and easily by event, person, topic, item, color, place etc. I suppose it would be a disaster if something happens to wipe out my my catalog files but that hasnt happened yet and I do try to backup the catalog as regularly as the photos themselves.

Calina

I use Vista for the download and it allows me to tag the photos at the download stage and uses the tags and download date to generate a folder name. This is fine if you do the download the day you took the photograph but owning to circs outside my control I have a folder full of photographs taken on Sunday and Monday both downloaded lastnight so I need to sort that out. I used to do the editting into a separate folder but that's just too hard to maintain. Now I edit into the download folder and create a separate subfolder if necessary.

For general maintenance, I use ACDSee Pro which is a lot less expensive than Lightroom. I'm resisting LR for the moment because although comparatively it's less expensive, it's one straw on a camel's back called my finances and the next major is a custom built casing for the camera, followed by a new monopod because the one I have is slowly starting to corrode which is not hugely surprising given that almost every time I take it out it spends time in the sea.

nilhg

decsramble wrote: »

Works well for me at the moment, I can find all my files quickly and easily by event, person, topic, item, color, place etc. I suppose it would be a disaster if something happens to wipe out my my catalog files but that hasnt happened yet and I do try to backup the catalog as regularly as the photos themselves.

This is one of the reasons I convert my ORFs to DNG, its possible to write all this info directly into the DNG file so if disaster does happen you dont have to retag, keyword, develop all the shots again.

Just another level of security....

amcinroy

I personally rename my RAW files using a batch renamer to the following system

YYMMXXXX_Location

where XXXX is the original camera generated file number.

By adding the YYMM bit and _Location bit this allows sorting and searching capability and also sorts out the problem of duplicate file names caused by going round my cameras "clock".

For instance after my recent expedition, the files look like

08059542_Kinnego Bay.PEF

I then use Picassa to browse, sort and search these files.

I personally don't save my edits at all. My theory is that I'll always do it better next time. So all edits go in the bin unless I've spent hours at any particular ones (very rare).

Andy

Cabaal

Year / MM / event
I use lightroom as well and assign keywords to each lot imported into it,

sheesh

I was thinking that it might be a good idea to use gps coordinates to organise my photographs there is a space in the jpeg format for storing that kind of information for raw files I was thinking of using a track file from a gps to store where I was when the picture was taken the creation time on the raw file could be matched to a time in the track file.

PopeBuckfastXVI

I go with

YYYY-MM Event Name

With seperate folders for Raw & Processed up one level so e.g.

pictures\Originals\2008-05 X & Y's Wedding\DSC001.NEF
pictures\Processed\2008-05 X & Y's Wedding\DSC001.jpg

JMcL

sheesh wrote: »

I was thinking that it might be a good idea to use gps coordinates to organise my photographs there is a space in the jpeg format for storing that kind of information for raw files I was thinking of using a track file from a gps to store where I was when the picture was taken the creation time on the raw file could be matched to a time in the track file.

I think there're a few solutions around that'll do that. You can get GPS units that'll fit into the hotshoe, though if you've already got a separate GPS, the value of that is moot.

sheesh

JMcL wrote: »

I think there're a few solutions around that'll do that. You can get GPS units that'll fit into the hotshoe, though if you've already got a separate GPS, the value of that is moot.

The way i have done it is probably cheaper but way more finicky
receiver costs about €50 track is created on my mobile phone which is connected to the receiver via bluetooth techy heaven

darraghsherwin

Does anybody using collections or other organisation methods in Lightroom?
I only use tagging to organise and let lightroom handle the directory sturcture using Year/Date

Darragh

YeahOK

+1 for badly.


Events, folders and tags in iPhoto or Aperture where I have the time.

melekalikimaka

i have one big folder with either the bands name and location and date, or event name and date. thats it, in side a raw/jpeg and an edited folder

Hugh_C

Calina wrote: »

I use Vista

Ahhhh! She used the "V" word.

Lightroom. But first I rename everything in the style of 2008-05-28_DSC_4599.NEF so that lets me sort incrementally at Finder level as well as in Lightroom.

I use lots of collections and smart collections (in beta 2). I tag a little but not much, collections do the trick for me.

fguihen

PopeBuckfastXVI wrote: »

I go with

YYYY-MM Event Name

With seperate folders for Raw & Processed up one level so e.g.

pictures\Originals\2008-05 X & Y's Wedding\DSC001.NEF
pictures\Processed\2008-05 X & Y's Wedding\DSC001.jpg

Thats a good idea. Il give this a go as this is now really getting on my nerves. one question, with adobe bridge, when i tag a photo, is it stored wtih the photo ( so i can change the location of the image without having to retag, or is it just a database within bridge?