Best Way of Organising Lightrooom

[zachhwilliams]

So, I've started using LR today, and it looks really good, but I need some advice about how to organise my photos.

I previously used Aperture, and I liked that but I would sometimes not continue to use that as my workflow, and I would have photos all over the place.

I do a lot of landscapes, and want to organise my photos by location, sub-location and date. For example: Weymouth > Esplanade > 16/06/2010

I also do some client work, so I would like to be able to have an area for that, so I could have for example: Client Work > Client

What way would you suggest is best to get the system organised like this?

All advice appreciated!

 

[Wail]

I guess everyone has her/his own work flow, and unique way to organise their digital library.

Personally: -

Year / Month / Date / Location

So, I've got: -

- Each one year independently 2004, 2005, 2006, ... 2010
- Each year has January, February, ... December
- Each month has the date of the shoot


Say there were two different locations on 20th Jan. 2010 (location #1 National Botanical Garden, location #2 Swansea Marina)

The file structure would be: -

2010 / January / 20th --- National Botanical Garden
2010 / January / 20th --- Swansea Marina

Then I'd put in key words to what the theme of the shot, and sub-theme too.

 

[Wail]

Just as a note, I put the months as: -

01-Januray
02-February
.
.
.
12-December

This way they remain listed in the right order; otherwise they'd be listed alphabetically.

 

[zachhwilliams]

I guess everyone has her/his own work flow, and unique way to organise their digital library.

Personally: -

Year / Month / Date / Location

So, I've got: -

- Each one year independently 2004, 2005, 2006, ... 2010
- Each year has January, February, ... December
- Each month has the date of the shoot


Say there were two different locations on 20th Jan. 2010 (location #1 National Botanical Garden, location #2 Swansea Marina)

The file structure would be: -

2010 / January / 20th --- National Botanical Garden
2010 / January / 20th --- Swansea Marina

Then I'd put in key words to what the theme of the shot, and sub-theme too.

That's how I used to do it, but it got a little bit annoying trying to find photos of a certain place without looking at each month/date.

 

[Craikeybaby]

Do you want to organise the files on your hard drive, or make it easy to find the files in Lightroom?

The files on my hard drive are stored in YYYY/YY-MM-DD folders, but in Lightroom they are organised in collections for Year > Event > Race but tbh I usually find what I want by going to the All images selector and using the filter tools to narrow down to the data and any keywords.

There are so many ways to do everything in Lightroom that it is just a case of following what works for you.

 

[Wail]

Keyword the pictures upon uploading them; that will sort it out forever.

 

[Wail]

When I upload a picture from a days' shoot (say, again, Swansea Marina today 16th June 2010), and the subject being boats.

I will put this in the folder: -

2010 / 06-June / 16th --- Swansea Marina

Then, upon uploading the pictures I have the keywords set to: -

2010 / June / UK / Swansea / Transport / Boats

This way, I can at anytime go a search by year, or month, or country, or city, or theme (transport), or sub-theme (boats, in this case). Yes, this does mean that I have a very long and extensive Keyword list; but having used LR for so many years now, it becomes 2nd-nature eventually.

 

[zachhwilliams]

I guess everyone has her/his own work flow, and unique way to organise their digital library.

Personally: -

Year / Month / Date / Location

So, I've got: -

- Each one year independently 2004, 2005, 2006, ... 2010
- Each year has January, February, ... December
- Each month has the date of the shoot


Say there were two different locations on 20th Jan. 2010 (location #1 National Botanical Garden, location #2 Swansea Marina)

The file structure would be: -

2010 / January / 20th --- National Botanical Garden
2010 / January / 20th --- Swansea Marina

Then I'd put in key words to what the theme of the shot, and sub-theme too.

Do you want to organise the files on your hard drive, or make it easy to find the files in Lightroom?

The files on my hard drive are stored in YYYY/YY-MM-DD folders, but in Lightroom they are organised in collections for Year > Event > Race but tbh I usually find what I want by going to the All images selector and using the filter tools to narrow down to the data and any keywords.

There are so many ways to do everything in Lightroom that it is just a case of following what works for you.

I want to be able to view a file structure of locations in LR if possible. Haven't ventured into collections yet.

 

[Wail]

If you use the file structure and keywording method that I've demonstrated then you could easily search for a specific location, on a specific year, etc.

In that example, I can quickly turn-out all the pictures taken in Swansea for a given year, and / or a given theme of Swansea, and / or a given date (year, or month).

Frankly, my mind is too set in this way that I am becoming a victim of tunnel-vision when it comes to other ways to do things with LR :bang:

I'd hate to have to go back and re-structure & word all the library :bonk:

 

[Lazgoat]

Lightroom stores them in a very organised fashion by date the photo was taken: Year, Month, Date.
Always keyword your photos when importing them with Lightroom, and you can flag and rate them too in the Loupe. You can then drill down into the photos by keyword, colour flag or star rating.
Have a look at some of the video tutorials here. They are very useful.

 

[zachhwilliams]

If you use the file structure and keywording method that I've demonstrated then you could easily search for a specific location, on a specific year, etc.

In that example, I can quickly turn-out all the pictures taken in Swansea for a given year, and / or a given theme of Swansea, and / or a given date (year, or month).

Frankly, my mind is too set in this way that I am becoming a victim of tunnel-vision when it comes to other ways to do things with LR :bang:

I'd hate to have to go back and re-structure & word all the library :bonk:

Sounds a good idea, so I basically just let LR do the file organising and split it into dates, and when I import, just do a batch keyword of the location and then go flag everything I need and keyword them more. I take it that's what you mean and it sounds good! Thanks

 

[RobertP]

I use a date based folder structure but use lightroom for finding stuff based on keywords i've added. Lightroom is a database and you can sort it by anything that can be categorised. An ipod or windows media library works the same way - you don't need to know where the file is to play it as long as you know a name or something to search for that would identify it.

 

[zachhwilliams]

Another thing that I need to be able to do is HDR. I need to grab three photos from LR and put them into Photomatix for HDR and tonemapping. Is this possible, and will it automatically import back to LR?

 

[Wail]

Sounds a good idea, so I basically just let LR do the file organising and split it into dates, and when I import, just do a batch keyword of the location and then go flag everything I need and keyword them more. I take it that's what you mean and it sounds good! Thanks

Sounds about right. Keep in mind that you can also check whatever keywords that you've created but never used (makes it easy to manage this, if it starts to get out of hand).

<snip> An ipod or windows media library works the same way - you don't need to know where the file is to play it as long as you know a name or something to search for that would identify it.

So true, but coming from an old school, I much prefer to know exactly where each picture is at; hence why I use the date file structure.

Another thing that I need to be able to do is HDR. I need to grab three photos from LR and put them into Photomatix for HDR and tonemapping. Is this possible, and will it automatically import back to LR?

Sorry, never was into HDR or any post-processing; no idea how to go about this one.

 

[Musicman]

/yyyy/mm/dd folder structure for me too.

Filenames are tagged in a similar fashion with date and a unique sequence number for the day on import: yyyymmdd_0001.CR2, etc. Unless I have a good reason, the files are exported with the same file names.

That way, if I have a loose photo I can identify exactly where the original ought to be from the filename alone.

Keywords with basic locations, etc. added on import. In fact, keywording is usually my first task before I do any PP.

I do databases in my day job, so it comes as second nature.

 

[hollis_f]

The whole point of lightroom is that the file structure is totally irrelevant. As long as you keyword sensibly then it should be just as easy to find any one picture if you have the most OCD file structure in the universe, or just chuck all images into a single folder.

 

[Musicman]

The whole point of lightroom is that the file structure is totally irrelevant. As long as you keyword sensibly then it should be just as easy to find any one picture if you have the most OCD file structure in the universe, or just chuck all images into a single folder.

Yep, but your computer's filesystem may start to creak a little if you have 65,000 images (plus any edits) in one directory.

Keeping your directory sizes down will be more efficient at the filesystem level.