and please use their services
Digital Organisation
- Thread starter Matt_C
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dankellys
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- Name
- Dan
- Edit My Images
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I personally let Lightroom do most of the hard work.
I have 1 folder called '2013'. In there I have my lightroom catalog. Lightroom is set to store them using the date structure Year/Month/Day. I have 3 seperate folders for exports 'JPGs' for full sized jpeg exports, 'Print' for photos I plan on having printed and 'Flickr' for resized jpgs to upload to 'flickr'.
So basically I have the following:
d:\Photography\2013\2013\06\05 - All my RAW images from a shoot yesterday
d:\Photography\2013\print
d:\Photography\2013\flickr
d:\Photography\2013\JPGs
Everything else is just oganised by Lightroom, using Keywords and other meta data, which is then sorted using Smart Collections.
For Example, photos I want to upload to Flickr and I plan on having Printed have the keywords "flickr" and "ToPrint". I then have 2 Smart Collections which filter out images with these keywords.
Each year, I will archive off the whole folder to an external drive, and start a new one. So '2013' will be replaced by '2014'.
I have 1 folder called '2013'. In there I have my lightroom catalog. Lightroom is set to store them using the date structure Year/Month/Day. I have 3 seperate folders for exports 'JPGs' for full sized jpeg exports, 'Print' for photos I plan on having printed and 'Flickr' for resized jpgs to upload to 'flickr'.
So basically I have the following:
d:\Photography\2013\2013\06\05 - All my RAW images from a shoot yesterday
d:\Photography\2013\print
d:\Photography\2013\flickr
d:\Photography\2013\JPGs
Everything else is just oganised by Lightroom, using Keywords and other meta data, which is then sorted using Smart Collections.
For Example, photos I want to upload to Flickr and I plan on having Printed have the keywords "flickr" and "ToPrint". I then have 2 Smart Collections which filter out images with these keywords.
Each year, I will archive off the whole folder to an external drive, and start a new one. So '2013' will be replaced by '2014'.
Last edited:
meonshore
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- Mike
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I guess it really depends on how much you go back to your images whether it is worth going back and restructuring or if you should just put something in place going forward.
When I first moved to digital capture back in 2004 I just kept them in folders of about 1000 images as they came out of the camera. In 2005 I quickly changed that as I moved to two cameras and significantly more frames coming off them. I haven't gone back to my 2004 images and sorted it out - I may if I ever have to access them again.
Whilst I also use Lightroom I have a directory structure on my hard disk(s) which is independent from any one application or tool. If I chose to leave Lightroom and move to C1, or elsewhere I don't want to be tied to Adobe to figure it all out.
Mine is very much tuned to my work, and the volume of images I shoot - anywhere from 75,000 to 150,000 per annum and also the HD space I use up.
Simply....
I used to have a single hard disk for images per year - although at the moment with 2TB drives I have 2 years per drive - with current cameras and volume 1TB per year is about right for me. They are mirrored and backed up. I have a lot of disk !
PER YEAR
I have a folder for RAW files, and a folder for Processed Images.
In the RAW files year folder I have 12 folders for the months of the year. In each month I have the shoots I have done by date and then text - some of those are paid jobs, some are stock/test shoots and some are my personal work. A job folder might have just 5-10 images in it it might have 8,000.
2013
--> 01-2013
-----> 130105 Newborn Portait Session for x
-----> 130110 Product Photography for company A
....
--> 02-2013
-----> 130203 Location Portait Session for x
...
etc
Those folders are imported (not moved) into Lightroom for processing. Given an approximate idea of the year and month I shot a job (often supported by a booking form or an invoice) I can very quickly and easily find the relevant set of images either in Lightroom, or just in bridge/finder etc...
Processed images go into another main annual folder, and then a sub-folder by type --> Portrait, Commercial, Event, Sports, Personal Work etc
and then into a sub-folder again date and description based. That folder contains a folder of TIFFs, and then a folder for any processed JPEGs, ordered images etc.
It is disk intensive, I don't throw anything away, but disk is now very very cheap and this gives me a cast iron way of finding images. I have in the past gone back to portrait shoots from 2-3 years ago to make replacement prints from an order. I have some weddings from 2008 and 2009 which I have been waiting on brides to come back to me to finish their orders, confirm album designs etc, which have only been finalised this year.
Not all of this may be applicable to you - as I say it is very personalised as to how I work - but I hope it may help.
When I first moved to digital capture back in 2004 I just kept them in folders of about 1000 images as they came out of the camera. In 2005 I quickly changed that as I moved to two cameras and significantly more frames coming off them. I haven't gone back to my 2004 images and sorted it out - I may if I ever have to access them again.
Whilst I also use Lightroom I have a directory structure on my hard disk(s) which is independent from any one application or tool. If I chose to leave Lightroom and move to C1, or elsewhere I don't want to be tied to Adobe to figure it all out.
Mine is very much tuned to my work, and the volume of images I shoot - anywhere from 75,000 to 150,000 per annum and also the HD space I use up.
Simply....
I used to have a single hard disk for images per year - although at the moment with 2TB drives I have 2 years per drive - with current cameras and volume 1TB per year is about right for me. They are mirrored and backed up. I have a lot of disk !
PER YEAR
I have a folder for RAW files, and a folder for Processed Images.
In the RAW files year folder I have 12 folders for the months of the year. In each month I have the shoots I have done by date and then text - some of those are paid jobs, some are stock/test shoots and some are my personal work. A job folder might have just 5-10 images in it it might have 8,000.
2013
--> 01-2013
-----> 130105 Newborn Portait Session for x
-----> 130110 Product Photography for company A
....
--> 02-2013
-----> 130203 Location Portait Session for x
...
etc
Those folders are imported (not moved) into Lightroom for processing. Given an approximate idea of the year and month I shot a job (often supported by a booking form or an invoice) I can very quickly and easily find the relevant set of images either in Lightroom, or just in bridge/finder etc...
Processed images go into another main annual folder, and then a sub-folder by type --> Portrait, Commercial, Event, Sports, Personal Work etc
and then into a sub-folder again date and description based. That folder contains a folder of TIFFs, and then a folder for any processed JPEGs, ordered images etc.
It is disk intensive, I don't throw anything away, but disk is now very very cheap and this gives me a cast iron way of finding images. I have in the past gone back to portrait shoots from 2-3 years ago to make replacement prints from an order. I have some weddings from 2008 and 2009 which I have been waiting on brides to come back to me to finish their orders, confirm album designs etc, which have only been finalised this year.
Not all of this may be applicable to you - as I say it is very personalised as to how I work - but I hope it may help.
OP
Matt_C
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- Name
- Matt
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Thank you both very much for your detailed feedback and comments, I appreciate the time you've taken.
I need to break out of the mentality of storing images in numerical order. I'm OCD about ensuring I've got all my snaps in order.
I'm going to have a go at ordering files by date for the RAW's and then Processed Images into separate folders I think.
Need to get to grips with Lightroom's metatagging as well I think..
I need to break out of the mentality of storing images in numerical order. I'm OCD about ensuring I've got all my snaps in order.
I'm going to have a go at ordering files by date for the RAW's and then Processed Images into separate folders I think.
Need to get to grips with Lightroom's metatagging as well I think..
meonshore
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- Name
- Mike
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Glad it helped...
Not sure if your camera can set a custom filename or not but even so once you have been over 9999 several times it becomes hard to work out what the filename sequence number means anyway - especially if you are using more than once camera body.
You can always check the order by sequencing by date & time (assuming you set it correctly and maintain it over clock changes) and sync cameras.
Really the right order are the days/jobs you shoot. Not the number of the file.