How do you organise your photos?

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Amnesia180

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Hi All...

How do you organise your photos?

I currently have Picasa and whilst this is very good at keeping things in albums... as I come to take more and more photos, it'll be harder and harder to remember what date/month my photos were taken in.

Just wondering how you guys store your photos.

Many thanks!
Amnesia
 
£299 :O lol !!

Hate it :P haha, kidding. I'll give the trial a run after work.
 
I keep mine in a biscuit tin :)
 
Date in ISO format then the name of the event, e.g.:

2007-04-08-Bergen

This lets me sort by data and ID by event, which is all I need personally.
 
I do it similarly. I have the location name first, then a date, for example:

Thundersprint 2007 11.05.07
Astley Colliery 03.12.06

At the moment they're on two partitions on my hard disk, plus copied to an external HD. I keep meaning to upload them to a secure directory on my web hosting account so I've got a remote copy, in case of fire/theft of my PC.
 
Thanks all..

I keep mine in dated folders. Then name and date the folder within the dated folder.
E.g:

2006
RIAT - 2006
Experimenting 080506

Seems like I do it in a similar way to you guys anyway :)

Thanks for the input.
 
SW4peter said:
Lightroom - It's a bit like marmite, you either love it or hate it...
Click to expand...

Hate Marmite, love Lightroom. I use Lightroom to arrange all my files. I get it to arrange them by date, then any special sets or events get an additional tag on the end, so for example;

03_04_2007
05_04_2007 - Fashion show
06_04_2007
08_04_2007
12_04_2007 - Farne Islands
13_04_2007

I then also have a 'Portfolio' folder, which is where the best of each set get exported to, with added borders etc. These are then uploaded to my Deviantart page.
 
Oh, I forgot to add: photos from the camera go straight into that folder, then processed shots go into a subfolder of that one called "Keepers".

Messiah Khan said:
Hate Marmite, love Lightroom. I use Lightroom to arrange all my files. I get it to arrange them by date, then any special sets or events get an additional tag on the end, so for example;

03_04_2007
05_04_2007 - Fashion show
06_04_2007
08_04_2007
12_04_2007 - Farne Islands
13_04_2007

I then also have a 'Portfolio' folder, which is where the best of each set get exported to, with added borders etc. These are then uploaded to my Deviantart page.
Click to expand...

What's the point in putting the date first if you format the date like that?

Sorting it by folder name would have it appear:

14-04-2005 - Foo
14-04-2006 - Foo
15-04-2004 - Bar
15-04-2005 - Baz

Which just seems weird.
 
Im not 100% thats the order I have the date set as. Ive got it set as the Lightroom default. But in anycase I very rarely go into the actual folder to find a picture. Almost all of the time, I find, move, copy etc pictures from within Lightroom, and using the date format that it has set as its default, they all appear in the correct order.

Good to see you over here btw robmiller, after your escape from the 'other' place.
 
Okay... so lightroom automatically adds borders etc aswell?

I think the way I've got mine set up is quite similar to yours.

But Picasa arranges by month anyway.
So it has..
2007
February
Mum Birthday
Outing Legoland
January
Dad Birthday
Family Outing Zoo

It uses the date that is stored on the file to determine what month it should go in. But it doesn't re-arrange your folders on the HDD.

So the HDD file looks like this -
2007
Dad Birthday
Mum Birthday
Outing Legoland
Family Outing Zoo

Hmm... confusing!
 
Lightroom can add borders if your printing the picture afaik, but not when you export it. I do 90% of the cropping/editing/tweaking in Lightroom, then send it to Photoshop of the last bit of dodging/burning/shrpening and adding borders.

Thats one thing I do like about Lightroom; The folders on the hardrive are named the same as they are in the Library, so if I rename a folder in Lightroom, it actually renames the folder on the hardrive as well.
 
I use Apple Aperture. I transfer all files from caemra through it to organized folders in my Pictures folder. This ranges from Commercial, Sport, Wedding etc. This is then sub foldered into events, like: Wedding>Mr & Mrs Bloggs>RAW Files.

In Aperture I have seperate albums for each event. Each album is title like so:

Wedding: Mr & Mrs Bloggs
Wedding: Mr & Mrs Bongo
Commercial: Evening Star Swimming Comp
Cadets: Parade Night

etc,...

The images themselves are then keyworded. These keywords range from portrait, landcape, wedding (prep, ceremony etc,).

To each Album a Smart Album is attached and when I need just Candid shots I tick the 'Serach by Keyword' and check 'Candids' this brings up all the images lableled candid in this Album.

There is also a Global Smart Album. This does the same as the Smart album but reads the entire library.

It has proved invaluable.

King.

EDIT: To give you an example of how well this system works I had a customer call me up requesting some wedding photos from quite a while ago. All I had to do is ask him a few questions tick a couple of boxes and voila, the images appeared. All within a about 1 minute and 30 seconds of his time. This is absolutely fantastic, no hming and ahing trying to find your work.
 
What's organize mean.......?

:checks:

1. To put together into an orderly, functional, structured whole.
2.
a. To arrange in a coherent form; systematize: organized her thoughts before speaking.
b. To arrange in a desired pattern or structure: "The painting is organized about a young reaper enjoying his noonday rest" William Carlos Williams.
3. To arrange systematically for harmonious or united action: organize a strike. See Synonyms at arrange.

Hmmm seems like I've some work to do... :sulk:
 
icon_cuinlove.gif
MARMITE ... don't got a clue about Lightroom ... :D


Download to Date took directory on external Lacie Hard Drive using Elements 5 and then use the in-built Elements Organiser to categorize in a number of ways, including 'Shoot Date', to make it easy to find when I have forgotten what I took ... usually the day after ...
comp11.gif


As you can add whatever categories/sub-categories you may need/want to E5 it makes it so versatile and very easy to organise/sort your pics at will ... imgo ... :D









yoda0cp.gif

 
f-spot

It organises your photo's chronological orby folder.
Each download/event from my camera has its own folder then i let f-spot work its magic.
 
Amnesia180 said:
£299 :O lol !!

Hate it :P haha, kidding. I'll give the trial a run after work.
Click to expand...

I had no idea it was so pricey. I got a free version as I bought rawshooter premium a year ago (£50 well spent).

I let lightroom organise photos in folders and find things by date/keywords/collections so I never actually look through the folders at all.

I used to use photoshop album which is the basis for the organiser in Photoshop Elements. I found that very good too...
 
I think Picasa is excellent.

I download all my images into picasa.

Those that I work on in PS, get borders and sig added, and then exported into a file which is named for each of my albums in PBase. Once a week, I upload all the new captures into the correct categories in PBase, and then back up the files to disc. I then delete the folder images from the hard drive, but keep the originals in Picasa. This works for both RAW and Jpeg.
 
I usually arrange mine like delow

RAW Original - On Xserve HDD
These are keyworded rated and captioned and a Catalogue made in Iview.

RAW Working - On Raid 3 Ultra SCSI HDD at my workstation
These are The STAR rated ones copied from the RAW original HDD and are used to make my working PSD files, when they have been used they are deleted.

PSD Working - On Raid 3 Ultra SCSI HDD at my workstation.
When converted and adjusted in photoshop they are saved in layered PSD files to the Xserve.

PSD RTP - Xserve
PSD files which are ready / have been printed.

Backups are also made of the RAW Original and PSD Layered and PSD rtp files.

Takes up a lot of space but hard discs are cheap compared to the cost of reshooting. Also quite a bit of it is Clients work i'm coverting and working on so you cant loose it.

As for folder structure its

20070611_STUDIO_SHOOT_KELLY
20070612_CRICKET_SECOND_ELEVEN_SHEFFIELD

Files are names

HODKINSON_20070611_3455.XXX
HODKINSON_20070612_3578.XXX

Which is

My surname_Date of shoot_Actual raw file last 4 numbers.xxx

it makes each file unique and easily traceable.
 
Wow! All sounds like complicated stuff...

I dont think I have enough photos to have to go into that much detail, and I don't have any clients (as it's not my job, I do it for pleasure)... so I don't need that either.

But I do like the idea of adding captions/keywords for ease of searching.
 
Messiah Khan said:
Its the opposite of dumping them in the 'my pictures' folder. I mean, nobody would do that would they? Or would they?:thinking: :p
Click to expand...



:lol: :lol: :lol:

Yup guilty as charged :D
I also have a few laying around in "my documents" in "various folders" and some in the Elements organiser it sounds a mess but I know where they all are! ( on my hard disc ;) )
 
:eek:

Man. You just brought me out into a cold sweat!

Get yourself an external HDD or something. If your main drive goes you're gonna be screwed! I store mine on an external and backup to DVD, but to be honest I would like something more failsafe than that.

I like the look of the new storage robots that are coming out.
 
inophoto said:
:eek:

Man. You just brought me out into a cold sweat!

.
Click to expand...

:lol: :lol:
I do used an external hard drive (when I remember ) to "back up"
All I was saying is, you don't have to be organised to be organised :whistling: :D
 
Got mine organised by year>month>event.

This is stored on my hdd and the as of a week ago this is now backed up to 2x250gig mybook pro's, basically mirroring each other and will be put onto dvd backups kept in a seperate location at the weekend.

hopefully that should keep my images safe :)
 
I TRY to organise mine.....but when you have all mixed stuff on one card its a bit difficult. lightroom says.. give a name to the folder... well its dated but full of different stuff from during the day at different places.

i find it all a bit difficult to be honest. Fine if you are out at an event.......but not if you are not!
 
I utilise the CHAOS THEORY method.
If i sit looking through random files long enough, ill eventually find the picture i'm looking for.:lol:
Dean:)
 
iMatch.
Hugely powerful.
Can sort by all sorts of Category keywords, individually, also by using boolean AND OR NOT operators.
It will import EXIF, so that allows date sorting
It will import and export IPTC, and now XML.
It has a programming language, so plug ins allow export of categories to IPTC and XML, and pictures to web sites such as Flickr, and to web page making programmes.
I haev not really touched the capabilities of hte programme yet.
 
Simple split into motorsport, landscape and wildlife.

the motor sport folder the split into year then cars and bikes, then into race serries ie DTM, BTCC, BSB etc, then each serries split to the track which is then spilt into the different races groups, each group gets a uploaded folder for anything that gets uploaded is safe, i a still have an unwatermarked version.

Take the bsb, splits the to the tracks i.e Thurxton, which then has folders for the Virgin media cup, Superstock championship, supersock cup, 125's and BSB.

Wildlife is the split to years, then location.

Landscape the same.

I use 2 identical 500gb external drives. Plan is to back up each motorsport serries onto dvd' at some point after after 2 years.
 
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