How do you store/organise your Photos?

krazy_horse

krazy_horse

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Hi there,

Just wondered how people organise their photos, i have just bought a lacie 500gig external and was wondering if there was a more logical way of organising pictures.

I have found just sorting them into the standard "date and where they were taken" folders very difficult as i end up spending ages looking for certain pictures i've taken, as different places usually have different subjects, and i can never remember where it was i took the shot.

Has anyone come up with a database, and categorising their pictures, so for example, a photo of a Robin, could have the following catergories:
  • Bird
  • Wildlife
  • Garden
  • December 07
  • etc....

Is this sort of thing easy to do in Microsoft Access, i have never used it...?

I just want a more logical way of searching for my photos.

Is there any software on the market already...Easy Photo Library...Photo Database...or something similar?

JB
 
I store mine on my hard drive.
Organise..?
A useful answer to your question would be much appreciated...
 
mine are stored by date, then subject. I think lightroom might be able to categorise them, never used it though.
 
I use lightroom which imports the photos in directories organised by date but you can then keyword your photos with any tags that you want so it is easy to find them later by date, tag or even EXIF data. It is also a very good RAW converter which is non destructive to the original file. There is a free trial on the Adobe website.

Before this I used Elements organiser (cheaper as it comes with ELements) and I have also tried Picasa by Google which is good for free software.
 
The better photo management & editing software lets you assign any number of tags or keywords – categories if you like – to every individual photo. So then those photos can be searched by tag/keyword/category.
What photo management & editing software have you got?
 
Same as Dod :)

I organise them in folders, named by date and subject / location. In the folder I keep the original RAW and my edited Hi Res TIFF. If I've needed a low res jpg (for posting on here for example) then I keep that too. Any future prints or "versions" of the shot that I need I can then refer back to the TIFF, or RAW if, for some reason, I want to re-work the shot.
 
I use Lightroom as well. I prefer the keywords method to try and locate something, rather than having it in different directories on my HD.

Picasa isn't bad, but I prefered Lightroom as that is where I do most of my photographic work.
 
Thanks guys, i use CS2 at present, how do i add a tag or category?

Cheers

JB
 
All my files are JPEG so filing them by file type doesnt apply to me :)

I have thousands of photos, 98% of which are of friends, and nights out, and holidays etc. And I have a single folder named "Photography" with sub folders including animals, flowers and gardens, macro, objects and still life, people, studio, and TP comp attempts ;)
 
Another vote for Lightroom here, I really need to get my pre Lightroom images imported and tagged up...
 
Yea, I'm almost lightroom, I use apples Aperture (mainly for it's Raw conversion) and iView Media, Possibly now called 'expression media'. Any digital asset management program will be good, as long as you can label maybe events (such as holiday) with other keywords, most will do.
heres a good free program tou may want to look at. http://picasa.google.com/
 
I use lightroom but want to figure out an easy way to just get rid of the pictures I dont want and only leave the decent ones... can't find an obvious workflow to doing this - it like to hand-hold and not really delete anything just in case.
 
i use googles free software called picasa its a nice clutter free smooth piece of software plus its fast and o did i mention it wqas FREE!!
 
Simple as you like over here:

I have directories on my PC's hard drive (and the laptop HD also) for each year. Within that year I have three categories - Holiday, Other & Speedway. Within each category I then create subdirectories for each set of shots - so for examplea wander around london at night might be "London night shots 110108" and some macro stuff from the garden could be "Macro flowers 220708".

Download all pics from that set to its relevant subdirectory. Once I have processed the shots those I have felt worthy of processing right through get left on the card, everything else gets deleted. (Once the card is full, or nearly full, it gets taken out of use and filed away).

Periodically make a straight copy of each directory onto an external HDD.

At the end of each year, and after I've checked all backups are complete, the "non keepers" get deleted from the PC hard drive to free up space.

As I usually know which year a shot has been taken in, to find something it's a simple matter of heading to the right category and year, and then looking for the occasion on which it was taken. At worst case there is usually only a few options to pick from.
 
Store them In a hardrive and organise them by district areas they were taken In usually.

And a separate folder for the Originals.
 
I store them like this;

/PHOTOS/200x/dd-mm/example.jpg

then export to LR from that location and have the DB backed up on a different partition. I'm toying with the idea of adding a description to the last folder title, but I need more time to do that for the rest!
 
basegreen said:
I use lightroom but want to figure out an easy way to just get rid of the pictures I dont want and only leave the decent ones... can't find an obvious workflow to doing this - it like to hand-hold and not really delete anything just in case.
Click to expand...

I just press backspace (delete on PC?) and it gives me the option to remove from Lightroom, delete completely or cancel, no keeping extra copies or anything if you choose delete completely...
 
I use and love Lightroom. I don't really have a dedicated structure though, as I have a really keen memory for some reason when it comes to my photos. Thousands and thousands of photos and hundreds of folders, and I can pretty much find any photo I want at any time. It's about the only thing I do well. lol
 
I have tried out a number of photo filing systems, and have found the best for me is ACDSEE PRO 2. You can create keywords to add to your photo’s, you can write IPTC data you can sort by filters/groups/ and sorted by. On top of all this it has the best set of modify tools I have seen. For instance Shadows/Highlights has 9 lightening bands and 9 darkening bands.

We do all our photo sorting correcting for competitions resizing etc using ACDSEE, all changes can be batched to run. Because me and my girlfriend put our photo’s up on a website together we rename all our files by the digitized date so when mixed together they are all fall into the sequence they were taken in. We rarely use Adobe or Corel Paintshop now unless we are having to clone out marks from the lens or want a particular effect.

A big plus is the CR2 support for :)our EOS350D & EOS400D with an additional set of tools. At present I have about a years worth of photo’s on my system all indexed about 11,000 (yes I know get rid of the fuzzy ones).

A big package well worth looking into and having a play.
 
-My Photos
--2007
--2008
---2008_02_07 - great hall players terra nova
....raw files here
----jpg
.....jpg files here
-----edited
......edited versions here

This is how I organise my photos and I keep various backups within a similar file structure.
I haven't used keywords yet as I seem to have quite a good memory, but I will file a pdf or a text file within the file structure to help.
 
Thanks all, i have just a nose in the latest Digital Photo mag, and there is a similar question, and they suggest adding extra info to your images in Adobe Bridge, might have to give this a go.

JB
 
My Pictures folder has several sub-folders;

0.1 Originals (either RAW or JPG)
0.2 Optimized Large jpgs
0.3 Small jpgs
0.4 web optimised
0.5 Black and White
0.6 HDR
0.7 etc etc...

Within the Originals folder, it's arranged in Year Folders, then Month, then date...
 
I am using aperture at this moment in time by means of subject

Buildings
Landscape
Wildlife
People
Family
Holidays
River & Coast

The images are kept in the Aperture main library and this is backup to a aperture vault.

And me being paranoid I first save them to an external drive in folders by year and month. (From there they are imported to Aperture)

All versions are stored within the Aperture library and only converted to JPG when exported to Web.

Do not know if this is the best way but that is how I am playing the game for the moment.

Regards

Nigel.
 
I use lightroom to store and work the majority of photos.

I copy the photos over into a folder, named as the location and into sub-folder by date. I then use lightroom to keyword the photos so they are easily traceable, from one of several ways.

I also use lightroom to make a second or backup copy of a separate location on the disk and back up from there. If I make jpgs/tifs/psd files from the originals they are placed into that folder if I need to back them up.

Hope this helps
 
I use Extensis Portfolio. Not bad providing you have a lot of pics and need the search capabilities. In truth it is probably best suited to an agency or agency supporting photographer who needs the capability to have multiple search options. It does not process the image ala Lightrooom so is a bit more basic albeit as expensive. If buying now would look at lightroom
 
Year/Date/Subject

Pretty simple really. I prefer using the OS to sort files. Might give Picassa a go if there's a Mac version.
 
Just create a folder, say "lake district shoot, 01/02/08" and then have folder within that for the original JPEG/RAW shots and then a folder for worked on TIFFs and then a folder for finished JPEGs that can be uploaded onto my site and in gallery areas.

Seems to work for me. I just use Adobe Bridge to view thumbnails when having browse.
 
I use Bridge too, useful little tool. Can't be bothered organising more than that.
 
On my (duplicate) external hard drives (one at home, one at work)

directories for each time I take the camera out:
eg.
2008_01 China
2007_12 San Antonio
2007_12 Paris

etc.
If I'm shooting both travel shots and people, there are sub directories for those.

Each directory, or sub directory then has sub directories for RAW and JPG

I tag the pictures using CS2 and I use Picasa to scroll through the shots, as it runs in the background and keeps a catalogue of all the pictures on my PCs.

It works for me.
 
Store Organise

Empty mem card to computer
Process pics then copy to external HD (Maxtor 320 GB : 66GB Free)
Delete off mem card
Every month backup PC pics to DVD and delete off PC to free up space

Thus
Stored on external HD in folder /year/month/event
Stored on DVD per month

Always throughout this process to curent date there are two copies of every pic
 
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