I'm bl**dy useless a photo management!

posiview

posiview

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Andy
Edit My Images
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I know, I should better manage my photographs and I keep saying I will develop a better workflow.

I bought a Mac last year and was determined to become more disciplined. It didn't last long.

Now, I have photographs in all manner of folders across 3 external drives, in 4 laptops (3 I no longer use but contain photographs).

So, what I'm after :) is any advise on whether any software exists that can automatically pull all my photographs together and organise them into folders date. Long shot maybe.

I know I can do it manually but that will take a long time.

Cheers for any advice.
 
I no i am in the same boat,photos on drives everywhere on different computer,cards lying around ready not being downloaded :eek:,starting to get a bit into an mess :(
 
A very simple way would be to download Picasa (free) it will find all images on your computer and set it to display in date order. Not the ultimate answer I know but it's a start.
 
No.... but I'm keen to hear the answer, not that I'm saying have the same problem as you...... ;)
 
I would put all photos from where ever in to one folder , then run Lightroom as a copy import which will arrange your photos for you.

Then store your original folder as a backup
 
My personal route would be to get a copy of Lightroom, either purchase outright or CC route.

I don't think there is any software that will really sort automatically, although Photo's will sort by creation date, but that may not be what you want. I would import the pictures bit by bit into Lightroom. Look at what you have and how you want to catogorise them . Just do a small amount at first, in case you change your mind. Although you can add images randomly into Lightroom and use keywords to sort after import this can be a long job. I prefer to use a simple Year/Event system . Lightroom also allows you to make Collections. Collections are groups of photographs with a similar theme. I.e. Birthdays. These collections do not move the location of the original photographs , rather adds a tag to them. So it's possible for one photograph to be in multiple collections..

Not the automatic route you wanted but unless you simply wanted them sorted by date, I don't think there is anything on the market that will do what you want.

Lightroom is available as a free trial for 30 days http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/photoshop-lightroom.html

I'd also got the adobe site for some of their video's first to see if it's what you want and to get some basic knowledge before you start the trial http://www.jkost.com/lightroom.html
 
Thanks for the feedback all. I'm currently on a mass cull of the photographs on my various drives to cut down on space.

Then I'll look to copy to LR.

Cheers.
 
posiview said:
Thanks for the feedback all. I'm currently on a mass cull of the photographs on my various drives to cut down on space.

Then I'll look to copy to LR.

Cheers.
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I hope your better than me,lasted about 2/3 days and mths later still waiting to be done :oops: :$
 
simonblue said:
I hope your better than me,lasted about 2/3 days and mths later still waiting to be done :oops: :$
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The thing I noticed that I could not delete any photographs of my daughter, Isabelle, even if the were totally crap!

Just deleted around 15gb of photographs and it's not as hard as I though :)

Cheers.
 
posiview said:
The thing I noticed that I could not delete any photographs of my daughter, Isabelle, even if the were totally crap!

Just deleted around 15gb of photographs and it's not as hard as I though :)

Cheers.
Click to expand...

Keep it up,good luck (y)
 
And remember once or indeed during doing the restructuring make at least one back up. Though if you are copying them across to a single drive IMO the ideal would be to keep 3 rotating backup drives and once completed use those drives in a similar manner........as stating the obvious any single drive can potentially fail at any time!

Oh for peace of mind I hope you are copying the files so that until you are finished and satisfied "they" are still available should something go wrong :)

Edit - undoubtedly the process will take time but the adage 'haste makes waste' perhaps needs to be the watchword.
 
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Be ruthless.

Delete anything that isn't "great". Even if you have a hundred "quite good" photos that you might want to do something with, forget it. Get rid of them.

This will not only clean up your workflow and make it easier to focus on those few great photos, but will also make you more critical of your own shots and therefore make you strive to do better
 
it may be too late, but I wouldn't use LR for the sorting. I find LR to be slow and clunky as a library / photo management tool. Have a look at a program called photo mechanic.

I recommend you first consolidate all pictures into one giant folder and then open the folder in Photo Mechanic and sort by date. The software is amazingly fast at sorting through images and you can quickly find the start and end of an 'event' or sequence of images and move them to a proper folder structure all from within Photo Mechanic. I tend to label my library as 2015 > 2015.09.08 - Trip to Morocco. At the same time you can star or colour rate images that you want to keep and simply delete those that you don't like. Then you can import them to LR either at an individual folder level or at the year level and apply keywords and edit any images etc..
 
A program like Light room does not care where photographs folders are. However It hates them to be moved.
It would seem the best policy is to gather all your photographs in to a single place and back it up preferably twice.

From there You can leave them in the folders they happen to be in, and Import them into Lightroom to create your index.
Remember Light room is only an index it does not keep a copy of the original photograph, that remains in the original folder and must not be moved, or it will be effectively lost.
You can then open each folder in lightroom and do any indexing or library work you want on the contents and add index words and captions or whatever.

There is no rush . I changed everything from IView to light room over a period of a few weeks... since both are simply indexes, I can still find my older shots through either system, But I have not added anything to the IView database in over two years and it is becoming redundant.
Were I to discover an ancient disk of photographs, there would be no problem... Simply a matter of adding it to the same location as the others, and importing it in to lightroom.

Neither system cares how the actual picture folders them selves are named or arranged... Provided those names are never ever changed or folders moved. If they are it would have to go through a long winded process of finding and re linking... something you do not want to do.

When you back up Light room You are only backing up the index not the Photographs... You still need to backup the picture files as part of your normal routine.

I would not recommend moving the Photographs into one vast folder It is unnecessary and makes the task of indexing far more difficult. and you will lose any sense of where they might be. Or what still needs to be key worded. A database like lightroom can find them instantly by parameters like date anyway.
 
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I have to honest, it is a pain and each has their own way of controlling/maintaining their system. I have my way, which I am willing to share, but you will have to find one that works for you.

I use LR for my main effort and then edit individual photos and make smaller adjustments in PS before exporting for use.

I have two seperate hard drives and store nothing on my MBP. My filing system on my 2TB edting external drive is folders by year/month/folder title. (eg 2015/Sep/London). Within the Folder I have 2 sub folders (01 RAW/02 JPG) and within RAW I have two folders again (01 Original and 02 TIFF/PSD). So I would copy the memory card to 01 Original and then back that up to a second independent hard drive immediately, with the same file structure. I would then import from the external editing drive into LR from the 01 Original folders (which gives me a date folder structure in LR). When I have completed my editing in LR, I would export to 02 TIFF/PSD {depending on what output you want} and edit in PS with that file, finally saving the TIFF and then converting to JPG for saving in the 02 JPG folder.

Therefore it looks like this,

Editing Hard Drive
  • Year
    • Month
      • 01 RAW
        • 01 Original (Import from here into LR)
        • 02 TIFF (editing files for PS)
      • 02 JPG (saved versions for website and public use)
Back Up Drive (4TB) - I immediately, before import into LR, copy this,
  • Year
    • Month
    • 01 RAW
      • 01 Original
And then on a monthly basis, copy the remaining folders over as well. In addition, when I have not touched a folder in that month on my editing drive, I can colour the folder GREEN, but I would colour a folder RED if I have been in there to edit so I know I need to copy just the red ones.

Sorry long winded and probably a screen grab would help, but I cannot do that right now. In the end you have to find a system that works for you.
 
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