Lightroom - How do you organise yours?

Cleisthenes

Cleisthenes

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Ben
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I've never really seen a 'best' or 'proper' way to organise my lightroom, but I ended up doing it by year, and then creating a new album inside of those years whenever I go snapping.

If you were to just take a camera on a walk, and got maybe 6 keepers, would you create a whole new album, or would you put it into an album such as 'Walks' where it could be generic.

Just trying to figure out the best way for me to organise my photos.

Thanks all.
 
Ben

Don't worry too much about the file structure as a major benefit to LR is the use of keywords and searching via these.

I use the following structure

Year/Specific Date (that the shot was taken) i.e. 2014/2014-05-04

but if I want to find a particular shot or type of shot then I use a keyword (sometimes more than one) to show me the selected photos.

Some of the pros will have a separate catalogue for each shoot or name their filing structure after that shoot I.e. 2014-05-04 Jack and Jill's wedding etc.
 
Thanks for the input. I think I just needed some sort of acceptance that I wasn't being a tit about it!!
 
I made some long post recently (long for me) pretty much saying Exactly what buck said. I have a seperate catalogue for each shoot. I also have a couple if catalogues for stuff I shoot periodically (random sh1t and one for the dog - I'm a model pro!)
 
Stevie- said:
I made some long post recently (long for me) pretty much saying Exactly what buck said. I have a seperate catalogue for each shoot. I also have a couple if catalogues for stuff I shoot periodically (random sh1t and one for the dog - I'm a model pro!)
Click to expand...
Sounds good to me. I also have a dog that I shoot a lot :p, oh, and a sister!
 
I do nested subfolders: year/year-month/year-month-date/

The advantage there is you can click on the year (top level) folder and it shows all pictures inside all subdirectories. Same with month. If you know roughly when you took the photo, it can make filtering a lot quicker.

Whatever you do, don't skimp on tagging though.
 
I think I need to take a leaf out of your books. My photos are not organised at all.... I just import photos after each event, edit them - leave them and then back up the entire date folders - I should probably look after my pictures more to be honest!
 
Mine all get dumped in a single folder, add keywords and set up smart collections. So I know where to find things in the smart collections. But the actual file locations are a complete mess, lol.
 
I use YEAR, month and SPECIFIC, (if needed) …… i.e 2013, April, AFRICA, and say BIRDS as all year ……. use a combination of UPPER and lower case to differentiate
I then create collections on the left, i.e. 5 star, 4 star, no stars, flagged red etc, etc.……. use a combination of UPPER and lower case to differentiate if necessary
and keywords on the right, e.g. NATURE and then within nature sub sections, e.g, animals and if necessary further divide…. use a combination of UPPER and lower case to differentiate if necessary
easy to do and I clean out the "collection no keywords" every so often
 
I have a folder for each camera then in that a year folder I then have folders that hold the raw files each folder is the size of DVD or now Bue ray disk which I back up onto in case of hard drive failure. Although I am looking at sorting out my hard drives as I have a 1 TB full another 2 TB getting that way also 1 TB drive for my old slides and negs that I have been scanning. I thinking about a network drive that I can put 4 drives into have 2 4 TB drives just for my Raw files do that as a mirror back up. Then on the other two have one for the pictures I develop and the other for my scan photos. Not done network before so just trying to get my head around all that I am going to need and see how much it will all cost!
 
When importing i use a date back front with a description. It means they go in order with newest at the bottom. like this.

20140529_talk_photography

I also get Lightroom to rename the files using the same protocol..
 
I like the ability to move some image sets from one computer to another if I need to. I create a folder for the images and then create a new catalog inside that folder, I then also create two other folders in the main folder one called 'bin' the other 'output' - use is self explanatory. When I want to move the sets I just move/copy the complete folder. I know this doesn't use a lot of features in LR but suits what I need for the moment. I find my computer too slow to manage very large catalogs files.
 
As far as LR organisation this is my approach. I use YYYY/specific date for the folders, I also have different catalogues for different subjects, i.e. 1 for Portaits, another for wildlife and another for family snaps. I then create Collections inside each for each event.

Also as far as HD organisation goes. Each catalogue is stored inside its own subject related folder with the RAW files stored with it, so everything relating to Wildlife is in the same folder on the Hard Drive and in the same catalogue within LR.

This has all come about after years of playing with different methods and seems to work the best for me. Note to remember never move file OUTSIDE of LR as you will lose all the links
 
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