Need to tidy up 'library'

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kartracer

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I hope I've posted in the right section - I feel this is more an operational question than a technical question, related to organizing images.

After hard disk problems, I recovered some files - some have the original name, and some had a name appended by the recovery software. I've also got various folders, some dated, others not. In short, a bit of a mess. Its a mix of NEF, JPG, and a few TIFF, etc.

I have Aperture (though I'm new to it), a Mac, PS, and various utilities. I have some old shots on a 'backup' but the backup disk was one that failed.

Any suggestions/tips how to approach this task?, which I feel is rather daunting.

Also, would Blu-Ray, or at least the 25GB(?) DVD's be a good way to store images more durably?
 
Answering your last question first, I'd opt for a hard dive over Blue Ray. No one knows how long disks like these will last. I use DVD's as part of my back up but only part. Images are backed up onto 2 backup drives as well. I'd opt for at least one external drive as a back up and then use DVD's in your position. If you look at the cost of Blue Ray disks at the moment they are seriously more expensive than the equivalent storage on DVD.

Now your main question.

Before you start doing anything decide how you want to store the data. I use a simple Year/assignment/subfolder (if needed option). It's what I used prior to Lightroom, and it still works well with it

I think you are going to have to spend some time going through you images and classifying them as to which folder(s) they belong in. You could just simply do it all by date. Finder will do that for you if they are al in one folder. But sorting after is going to be a real pig of a job.

I'd suggest you sort your filing system out and then slowly add the files to the appropriate folder. How easy this is will depend on how many images you have. I'm not familiar with Aperture, as I use Lightroom. But you could import into Aperture and then go through each image and the allocate it to a suitable folder. As I said I don't know if you can do that in Aperture, you could in Lightroom so I suspect you can.
 
With a 1Tb drive costing less than £50 and an external case costing £10 I would back up that way. It is FAR FAR easier and quicker and will last. It is also as big as 40 bluray discs which would cost 4-6 times as much.
 
Oh yes organising images.... I tried to do this by subject by lots of images have multiple subjects so now it is:

Main Folder > YEAR FOLDERS > YYYY-MM-DD

and just stick them in the folders as per the date...

Then use the tagging option on Aperture to tag all images of X with tag "X", images of Y with tag "Y" etc etc.

This might take a few days but it is reasonably easy to keep up to date later. The advantage of this approach is that you can then instantly see all pictures of X with a couple of clicks
 
Chappers said:
Answering your last question first, I'd opt for a hard dive over Blue Ray. No one knows how long disks like these will last. I use DVD's as part of my back up but only part. Images are backed up onto 2 backup drives as well. I'd opt for at least one external drive as a back up and then use DVD's in your position. If you look at the cost of Blue Ray disks at the moment they are seriously more expensive than the equivalent storage on DVD.

Now your main question.

Before you start doing anything decide how you want to store the data. I use a simple Year/assignment/subfolder (if needed option). It's what I used prior to Lightroom, and it still works well with it

I think you are going to have to spend some time going through you images and classifying them as to which folder(s) they belong in. You could just simply do it all by date. Finder will do that for you if they are al in one folder. But sorting after is going to be a real pig of a job.

I'd suggest you sort your filing system out and then slowly add the files to the appropriate folder. How easy this is will depend on how many images you have. I'm not familiar with Aperture, as I use Lightroom. But you could import into Aperture and then go through each image and the allocate it to a suitable folder. As I said I don't know if you can do that in Aperture, you could in Lightroom so I suspect you can.
Click to expand...

Thanks that info. Will finder organize by (file) modified date, or by shooting date?

Also, I have a few thousand mounted 35mm slides I need to scan and catalogue. I guess a similar arrangement will work there? I have them in archive sheets in a large ring binder. Any suggestions for numbering of the actual slide mounts?
 
If you use the "columns" View in finder you can select either date modified or date created.

You may find it worthwhile spending a few hours learning a Aperture as it may have a better sort function than finder
 
cowasaki said:
With a 1Tb drive costing less than £50 and an external case costing £10 I would back up that way. It is FAR FAR easier and quicker and will last. It is also as big as 40 bluray discs which would cost 4-6 times as much.
Click to expand...

Incidentally, I just had a Samsung 1TB drive fail just inside 12 months. And I 750GB WD drive fail after a couple of years (of very light use, i.e. backup).
I also have Seagate drives, and they fail also, given time.

So I'm still inclined to put my important data on something that is non-magnetic, and won't self destruct.
 
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