Organising your photos and videos

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Sandy 123

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Sandy
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I am just wondering how people organise their work and how much they keep.
Eg. I took 100 photos on a holiday in 2024. Some animals, some buildings etc. I went to Mumbai and Delhi
Currently in a sub folder of 2024.
I also went to Kenya in 2023 and took another 100. Some animals some buildings. Currently in a sub folder of 2003. I went to Mombasa and nairobi.
Would you keep a sub folder of both with animals, buildings?
But what about if you want to see all the photos you took in Delhi? There could be ones in animals and buildings.
Looking to see what others do.
 
I guess 'tags' might help as then you could search for 'animals', 'Delhi' - as long as you have the software to do it.
Mind you I'm the last person to ask as my photo history is a dumping ground! :oops: :$
 
Mine are in a folder by year then month then additional subfolders if a large number. However in recent years I've taken far fewer as don't get out as much sadly. I also have a spreadsheet indexing them all
 
I just rename each image file with the basic information that I need to find it, such as "Chair lift terminal and radio mast Niederau S10_1887". That provides me with more than a dozen search terms. which is as much as I ever need.

I start a new folder on January 1st each year, to keep the directory size reasonable.
 
Cataloguing software. Personally I use Lightroom, but others are available. It makes finding images really really easy.
 
Since using a keywording package I just store unprocessed images by year and then date saved to hard drive. Processed AND exported photos (which also carry keywords) go in folders by category ready for upload. Processed un-exported photos remain as raw files, to be found through keywords.
 
Mine works something like.....

Photos - astrophotography - 2020, 2021, etc

Photos - holidays - *location/year

Photos - street - 2024, 2025, Bristol Pride, etc

Photos - 35mm film - year/month/film stock

All my photos import through LR with a year/date 'prefix' in front of the file name too - and the in camera file name prefix also allows me to now what camera it was shot on.
 
I use folders with names and dates for each shoot. Using LR for DAM didn't work for me, I was editing other peoples images, so they were on and off my computer. Although I no longer do much of that I cant get used to LR for managing stuff.

There was another program, either free or cheap that worked great as a DAM, but I cant remember the name now. It found all the pics on your computer and sorted by date or whatever, you could tag as well..
 
So you would tag each one with multiple tags. Eg Delhi, animals,date,person in it
I have got thousands!!
How many do you all keep.
Eg I might have a photo of my daughter taken at the same time, but different angles. Some better than others.
How do decide which ones to keep and which to delete?
 
Sandy 123 said:
So you would tag each one with multiple tags. Eg Delhi, animals,date,person in it
I have got thousands!!
How many do you all keep.
Eg I might have a photo of my daughter taken at the same time, but different angles. Some better than others.
How do decide which ones to keep and which to delete?
Click to expand...

Normally tag the whole set at the time of import Delhi, animals etc. The date is already embedded in the image when taken.
 
Sandy 123 said:
So you would tag each one with multiple tags. Eg Delhi, animals,date,person in it
I have got thousands!!
How many do you all keep.
Click to expand...
I have over 116,000 photos and counting. I'm sure others have far more.
Sandy 123 said:
Eg I might have a photo of my daughter taken at the same time, but different angles. Some better than others.

How do decide which ones to keep and which to delete?
Click to expand...

Keep them all. As is often said, disc space is cheap.

Sometimes a poor photo can stir a memory or have a use.

I only get rid of the utter s***e and very close duplicates - e.g. one or two from a burst of shots.

The key to keeping track of them all is tagging them on import, and using lots of tags. A lesson learned the hard way...
 
Another couple of question.s.
You want to take some video and photos of a party. You shoot loads of stuff and make video. Do you get rid of stuff you don’t want in the video?
You are in the pub. Friend says can I see your holiday pictures. All on cloud. You don’t want friend to fall asleep. Do you have a ‘best’ folder?
 
Sandy 123 said:
You are in the pub. Friend says can I see your holiday pictures. All on cloud.
Click to expand...

I don't do pictures in the cloud, but if I do want to show puctures like that I'll export selected photos to a folder and show those.
 
I can't be doing with organising photos into categories. It just annoys me that you lose the dating context. Plus which, I don't want to look at folders that might contain all bridges, for example. I would much rather see them in relation to the other photos I took at the time. I'm thinking primarily film, and they might be several of 36. But as long as they are together I know the story of that film. Also, it's entirely likely that taken out of context I might forget which film I was shooting.
 
I separate mine as such:

2024
20240110 - Trip to xyz
20240402 - Wildlife trip
2025
20250406 - Saudi Arabia
20250901 - Anglesey

and so on.
So I have high level folders for a category, Personal, Sport. Corporate etc, then within each folder there is a subfolder with the year 2023, 2024, 2025 etc. and then within each year folder there are subfolders for events, they have the date in the format of yyyymmdd - description so I know what the pictures are.

The collection in Lightroom for each shoot matches the folder name, so 20250406 - Saudi Arabia

Worked for years so I don't see any need to change it. :)
 
I stick with a simple Year > Month > Day folder system and everything from that days shoot goes into the day folder. I tried segmenting stuff into "wildlife", "landscape" etc folders but I ended up confusing myself (easy done, admittedly). I really must crack on with tagging my photos.
 
I have a folder called 'Photos'
This has sub-folders for each year.
Each year folder has 12 sub-folders - 1Jan, 2Feb, 3Mar etc
The naming the camera gives folders includes the month and date so the folders on the camera for any month are just transferred to the appropriate month in the PC folder structure.

I use an old copt of PSE which has a good organisation system which allows multiple tags.

Dave
 
I think you need to pick what seems most logical to yourself and means your looking for something you can find it easily.

I tend to go for a folders for what the occasion was, like a holiday, day out, etc. but then I do also have things like a transport, wildlife folders etc. I don't think they way I do it's the most logical way like having year folders which then have 12 monthly subfolders but it works for me and means I can find what I want easily.
 
Ghost said:
I stick with a simple Year > Month > Day folder system and everything from that days shoot goes into the day folder. I tried segmenting stuff into "wildlife", "landscape" etc folders but I ended up confusing myself (easy done, admittedly). I really must crack on with tagging my photos.
Click to expand...

Pretty similar here

I use Lightroom to manage my photos, but adopted the same YYYY > MM > DD folder structure I'd been using for years before the first public beta in 2006

2025 > 11 > 22

Files are renamed automatically YYYYMMDD_XXXX upon import into Lightroom where XXXX is a 4 digit sequence with leading zeroes, e.g. 20251119_0001.ARW for the first photo I took Wednesday with my Sony A7III. That way I know exactly where any original file should be if I have a copy in front of me, such as 20251119_0001.jpg.

That's it for file names and folders - they are simple and neutral, strictly date + sequence. Anything more complex than that is handled in Lightroom's database.

I tag the pictures extensively with subject and location data - it tends to be concrete data like names of places and people, the architects of buildings, registration numbers of vehicles, etc. I may also include some information such as 'reflection' or dominant colours in the scene.

This stuff comes in useful when I'm suddenly looking for a picture of a red van in Staffordshire 20 years later. :)

If I need to group pictures across time or by topic for sharing or for quick reference (such as a holiday trip to Paris) that is what Lightroom's Collections feature is for. In the OP's example, that could be one for Kenya as a whole, and others for buildings, animals, Nairobi and Mombasa as needed. If you've tagged the photos well, that can all be done automatically without having to file them into collections by hand.

Oh, and I keep everything. I always keep all my film negatives and I do the same with my RAW files. Disk space is cheap and modern software can pull details out of images I took in 2005 that I never knew were there.
 
Mine a stored in folders by years as I don't take as many pictures to additionally sort them by months. Vacations and travels are sorted by folders of their own names alongside with all the smartshow 3d slideshows I make. Other videos are stored separately, again sorted by years.
 
Basically, my storage hierarchy starts with year taken, with sub-folders for each day's shoot in that year. I make use of Lightroom Classic's keywording feature and create collections based on those so if I want to see all the photos I have of (say) Little Egrets all I have to do is look in the waterfowl collection and filter on little egret. There's no need to remember when or where the photos were taken or where they are stored.
 
seaodyssey said:
Download Digikam (Free opensource software) and use Keywords, It won't take long with the number of photos you have.
You can assign multiple keywords to each photo.
Click to expand...
Do you know any other similar app?
 
Sandy 123 said:
But what about if you want to see all the photos you took in Delhi? There could be ones in animals and buildings.
Looking to see what others do.
Click to expand...
That's the trouble with categories. The last thing you want to do is to duplicate images across different folders.

Tags, by comparison, are infinitely flexible. And some apps offer the facility of collections, however they might name it, which is akin to folder categories except that they are virtual rather than physical, so there's little hit to storage space.
 
I have all my photos sorted by where and when they were taken, in folders - for instance "Duxford flying evening 2508". All the raws and jpegs from that event go in that folder, and then there's a subfolder inside called some variation of "edits" which is where I put all the edited versions of the keepers (I keep the originals too).

I did think about installing Digikam and going through each folder to add a load of tags... I think before I do that I'll need to move all my published folders to a new location and just import them into Digikam, otherwise it's going to get very messy.
 
skullfunkerry said:
I have all my photos sorted by where and when they were taken, in folders - for instance "Duxford flying evening 2508". All the raws and jpegs from that event go in that folder, and then there's a subfolder inside called some variation of "edits" which is where I put all the edited versions of the keepers (I keep the originals too).

I did think about installing Digikam and going through each folder to add a load of tags... I think before I do that I'll need to move all my published folders to a new location and just import them into Digikam, otherwise it's going to get very messy.
Click to expand...
You can add folders for Digikam to look at easily. However I do have most of mine under a Photo Folder.

I Have
Photos
1996 to 1999
1996
1997 Etc
2000 to 2009
Etc

I use Faststone image Viewer to copy files from the card into dated folders.
 
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