Organising your photos?

I know this has been asked before but I'm going to ask it again. How do you organise your photos?

I need to reorganise my photos, but am unsure how best to do it. My current organisation has become a mess over the years and needs sorting out. Something to do in the long evenings to come.
I currently have photos in folders under subjects like holidays, outings, trees and flowers, dogs. But many (most) photos don't fall into these categories and end up in folders on their own with some vague title. As I said it's a mess.

I'm not talking about what software to use, but the actual structure you use for organising photos so you can find a specific photo easily.

All ideas are welcome.

Mine are a mess too, I will follow this thread with interest.

I use a system based on date. Most of the time i know the day a photo is taken so i can most of the time find it.

With lightroom i should definitely need to use small description for my photos to make them easier to sort and find if i need a particular photo.
It's getting too many of them to know out of my head now

At least i got a good thing to change about me in 2011

Simply in date order.

By venue/date eg. Whitby Goths 2010

quote: Most of the time i know the day a photo is taken so i can most of the time find it.
Ah Leslie Welch.

I use dates in the form y/m/d some with the venue added, the folders are saved by years on external hard drives. On the 20th the folder was 20101020.
John

With increased file sizes you have to use a system that will allow older photos to be archived on another drive.

I store everything initially by year so the first directory will be:

Pentax_Photos_2010_Vol_01

I'd start a new Vol_02 when Vol_01 has about 80GB in it. Makes BUP's
easier. Probably better on another partition so if a partition gets
damaged you don't lose everything.

Dirs off this have venues or locations:

Ashurt_Beacon

Martin_Mere

Three_Sisters_Nature_Reserve

or some might be lumped together

Lens_Tests_Outside

Lens_Tests_Indoor

Inside the above dirs sub-dirs are by date and are usually
just the dir off the SD card copied over and renamed.
I wish Pentax would let us set the dates of dirs in the
camera. So these are renamed YR-MNTH-DAY:

10-08-21
10-09-18

Anything important in a dir might be added after the date:

10-08-21_Meercats

I always keep the original filename and if I need to change it
just add the new name to the end. This way I can always search
on the original filename.

_igp4593_Meercat_001.jpg

Because the camera counts from 0001 after 9999 you could
change one of the letters in the filename to A B C D etc
at each increment. Or rename the files.

A_igp4593_Meercat_001.jpg

I put a txt note in each dir stating the lens used etc.

Important Dirs will have MD5 checksums created by Total Commander
File Manager. Really important ones will have 15% of PAR2 recovery
files.

To index my HDD I use a freeware program called Locate32
http://locate32.net/
This is really fast and lets you specify search just photos and
if you put in meercat it will list all the photos with meercat
in the title. Clicking the file launches my viewer. I can also
put txt files in each dir with the name as a note and Locate32
will find them. i.e. taken_with_Jims_Nikon.txt

An old habit from the Sinclair QL days is always using underscores
rather than spaces in filenames they may eventually finish up on
a system that doesn't like spaces.

One thing I would like to ask - is there a way that topic names can be attached automatically (batch run) to individual shots within a folder?

I know Gwen was not looking for software suggestions, but using PSE as I do makes finding/viewing photos a doddle.

I categorise things such as trips/days out, or holidays, or photographic competitions etc. with susubsets of the name of the place I visited etc.

It is also possible to tag photos (lens used is very useful) so there is another way of looking things up.

Finally you can select date order if you wish.

All my actual files are stored in an external hard drive in date order. I never have to actually hunt through them as the directory in PSE does that for me.

Me too, Peter! PSE har a very good organizer to keep track of my images.

Personally, I store all images in a folder called Picture Gallery, with subfolders based on themes/events etc. PSE's built-in timeline will automatically show the images in chronological order or by folder as selected.

I also store the Adobe catalogue within the Picture Gallery folder, thus the catalogue is backed up every time I make a copy of the folder to the external harddisk and to my laptop.

I have PSE and I do use the organiser. But there are times when I don't want to fire up PSE just to find a photo, or as now when I am choosing photos to make a calender I need the actual location of the photo. Hence the need to clean up my act.

looks like I have plenty to do in the coming months reorganising it all .

Try this: http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Download.php

The controls initially look somewhat daunting but this is simply because it is highly flexible and powerful, for example allowing you to rename based on EXIF data. Well worth spending a little time trying to get to grips with.

Gwyn, I always use PSE to find a photo. It's so much easier that way. And you can add location to images as a tag.

These days the 2 are totally related and my answer to the first point is in the 2nd point.

How do I organise my photos? Aperture. You have PSE also Lightroom comes highly recommended.

So, how do I organise my photos? By photo, face or place.

How do I find a photo? Primarily by photo, face or place. Keyword & loads of other searches are available.

Lets say we went to a wedding today and shot 500 raw files I would connect the card, run Aperture and import the raw files (and video) into a project called 'Jack and Jill' in a folder named 'Weddings'. When the import is complete you can then sort / rate / delete / batch convert / batch rename / batch edit exif / keyword the photos you want etc. etc.

Once the basics are done, I will then run faces & places so I know who was there and where. The names on the faces are tied into names in my address book (which is identical to my phone as well), and will also auto tag people in Facebook should I choose to hit a button and upload some photos there. If other people on Facebook get tagged that I do not have in faces, Aperture will automatically update my faces folder to tell me who they are.

What seems to be the main point of your post is to quickly find a photo, and this is where having software like Aperture comes into it's own. Photos of my wife? Go to 'faces' and click on Fiona. My favourite photos of my wife? Click on Fiona and show only 5 star rated photos. Scotland holiday photos? Click on places and use Google maps to zoom into Scotland and all the locations are there. You can add almost any other search filter in there if you wish. Birds shot with the the DA* 300mm, no problem. Favourite shot of the dog, where and when, easy.

So, to get
the answer is the opposite of
It's exactly what software you use, thats the whole point.

My Aperture library consists of over 25,000 images, and all the master files are in there. How are they organised? Don't know. What kind of labelling structure does it use? Dont know. Folder structure? No idea. Date organisation? Ain't got a clue. All I do know is that they are in there, named as I told it to in import (which is normally untouched from camera), and I can get to them easily if I want.

Getting used to the idea that you should be organising photos instead of file names makes you think about things completely differently. For example how would you rename 'IMGP0001' to show that the photo includes the wedding of Jack and Jill, the location, the fact their dog was in the photo, on the dancefloor, shot with the fisheye lens? Then, if you can work out how to rename that file to describe the photo, what would you name the folder that it's in? It's something that genuinely doesn't even cross my mind.

When you use Google to search for images, do you use the normal search and read about the photos, or do you click on images and look at them?

May I suggest wholeheartedly that you change your opinion of 'I'm not talking what software to use' to 'what software should I use?', because when you use the right software, any photo can be found in an instant, and is genuinely the answer to your question.

It may be easier to see the kind of things I mean by watching some videos on how pros use it here, or by some training videos here. Whilst I appreciate that you cannot use Aperture, watching some of these videos may help encourage you to further explore what PSE can do for you, or wether more research into LightRoom is right for you. Have only mentioned these software options because they also easily integrate with Photoshop.

This, genuinely is one of those situations where once you have used such an option, you never look back and you question how on earth you coped before. Then once you have got used to it, you realise that you are only just scratching the surface. One such option would be the galleries in my sig, so easy it makes you blush.

So, for 'something to do in the long evenings to come' research what is the right software to buy, get all your photos in there, learn what 'non-destructive editing' can do for you, then continue to use that software to organise your photos in the future.

This has turned in to quite a long post, and I know I've gone on a bit, but genuinely, this is the best advice I can give.

Hope that helps!

PS I believe there is a 30 day trial for LightRoom? Download it and try it out, it could completely change they way you think about organising, then sharing your photography.

This is a brilliant example of why I use a program similar to PSE to organise my photos, as the first question I ask when reading this is 'why do I need to know the actual location of the photos?'

As a RAW shooter, knowing the location of the RAW files will be of no use in making a calendar (replace the word RAW with original files if you shoot JPEG).

Edited pictures are the ones I need, so where are they stored? This is where your mind gets blown, they are not stored anywhere because they do not exist. You have a stored RAW file, and you have a list of adjustments, what you see on screen is the photo with the adjustments applied, the RAW / original file NEVER gets touched.

So, getting back to the calendar, PSE 9 can create it's own calendars, so select the photos and click on calendar. Done. That's it from the organisational point of view.

It's that easy. No working out if you need 800x600 jpegs, or wether the kodak printing service prefers TIFFS and what size do you need to create etc etc. The software will either just print it locally, or, if you choose to send it off, the software should automatically send what is needed in the right format.

If you use a program independently from PSE to make your calendar, then use PSE, select the 12 pictures you want in the calendar (make a smart album for them if you like), then right click and export versions. You then have the 12 photos you want for the calendar, in a folder, in any format, any size you like, to do what you like with to make your calendar. Again, the original file stays where it is, no need to look for it, copy it, move it, and NEVER gets adjusted.

Non-destructive editing really comes into it's own in these kind of examples, and once learnt becomes second nature.