Picture retrieval

I've got thousands of pics stored away on external drives in folders listed as date/location/theme etc (I keep adding/changing index bits here and there).

Snag is finding a specific pic still appears to rely on my memory which is getting worse as I get older (take yet more pics).

How on earth do you guys manage or is it a universal problem awaiting someone else to act as librarian- cos, we can't be bothered.

Any ideas that don't require me to spend hours "tagging" each and every pic would be welcomed. Oh and before I forget I don't want to spend hard earned cash on software that I might not use (see above for reasons).

I suppose if I junked the duff ones (some say 99%+) the problem would go away

regards
Bernard

https://www.pentaxuser.com/article/organising-your-digital-files-252

This system is simple and works without any effort whatsoever.

Adobe Lightroom. It's cataloguing system is superb.

What is fantastic is the Smart collections. After every shoot I keyword my pics and these are automatically added to any smart collections I have created.

Ity's so simple to find a specific pic.


And...... please ....... don't junk any of your pics.

Any chance you could type up a brief description of how your initial workflow goes Smegs for us LR3 users? I'm still not sure of the best way to catalogue stuff before/during import.

Vic.

Yup be glad to. I'll post it once done in a new thread in the general photography section

Thanks - that would be really useful for me too - my lightroom catalogues are in a worse state than my Picasa files - if that is possible

First I'd like to thank you all for taking the trouble to reply and advise.

To John I think I already do what you're suggesting ie a typical directry tree might be :-
Pentax-2010-Garden-03March-list of files
Pentax-2009-Dorset-Lyme Regis
Pentax-2009-Dorset-Dorchester
etc
If I'm looking for a flower/insect I navigate to -Garden- But this still requires me to remember the year and the month it was taken.
Pictures on the beach are elatively easy to find


To Smeggypants I have a friend who swears by Lightroom but he seams to spend ages and ages adding "tags", but maybe this is what I have to do, just hoping I wouldn't need to. I wouldn't dream of deleting my pics they took so long (1/30-1/500 sec) to get them -. but I do have some 500GB stored on two external drives (1 backs up the other).

As Xbow and Fritzthedog have brought up the request for a "tutorial" I'll add my twopennyworth to that request.

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/smeggy-s-lightroom-workflow-26516


Add tags ( keywords ) takes no time. I can whip through a 1,000 shot shoot in a few minutes. Multiple select them and ad a keyword to all at once.