organising files..........

Lynton

Lynton

awkward customer
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Name
Lynton (yes really!)
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help.....

I should know this and I should be more disciplined, but whats the best way to organise files on a PC so I can find something in seconds rather than hours.........

OK here's the scenario........

I have about 8 SD cards, and one of which can be in the camera at any time, and when i come home I dump them all onto the external drive in one of the 8 main folders.

If a card has been in the camera a week , i'll have say

7 subfolders

100_2412
101_2512
102_2612

and so on

all of which will be in "transcend I"


That's ok - when i want to find a a pic from a few days ago, but when i want something from months a ago........ there HAS to be a better way of file nomenclature........

help!
 
I have a folder for each year, then one for each "shoot" - with a serial number (so they're in order) a description (usually just location) and the date.

eg

1001 - River Lea - 02 Jan
1002 - Home JT Products - 03 Jan

Not exactly perfect for finding stuff, but if you know where you were when you took it, or the rough date then it's pretty quick.

I'm tempted to re-organise sometimes and import everything through Lightroom and add tags to each shot, so I can search through that using the tags/keywords
 
I try having all my raw and jpgs labelled differently,

with the raw file I run the folders as
year_month_date_location/event

then when producing the jpgs I label them to the folder instead of their true name so
yymmdd###.jpg and them into folders like 'boats' 'light trails' 'cheetahs'

it took me ages to find something that works for me as use 3 different cameras, canon, nikon and Olympus. and so finding a picture of a lion having a nap it doesn't matter which camera I used :D
 
I tend to organise in folders by year, month and shoot. For example:

2010 | 02 - February | 23/02/2010 - Newent BOPC

I then add all the required meta data and now I've started to create collections in Lightroom to organise by style.

Seems a fairly easy way for me to find my images, but then I'm not working as a pro tog and therefore taking thousands of images. :)

Regards

Paul
 
I list my shots on a spreadsheet, so can search on month, shot title. Like most things it's the discipline to maintenance that is where the effort needs to go.
 
Folders are good, date-restricted folders are better, but they're not much help if you want a specific photo and you can't remember when you took it.

I use the keywording in Lightroom extensively. I have five categories of keywords, headed When, Where, What, How, Who. So if I want that image of an osprey I shot in the Lake District, I can find it easily whether it was shot in 2010 or 2003.

Keywording takes time and I don't always have time when I upload the photos, but I came across a great tip to help with that. I have five keywords which are TO-DO keywords: TO-DO-When, TO-DO-Where, etc. All images are automatically assigned these 5 keywords when they're imported. When I review a batch and keyword them to show which people are in them, I delete the TO-DO-Who keyword, and so on. Selecting all images with any TO-DO keywords still attached shows me what I still have left to do. It's simple and it works.
 
With shooting weddings I have to keep them organised. 20 wedding = almost 20,000 images at the end of the day.

I only use LR as a processing engine so don't use the collections or catalogues, first pass deletes the rubbish, second pass does the WB, exposures and cropping. Then I delete them out of LR. No point in having them in there now. I then use Bridge as a light table and process all the images through CS3.

As for the folder structure I also use years. So there will be a Weddings 2010 folder, then couples names.In that folder will be two subfolders. RAWs and Album JPEGs That also means that I can target my weddings folder for backups.

I also have a folder for commercial work and one for marketing. The commercial one is again done by year and client. The marketing one is where I drop images that I think might be useful for any advertising.

Another couple are Website where all the resized images for my website are, again split into subfolders for the various different bits of the website, and personal where all the fun stuff goes. :)

At the end of the year I simply keep anything outstanding for albums on my HD but the external drive gets everything for that year archived and a new one popped in. I then go through all my folders on my editing PC and delete everything I am no longer working on. I need to keep it clean for the next year.

Guess what I'm doing this week? ;)
 
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cheers guys - so many different ways but a common theme.....

I am going through 2010 now - deleting all the crap that i'll never come back to..... / need again......

Then i am going to spend a little bit of time with some keywords in Bridge.......
 
For example, Christmas Market, Manchester, 22nd Dec 2010; I sort mine like this:

>2010
>> 12-22 - Christmas Market, Manchester.

If you do a huge amount of photography, maybe:

>2010
>>12
>>>22 - Market etc.

Either that or keywording all photos on import and using lightroom/bridge to keep track of dates.
 
Life's too short. Just get a bigger hard disk.
Click to expand...
Perhaps this is inherited from my Dad, but I quite enjoy clearing things out and having an organising session.

Just did a laptop windows/HDD clean-up... cold beer and 2 enjoyable hours thankyou, haha :D
 
My folder structure is Year>Month>Date but my real organisation happens in Lightroom. I exploit categories and keywording extensively.
 
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