Organising your images

jammy_c

jammy_c

Messages
991
Name
James
Edit My Images
Yes
Hey Guys! I'm sure this question has been asked time and again, but…
I have just purchased a new computer (being delivered today) and I think it would be a great excuse to organise all of my photos property.

At the the moment I have about 400 folders with names of the events such as “Autosport show 2011” or “Gemma’s Birthday”, etc.

Is it more efficient to name folders with the date of which they were uploaded, then tag them in another program?

I have Lightroom 3, but have never used it for organising my pictures, just RAW processing. Is this a good tool for doing so? And if so, what do you guys go about naming conventions, etc?

Cheers!
James.

p.s. Does anyone use “Microsoft Live Essentials Photo Gallery”? is it any good? Or will I be best getting to grips with LR3?



 
I import all of my photos using lightroom where I add keywords relating to the images but I still organise them in folders as you do.

I know if you label them properly in LR there's no really need to do this but I suppose I've been doing it this way for a long time, plus if I need to find certain images I can go to the folder directly as opposed to having to search through LR.

My folder structure goes something like this:

My Pictures > Photos > My Birthday > 2012 > and then when I export I'll create a resized and Edited folders. Risized is used for web publishing, Edited for 3-4MB full res images.
 
Hi Russ, yeah that makes sense to me. the only benefit I can see of naming the folders by YYYY-MM-DD is that you can have the folders organised chronologically with the most recent folders at the top (or bottom). think it may frustrate me using "window explorer"/"my computer" and not having them named according to what they are.

my wife is due soon with our first child, and I want to make sure we keep loads of photos of him growing up, i suppose: My Pictures >"baby's name">aged 0, aged 1, aged 2, aged 3, etc...
 
Hi James, I was in your position about a year ago (new baby on the way, about to take tons of photos). I took the easy option at the time of just importing the files using elements and having it automatically create them in YYYY-MM-DD folders. Sleep deprevation prevented me thinking straight!

A year on and i've just finished re-organising them back into something that works when using Windows Explorer. I used the same as you suggest i.e. My Pictures > Baby's name> year 1, year 2 folders. Given the amount of pictures you'll likely take that's definitely the way to go. In folders by day just isn't manageable.
 
First of all, Lightroom is the best tool for organising images. I recommend taking a look at Adobe.tv for tutorials, it isn't exactly a cheap piece of software, so you are as well using its pull potential!

My advice would be to import the files into Lightroom a folder at a time (moving them to the new file structure) and adding keywords, such as Autosport show/Gemma's birthday on import, so that data stays with them. Correctly keywords images will be easier to find than using Explorer.

With regards how to organise your image folders, it doesn't really matter, they can all be in one folder if they're keyworded, however my preference is YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD, probably as a throwback to my pre Lightroom days.

Two key points to bear in mind are:
- Backup your system before moving things around!
- when all your images are in Lightroom, don't use explorer or anything other than Lightroom to manage them, as that will break the database links in Lightroom.
 
Must organising my images,must organising my images :(

I am in the same boat,everythings backed up,about 4 times,but in no sort of order :)
 
jammy_c said:
my wife is due soon with our first child, and I want to make sure we keep loads of photos of him growing up, i suppose: My Pictures >"baby's name">aged 0, aged 1, aged 2, aged 3, etc...
Click to expand...

I don't have Lightroom ( :'( ) so always use explorer for finding photos. I use the following structure:
Year>Month>Event - but one of the 'event' folders is "general" and another is often "Heidi" (my daughter's name).

I think the issue you'll have with the method that you've suggested is that when your baby starts to interact with people more you end up with less of them on their own and more with other people. You then need to work out for each picture whether it should go in the child folder of not. Organising by month also helps you remember when your baby did what (when did they first smile, first crawl etc). I say all this from experience of starting out your way when my girl was born 15 months ago.
p.s. you will end up with lots of photos, so you're doing the right thing working out how to organise them all beforehand!
 
Before getting LR, I had my images in folders in date order - year>month>day>subject/location. I then decided to mess all that up by filing the images by subject - birds, macro, landscapes, etc. Then I found some images could fit into several categories, so abandoned that and re-sorted them! Luckily I didn't have too many at that stage.

Since LR I've reverted to the previous filing system and this is set as a preset in LR and I just have to rename the folder by adding the location/event/subject at the end of the date setup. I add certain keywords on import that apply to the whole batch, and then add any specific keywords to individual images as needed.

I just find it far easier to keep everything in chronological order with descriptive names for the folders.
 
Lightroom 3 hand's down is the best for organising photo's

Take's minimal setup , backup's on the regular to my external hard drive too , which come's in handy when transferring to other computer's and my laptop
 
Hi James,
Can't believe nobody has mentioned Picasa yet. Ok, you have LR which is awesome but Picasa has the bonus of face recognition and tagging (and it's free) This will let you see all the pics of a particular person even if they're in different folders. I think you can integrate this with LR but not sure how it works in practice, maybe someone here has some experience?
 
For me, 2 folders on External HDD
RAW and JPG
Within JPG, 2 folders of current work (not done viewing) and Archived.
YYYY-MM-DD-Name
Gets dumped into RAW. import into LR at same location.
Edit and export to JPG with same naming convention.
After a month or 2 i delete the old RAW's to free space.

Beauty is i can keep a track of who i need to be putting on MBP in an instant to take to the Studio, or delete old RAW or see where im at.
 
Does everyone have a folder for your photos straight off the camera, IE Xmas 2011 and then another folder (with the same images edited) titled the same but Xmas 2011 edited?
 
jimmy83 said:
Does everyone have a folder for your photos straight off the camera, IE Xmas 2011 and then another folder (with the same images edited) titled the same but Xmas 2011 edited?
Click to expand...

Nope, everything is in Lightroom, I only export files when I have a use for them, no point keeping 2 copies of the same file.
 
Craikeybaby said:
Nope, everything is in Lightroom, I only export files when I have a use for them, no point keeping 2 copies of the same file.
Click to expand...

Ok I see your point but what about you have a finished photo all edited and then come back to it and start from scratch again? What would you do in this instance?
 
Lightroom stores the edits. If I wanted to do a totally different edit of the same image, say a b&w conversion, I would right click it in Lightroom and create a virtual copy. This means that there are 2 entries in the Lightroom database referencing the same original file, but with different processing.
 
Hi

I organise my photos into main folders and sub folders

eg - Motorsport -> Oulton Park Gold Cup 2011
or Holidays -> Northumberland -> 2011

I tend to import the photos and I set the folder location and sub folder name etc, rather than having it automatically done - ie date etc. My FIL has Photoshop automatically assign the date to his imports, which works for him, but confuses the life out of me !!!
 
jimmy83 said:
Ok I see your point but what about you have a finished photo all edited and then come back to it and start from scratch again? What would you do in this instance?
Click to expand...

In LR I create a Virtual Copy, do the edits (which, by the way, are not altering your original file - it's just referencing the changes into a sideline file called .xml), and then Export the file to whatever format I need - tif, jpg). This makes an extra copy for uploading to website, printing, etc, so you configure the export into whatever size you need. These files I store in a sub-folder of the originals, but these are not then imported in Lightroom. If I want to look at these images, I can view them in Windows Explorer or do further tweaks in Elements.

If I want to make a colour and a black and white version, I make two virtual copies, edit accordingly, and then export them as two jpgs. The virtual copies are not actual files, so they do not take up any extra space on your hard drive.
 
jimmy83 said:
Does everyone have a folder for your photos straight off the camera, IE Xmas 2011 and then another folder (with the same images edited) titled the same but Xmas 2011 edited?
Click to expand...

Yes, I start off with all the raw files in a folder, then work on them, finally saving the processed file into a nested folder called Final which is just the finished shot so they are easy to find. As I said though I use Media Pro which keeps track of my shots so the locations aren't that critical
 
Lightroom for me too. When you import store by date. I have a folder structure for the raw files by year 2009, 2010, 2011 etc with folders as date of shoot underneath. Lightroom does this by default.

Then import with keywords - always - this really is a must. In the library module you can then search by metadata on keywords, camera or lens used etc.

Then use the categories. I tend to create these along the lines of my export folder structure. This becomes personal, but I have various overview categories such as Family, Work, Cars, OCA, etc, with sub categories under that. For the family category, I have years as sub categories, then events under the years, i.e. christmas, that years holiday, a certain trip etc as that's the easiest way to remember, but for things like OCA it's sorted into Modules, then projects, for cars I have a few sub categories. It's all how you feel is best to organise.

Then it's easy to find stuff. Browse through the category, search in the library module for metadata (use all photos), or even open the folder structure and search by date.

It really is worth spending 30 mins watching a few of the lightroom initial training videos. http://tv.adobe.com/product/lightroom/
Too many people ignore lightrooms brilliant organisational features.
 
I create my folder structure in the windows 7 explorer window, but with a 3 digit prefix to each folder name followed by a name, which is normally the location where I took the photos.
eg
My Pictures > Raws > 001 Bath
My Pictures > Raws > 002 London
My Pictures > Raws > 002 Salisbury

I then import into lightroom but keep the original folder location.
 
Phil1974 said:
Hi James,
Can't believe nobody has mentioned Picasa yet.
Click to expand...

Another vote for Picasa here! I have CS5 and CaptureNX2, both of which I use for PP/editing so not really looking to purchase LR as well.

For organising image catalogues, Picasa is excellent and its free :)
 
Craikeybaby said:
Nope, everything is in Lightroom, I only export files when I have a use for them, no point keeping 2 copies of the same file.
Click to expand...

+1. I only ever export images if I need to send them somewhere and as soon as I've done so I delete the exported image. Lightroom can recreate the exported image on demand as many times as I need so I don't need to store them.
 
I just use a yearly folder and file rename to to year/month/date/ text (gemma's birthday/ insert your own)

The rest/or the above can be done in a Dam program of your choice. Although I have and use Lightroom I prefer to do the initial Dam part in Medio Pro as I prefer it as a Dam program to LR.
 
When I got my new PC, I decided - like you - that it was time to sort out the mess that was my photography folder.

Ended up using the Year -> Month hierarchy with all files being named like YYMMDD0001 so that they all end up being organised perfectly chronologically. I keyword people who are in the photos but nothing else besides just so life is easy if someone wants pictures of themselves. I don't see the need to keyword 'beach' or 'tree' as I know which folders are likely to contain pictures of beaches and trees will feature in nigh on all of the photographs I take.
 
craftysnapper said:
The rest/or the above can be done in a Dam program of your choice. Although I have and use Lightroom I prefer to do the initial Dam part in Medio Pro as I prefer it as a Dam program to LR.
Click to expand...

Dam being digital asset management?? :thinking:
 
Are there any free programs that will allow you to add and search pictures by tags ?

Many thanks
Cliff
 
*gold* said:
Are there any free programs that will allow you to add and search pictures by tags ?

Many thanks
Cliff
Click to expand...

On Mac: iPhoto
On PC (& Mac): Picassa
 
Cheers all, some good points. Really need to organise my mess! Hot so many photos don't know where to start tho :(

Once all organised I take it it's easy to back it all up on another HDD?
 
Yes, because if you know where everything is you can make sure it's all captured in your backup routine.
 
Craikeybaby said:
Yes, because if you know where everything is you can make sure it's all captured in your backup routine.
Click to expand...

Thanks, another question...I've taken hundreds of photos of my niece. I've got some which are my favourites...now what would be the best way to find these favourites once iam all organised? If I used keywords Elsie...I would still have to search thru a few hundred photos to find the one I was after. Would the best bet be to search by date if you know roughly when it was?
 
Actually can you rate or star your photos for favourites?
 
jimmy83 said:
Actually can you rate or star your photos for favourites?
Click to expand...

You can in Lightroom, I'm sure you can in other applications too. What are you using?
 
*gold* said:
Are there any free programs that will allow you to add and search pictures by tags ?
Click to expand...
Craikeybaby said:
On Mac: iPhoto
On PC (& Mac): Picassa
Click to expand...

Or Windows - you can tag photos in directly Windows if you want to, and search via Windows search.

Picasa and LR etc will tag the files in the same way windows does, so you can still use Windows to search for tags even if they've been tagged in another program :thumbs:
 
Craikeybaby said:
You can in Lightroom, I'm sure you can in other applications too. What are you using?
Click to expand...

LR3.6

OutLore said:
Picasa and LR etc will tag the files in the same way windows does, so you can still use Windows to search for tags even if they've been tagged in another program :thumbs:
Click to expand...

cheers
 
To rate files in Lightroom, simply press 1 - 5 on the keyboard to assign them that many stars.
 
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