Storing of pictures?

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NJG

NJG

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Nick
Edit My Images
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Right im fed up with my pictures every where. I dont seem to be able to come to a solution on how to store all my pictures neatly.

I download from camera into windows. And then if its an album i like I then import to lightroom catalogue ( currently saving for cs3/4 ). But all my folder names are now very confusing to me and I have duplicated pictures everywhere. They are all in My Pictures folder. How do you sort yours? How do you name your photo's?
 
I create archive directory's and name them "Archive 1 Aug07 - Nov07" and so on. Within these I create sub-directory's called "birds", "transport", etc etc.
I also create a "working" directory where I hold pictures for post processing before putting into relevent sub directory. These are all then backed up to an external drive.
ACDSee adds the meta links for me to do a total search across my drives.

C:/Photos>
Archive 1 Aug07 - Nov07>
Birds
Transport
Trees
Archive 2 Nov07 - Jan08>
Birds
Planes
Stock
 
NEVER store pictures in 'my pictures' - it's part of Windows and if you had to re-install Windows for any reason - then you'd lose the lot! Store your pictures on an external drive or at least a 'D' drive within the computer - NOT on your 'C'drive. ALWAYS back up to a second drive for safety.

I use a Drobo 5TB system now which keeps everything together (but spread over 4 disks) and protects the files against disk failure. www.drobo.com for more info.
 
I have them by location or subject, for example i might have quite a few of my cats, so they go in the same folder.
The contain subfolders named by the day the set of shots were taken in the format yy/mm/dd so you can sort them by name and they will be in chronological order.
In each set of photos there is a 'processed' folder for all the processed jpegs (as i always shoot raw)

This seems to work because if you are looking for a particular photography you usually remember the subject.........unless of course you shot a lot of weddings, then i assume it would be best to do it by date alone.
 
Ok thank you. Hawkmoon I like your idea and i think I may do it like that. Then each Archieve you can burn to dvd.

Now is there software or can vista do it and im not aware, do mulitiple renameing? Ie if I have a folder with Transport and in that have loads of images, can I rename them to say Transport1 30-01-2010 Transport2 30-01-2010. Is there anything that will do that?

Sorry question is a bit difficult to understand.
 
Do any renaming of folders or images within Lightroom - then LR will still track your images - do it outside of LR and you risk losing all your edits!
 
awp said:
NEVER store pictures in 'my pictures' - it's part of Windows and if you had to re-install Windows for any reason - then you'd lose the lot! Store your pictures on an external drive or at least a 'D' drive within the computer - NOT on your 'C'drive. ALWAYS back up to a second drive for safety.

I use a Drobo 5TB system now which keeps everything together (but spread over 4 disks) and protects the files against disk failure. www.drobo.com for more info.
Click to expand...

In "Properties" you can change the location of My Documents, I have mine set to D:/ so it no longer falls within the system drive. This means all my music, photos, videos, etc, etc are seperate.

This also has the advantage for me of being able to make the D Drive public and I (or ayone else on the wifi network) can access the fles on there. You can even set the security level so other can only read the files and not edit.
 
Don't think you can do that in XP can you? I'm still on XP.
 
I manually copy all of my images into a date based folders, Year->Month->Day

If I am shooting for a client I then create a sub folder with the job number. Within each day or job folder I have sub folders for:

1) Originals
2) Edits
3) Web/Slideshow Export
4) Print Export

After the import I backup the folder to an external drive, this drive keeps a copy of all originals.
I then create a new lightroom catalogue in that folder and import into lightroom and tag the pictures. Once I have done edits I backup the folder to a 2nd drive, this drive I have a copy of both the originals and edits with the lightroom catalogue for that client.

After all this I import the catalogue into my main LR catalogue that has everything in it.
 
Way I have it set up

D:/Pictures

Then inside 2 folders:
Masters (where I store all my raws)
Archive (where I store older pictures I don't really have much use for)

Then on c:/ in the bog standard my pictures I have all the exports, my to do folder of ones which need to be sorted out, and the collections folder of odd folders of pictures, e.g. dog.

Everything apart from whats stored in the collection folder is stored in folders like this: yyyy.mm.dd - what it was - where it was. Also I have a library set up (good ole windows 7) which combines the archive folder and the main my pictures folder.

Routinely backup all 3 folders, masters, archive, and my pictures. On an external HD 150miles away for safe keeping.
 
I use a NAS which is really goot

data is backed up via Raid 1 (disk mirroring)

to store my pictures I have folders for say Landscapes, then sub folders for locations, within those I has RAW, Jpegs, resized for web folders

Seems to work fine for me
 
Good info - just wondering if I do that what would happen to my LR catalogues - LR stores these in /My documents/my pictures - never been happy about that although they are backed up to an external drive regularly.
 
Never used lightroom so can't say for certain

Is there no where to change the location of your pictures in there?
 
You can change the location of your "My Documents" file in XP, I always had it set to a different partition so that I could re install windows every 6 months.

If you have got Lightroom you are 90% of the way there having decent image management, it's what Lightroom is for! The really easy way would be not to use Explorer for looking for image, just use Lightroom, or use Lightroom to reorganise/rename your folder structure (don't do this outside of Lightroom or you will have to relocate everything manually).

FWIW on import I get Lightroom to put my raw files in the structure year/yyyymmdd/images.dng, but I can't say I ever go into the file system to look for them, everything is handled by Lightroom, so they could be anywhere as long as Lightroom knows where to find them.
 
awp said:
NEVER store pictures in 'my pictures' - it's part of Windows and if you had to re-install Windows for any reason - then you'd lose the lot! Store your pictures on an external drive or at least a 'D' drive within the computer - NOT on your 'C'drive. ALWAYS back up to a second drive for safety.

I use a Drobo 5TB system now which keeps everything together (but spread over 4 disks) and protects the files against disk failure. www.drobo.com for more info.
Click to expand...


I store my photographs in my pictures. What I have done is made the default location of my documents a sepearte hardrive
 
neil_g said:
doesnt really matter where theyre stored as long as theyre backed up..
Click to expand...

Well it's better being in two safe places than just one - I don't regard My Docs on the C: drive as a safe place!
 
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