How do YOU organize your pictures?

[GavinT]

I have a relatively simple folder structure, and work with metadata a fair bit. I do photography as a hobby, not for work.

[FONT="Courier New"][SIZE="2"]External Drive 1/Pictures/1976mmdd_1997ddmm
				/1976mmdd_EventName1
					/19761224_0001.dng	[This was converted from a scanned photo of my childhood]
					/19761224_0002.dng
					/19761225_0001.dng
					/19761225_0002.dng
				/1977mmdd_EventName2
External Drive 1/Pictures/19980101_19981231
				/19980324_EasterForExample
					/19980324_0001.dng	[This was converted from a JPG file, with no source RAW]
					/19980324_0002.dng
etc etc
External Drive 1/Pictures/20080101_20081231
				/20080101_NewYearsDay
					/20080101_0001.raw	
					/20080101_0001.xmp
					/20080101_0002.raw
					/20080101_0002.xmp[/SIZE][/FONT]

I work with Lightroom, which just references that folder structure on the external HD.
My Time Machine, on another External Drive then is setup to backup both the Lightroom 'library' which sits on the Mac's HDD, and the entire contents of External Drive 1/Pictures.

Also, each folder under External Drive 1/Pictures is backed up to a DVD as well once it's 'complete'. Sometimes, there will be more than one of those folders on a single DVD, because I have less photos from my childhood for example.

I'm also using Metadata a fair bit, which then allows me to find stuff quite easily. So, each time I grab stuff of the camera, I'm copying to the External Drive (and Lightroom is pretty good in that I can tell it create those folder names like that, or pretty close too, and I manually name them afterwards). Then I edit, but also ENSURE that I set of the IPTC data, captions etc etc, plus add the Metadata tags.
Of course, I still have a HELL of a lot of old photos. Some are scans from the photos, some are earlier JPGs with no orginal files etc. So, I'm in the (long) process of sorting those out. A lot of my own photos from 1998 to 2002 are have been scanned from the photo (that was shot on film). Those are JPGS which have been cropped and edited too much and are a mess. So, I'm going to use the orignal negatives and go back and rescan them again, convert to DNG, then post process as I would with RAW files.

My metadata tags themselves are in a nice hierarchy too, as Lightroom supports that:
Something like (not complete list):

[FONT="Courier New"][SIZE="2"]Event
  Event:Party
  Event:Wedding
  Event:Christmas
  Event:Other
People
  People:Family
    People:Family:Me   
    People:Family:Wife
    People:Family:My Family
    People:Family:Wife's Family
  People:Friends
    People:Friends:My School Friends
    People:Friends:My Uni Friends
    People:Friends:My Work Friends
  People:Other
Subject
  Subject: Dawn Shot
  Subject: Dusk Shot
  Subject:Night Shot
  Subject:Animals
  Subject:Buildings
  Subject:Cars
  Subject:Other[/SIZE][/FONT]

 

[Keebler]

I use Aperture and from a pure hobbyist point of view, I have all my pics from 2001 to now, organized by year-month-day-sequential #

Some of them are tagged with keywords, but that is my big project while in vacation (kids and wife go to be early so what's a guy to do?).

I'll then create smart folders based on the keywords for events etc...

i find it makes sense for me to do it this way b/c I can go either by date which is the default or by smart folder if i know the specific event etc..

btw, in terms of backup - all aperture files and original files are stored on Mac Pro HD, then backed up to an external. All original photos, before importing into aperture are backed up onto another Hard Drive and then I have DVDs burned for each year. Just in case

cheerios,
Keebler

 

[mactastic1971]

I use the following:-

User/Pictures/<year_month>/<event>/RAW
User/Pictures/<year_month>/<event>/RAW/PSD
User/Pictures/<year_month>/<event>/RAW/PSD/JPG

I rely on tagging heavily !!!

 

[Boblister]

This thread is very interesting to me as its hopefully answering some questions I was ready to ask myself.

I took the plunge over the weekend and bought a Mac Pro after many years using a PC. My sons Aperture demonstation on his iMac was enough to convert me. For years I have been using a structure similar to what others have done here. My Docs/pictures/originals/year/month
I used software from a company called Breezesys. Downloader Pro for the importation of the images. It would rename as required, sort into my desired folder structure creating directories as required all with a lot of safety built in. You cant overwrite or delete anything by accident using this software. The other piece of software was Breezebrowser Pro which is very nice for image manipulation, raw conversion and very simple editing. So to me Aperture is going to replace the Breezebrowser package giving me better editing and a better cataloging system. However where I am not clear, with me being a Mac newbie is how Aperture will store my images if I leave it to its own devices and let it import them. Do people use other software to import the images then tell Aperture where they are. I know its sacralege, but I em even tempted to run my old favourite Downloader Pro on a PC to store the pictures on an external drive then take the drive with images to the Mac. Or I could even run Downloader under Fusion. Are there any equivalent downloaders for the Mac?

 

[Flowero4ka]

I organize my photos by topics - VOYAGES, PEOPLE, FRIENDS and etc.. Inside I name folders in next way - year/date/subject. For example - 2006/12/12/wedding Mike and Jane...

 

[stcanard]

What dos the public library do? You should copy their system. They have a set of card catalogs. Typically three catalogs but there might be more. One catalog is organized by autor, another by subject and another by title. Notice that a book could have three or more subject cards all for the same book. No reason to have only one. same for multiple authors, one card per author.

Ahh, but you're missing a point here in your analogy.

How does the library have their books sorted? Non-fiction in order by the dewy decimal system, Fiction hierarchically in order by Genre / Author.

They then provide a keyword system for random searches, or allow you to browse based on an organized hierarchy. You can't get away from the need for a physical organization of the items.

Generally I'm physically organized:

(Blue Folder) Year / (project) Date-Shoot
(Blue Folder) Special Event / (project) Date-Shoot

Keywords, for each photo:

Location, Contents, Mood, Event, Descriptive, Backup Location

It allows me to quickly navigate at organized hierarchy to find a specific shoot if I want, or use keyword searches to find something I need.

 

[ChrisA]

For the past 5 years I've been naming folders on my own and putting them folders and subfolders in my own arrangement. I'm looking to progress from that, and hoping many of you will have better ideas and methods. My photos total well over 200gb, including many large raw and jpeg files.

How do you all organize/browse your photos?

Thank you in advance for your suggestions and sharing!

Folders don't work. Let's day I wanted to find all the images I have of a hermit crab. Having folders organized by data or locaion is not going to help me.

The best way is to assign keywords and comments to every image then just thrown them all into one big bucket. The you can pull them out of the bucket using some kind of asset managment software. Smart albums help too. But i think keeping image files organized on foldrs is a total waste of time. I'm using Aperture now to keep my images organized but there is other software that would work.

I do use smart albums to group related images. If I go on a trip I keep all theimages from that together but an image can be inside any number of albums all at the same time without making copies so I can organize the images 18 different ways so I don't have to decide i I want to organize by dae or subject or location I can do all of those. It's like the way a public library uses card catalogs. Three card files sorted three ways and one tack of books sorted a forth way. but one with a computer I'm not limited to only three card files. I can make card files on the fly when ever they are needed.

 

[nutmac]

Count me in as another Aperture user relying on Aperture to manage folder structure. For me, manually managing the folder structure is not worth the efforts (Aperture lets me do that easily if I want).

I organize my Aperture library as follows:

At the top level are "camera model" folders (e.g., Canon EOS 400D), and specialized "Smart Albums" folder that houses smart albums.

Year folders (e.g., 2008) at the second level. I've tinkered with month folders in the past, but I don't shoot nearly enough photos to justify that level of micro management.

Underneath the year folders are projects themselves (e.g., "Christmas at Whistler"). For larger projects (e.g., "Summer in Italy"), I create albums underneath (e.g., "Rome", "Florence"). I always set city, state/province (where applicable), and country EXIF tags during import.

 

[HooHar]

Is there any advantage in having nested folders from the file structure / speed of searching / file safety perspective.

e.g. Does it slow searches down if you have say 10,000 large 20Mb images all in the same folder (say PICTURES/RAWS/...)

 

[eddx]

I use Lightroom - its the way forward. I have tried using Apple's Aperture and before Lightroom I used the normal file structure.

Now I just put them in titled folders in a folder entitled 2008. Previous years works are in other years folders.

Try Lightroom for a month and I am sure you will love it.