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How many photos do you name or caption
- Thread starter MacNut
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I name mine at the same time I cull out the junk. I use software to name them with sequential number suffixes based on some logical criterion such as location, event, etc. I then put them into a dedicated folder. I will also organize those folders based on other criteria. For instance, I have one folder for the city I live in and use that to hold the subfolders for all of the sites I have shot. I do that before any processing. If I were starting out fresh I would use a DAM program to rely on tags rather than my memory to remember where some images are.
Zero until some receiver (magazine, contest,..etc.) requires me to name it.
I am really bad about naming or tagging my photos. They just all go in a year folder. I guess that’s why apps like Google Photos or Apple Photos use AI to do a lot of that for you now. I’m a bit impressed that Apple Photos can recognize my kids as they grow up. I guess the algorithm takes into account the year, as human development is fairly predictable. Still, it’s not perfect, but it is still doing a lot of the work for me.
Since most of my photos are taken with iPhone, there’s a lot of data already available as part of the metadata for individual pictures.
I just use albums and dump all the relevant pictures within it. Sometimes the same pictures can be under multiple albums but since the pictures aren’t getting duplicated, it’s really helpful to save space but also tag
as necessary. I don’t name individual pictures. That’s way too much effort for my busy lifestyle. 
I just use albums and dump all the relevant pictures within it. Sometimes the same pictures can be under multiple albums but since the pictures aren’t getting duplicated, it’s really helpful to save space but also tag
as necessary. I don’t name individual pictures. That’s way too much effort for my busy lifestyle. 
I use keywords/tags quite a bit but in general, I don't name or caption any images except for those I happen to put up on Flickr/SmugMug/whatever. I do that at a low enough rate that it's not onerous.
This is my approach. End of the year is the great cull. Once I have trashed everything that I know I don't want, then I use Graphic Converter to rename and index originals in sequence. Typically MMDDYY_001 and up, GC grabs the date from the EXIF file.
Then I go through and pick the very best from the year. These images get the full editing treatment, are reduced in size, and are 'saved as' to a different folder to create Preview Slideshows. Also posted to DropBox which allows me to share with friends and family. Sometimes I also separate out certain trips or occasions into stand alone slideshows. Either way naming convention is YY_Index#Name and is applied when I do the 'Save As'. The year and Index number match the digital original, which allows me to easily find the digital original should I want to rework it for any reason. The name typically reflects the subject. For example 2004 which I recently completed had 280 images of which 40 made it to the slideshow folder. Another smaller slide folder for my trip to the US in November of that year.
At the moment I am working on the slideshow aspect and have several more years to go on these.
Hopefully it goes without saying that everything is redundantly backed up locally and statically, before I embark on the culling or editing process. A back up that auto updates is your worst enemy for this process.
Anyways what it comes down to is what works for you. Many find keywords or tags useful, but my own experience was that they often had to be read by the app that applied them, so I don't bother. No idea if that has changed in the past 7 or 8 years, the comment just reflects my early experiments with this. Example Adobe Bridge tags were not read in iPhoto and vice versa.
Then I go through and pick the very best from the year. These images get the full editing treatment, are reduced in size, and are 'saved as' to a different folder to create Preview Slideshows. Also posted to DropBox which allows me to share with friends and family. Sometimes I also separate out certain trips or occasions into stand alone slideshows. Either way naming convention is YY_Index#Name and is applied when I do the 'Save As'. The year and Index number match the digital original, which allows me to easily find the digital original should I want to rework it for any reason. The name typically reflects the subject. For example 2004 which I recently completed had 280 images of which 40 made it to the slideshow folder. Another smaller slide folder for my trip to the US in November of that year.
At the moment I am working on the slideshow aspect and have several more years to go on these.
Hopefully it goes without saying that everything is redundantly backed up locally and statically, before I embark on the culling or editing process. A back up that auto updates is your worst enemy for this process.
Anyways what it comes down to is what works for you. Many find keywords or tags useful, but my own experience was that they often had to be read by the app that applied them, so I don't bother. No idea if that has changed in the past 7 or 8 years, the comment just reflects my early experiments with this. Example Adobe Bridge tags were not read in iPhoto and vice versa.
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What problem are you trying to solve? If it is how to find images then naming and captioning them is only one step, and probably the least useful for finding images. Keywording is key if you want to be able to find the image in a large collection, along with a good cataloging program.
I name all my images when I ingest them, with a standard naming convention: myname_date_####. So far, this has always given me a unique name.
I also keyword all the images I save. Most modern programs can read the keywords these days. It does take some discipline, but it pays off when I try to find an image. I have over 100K images (I'm old and have been doing this a long time).
I name all my images when I ingest them, with a standard naming convention: myname_date_####. So far, this has always given me a unique name.
I also keyword all the images I save. Most modern programs can read the keywords these days. It does take some discipline, but it pays off when I try to find an image. I have over 100K images (I'm old and have been doing this a long time).
This would never work for me.
I cull when I bring the images into my computer. Waiting until the end of year would have me gong through through thousands of images. Not a task I would look forward to.
All of my backups are automatic. Time Machine, Chronosync, and Backblaze all happen without any intervention on my part. This is what computers are good at, repetitive tasks, and I am happy to let them do it.
I don’t rename them at all.
Import into LR.
Add global keywords in import.
First cull.
Second cull.
Add additional specific keywords.
Import into LR.
Add global keywords in import.
First cull.
Second cull.
Add additional specific keywords.
I rename only images which I am editing and plan to share online here or somewhere else, and I give each image a sort of meaningful name so that later I can find it again if need be. After a while it can be tricky to come with an interesting, descriptive and meaningful name, especially for some abstract macro thing I've done..... I have tried doing the keywording thing which is possible in DXO PhotoLab 4 but surprisingly enough, it just doesn't work well for me, since often I'm in a hurry to edit and share something and don't want to take the time to fiddle with keywords. Essentially I have my own hierarchical structure, more or less, and cataloging system.
Unedited RAW images are retained in folders by date and if the shooting session were pretty much all around the same subject, I add that information as well. Example: 2021 RAW Images / February / "02/28/2021 Hooded Mergansers and Geese in the Rain". A specific edited image from that (imaginary) shoot might be called "Male and Female Hoodies Playing in the Rain" and it goes into a folder named, aptly enough, "Edited Images" within the folder for the overall year and the month within that year. Today being the last day of February, if I actually do shoot and edit anything today, it'll go into that folder and then I'll wrap it up, start a new folder for March 2021.
Sometimes I go back later to the RAW files and look through them again and find a few more images to process, and other times I don't, so they tend to pile up until I get around to culling them, which I really should do prior to even thinking about editing anything.
Unedited RAW images are retained in folders by date and if the shooting session were pretty much all around the same subject, I add that information as well. Example: 2021 RAW Images / February / "02/28/2021 Hooded Mergansers and Geese in the Rain". A specific edited image from that (imaginary) shoot might be called "Male and Female Hoodies Playing in the Rain" and it goes into a folder named, aptly enough, "Edited Images" within the folder for the overall year and the month within that year. Today being the last day of February, if I actually do shoot and edit anything today, it'll go into that folder and then I'll wrap it up, start a new folder for March 2021.
Sometimes I go back later to the RAW files and look through them again and find a few more images to process, and other times I don't, so they tend to pile up until I get around to culling them, which I really should do prior to even thinking about editing anything.
I don't know what the OP is renaming.
Some assume it's file names. Others seem to be talking about titles, an IPTC tag. They're different. Since the OP was talking about captioning as well, I assumed it was titles. I usually only add those when necessary, and to the final image. I might have a dozen shots of the same subject, so it doesn't seem efficient to name them all.
I never rename files. Never had a reason to, unless someone who wants copies requires some sort of name.
Some assume it's file names. Others seem to be talking about titles, an IPTC tag. They're different. Since the OP was talking about captioning as well, I assumed it was titles. I usually only add those when necessary, and to the final image. I might have a dozen shots of the same subject, so it doesn't seem efficient to name them all.
I never rename files. Never had a reason to, unless someone who wants copies requires some sort of name.
With our new Photo Association game, this is really biting me now -- the years during which I never bothered to caption/label/title an edited image or set up and use keywords and a DAM system. I do have my folders labeled now, even the old ones, so that at least I can open one up and hopefully find that image that I vaguely recall having shot lo these many moons ago, but it would have been so much simpler had I also titled the actual image file as well!
It has been only fairly recently than I've gotten my act together and properly labeled images as well as overall folders and I think it will pay off in the end. However, yes, at times it can be challenging, especially where there are several images of the same subject; in that case I have to either for example, use "glass vase 1," "glass vase 2", etc., or if it's a subject which is alive and moving and doing something I can use more specific titles such as "Alfred standing on pier," "Alfred Gazing into the Distance," "Alfred Headshot"...... Some abstract images are not so easy to define and in those cases I do resort to "Abstract 1," "Abstract 2".....
It has been only fairly recently than I've gotten my act together and properly labeled images as well as overall folders and I think it will pay off in the end. However, yes, at times it can be challenging, especially where there are several images of the same subject; in that case I have to either for example, use "glass vase 1," "glass vase 2", etc., or if it's a subject which is alive and moving and doing something I can use more specific titles such as "Alfred standing on pier," "Alfred Gazing into the Distance," "Alfred Headshot"...... Some abstract images are not so easy to define and in those cases I do resort to "Abstract 1," "Abstract 2".....
This is my problem really. Everything is either by date or in sequential order. So I have to try to remember when I took it.
Tagging is more useful in naming.
In the years I've been involved in digital photography, the advent of geotagging is perhaps the most useful. For this reason itself, a modern photo library/image management application is more useful than the hierarchical filesystems I relied on twenty years ago.
Exhibit A: let's say I visited Paris in April 2004, September 2012, June 2013, and January 2018. I'd have to remember exactly when I visited if I used a date-based hierarchical filing system. July 2013? Nope, I was in Munich. November 2017? Nope, in San Diego. If I consult an image management system that understands geotagging, all I have to do is surf over to Paris in the map.
This is especially useful for local landmarks that I visit extremely frequently. There are probably nearly 1000 photos I've taken at a particular county park within a 30 minute drive from my place. There is absolutely no way I can remember every single dawn/dusk/whatever when I was there.
I discovered this about 17-18 years ago. At the time I had a P&S digital camera that naturally did not geotag photos in that era. However, when I uploaded a batch, I could drag the images onto Flickr's map. It was manual geotagging but it got the job done.
In the years I've been involved in digital photography, the advent of geotagging is perhaps the most useful. For this reason itself, a modern photo library/image management application is more useful than the hierarchical filesystems I relied on twenty years ago.
Exhibit A: let's say I visited Paris in April 2004, September 2012, June 2013, and January 2018. I'd have to remember exactly when I visited if I used a date-based hierarchical filing system. July 2013? Nope, I was in Munich. November 2017? Nope, in San Diego. If I consult an image management system that understands geotagging, all I have to do is surf over to Paris in the map.
This is especially useful for local landmarks that I visit extremely frequently. There are probably nearly 1000 photos I've taken at a particular county park within a 30 minute drive from my place. There is absolutely no way I can remember every single dawn/dusk/whatever when I was there.
I discovered this about 17-18 years ago. At the time I had a P&S digital camera that naturally did not geotag photos in that era. However, when I uploaded a batch, I could drag the images onto Flickr's map. It was manual geotagging but it got the job done.
As a Lightroom user, you have a superb tool for keywording. People approach keywording differently. I have 9 keywords to define broad genre like nature or food, etc. Ratings and sorts by capture date get me the rest of the way there. I rate first, keyword only 4’s and above. It’s pretty simple.
Admittedly I’m a rank amateur. I cull mercilessly, 90%+ and keep my maintenance requirements low. If you’re a pro, you may not be as fortunate.
I don't use Lightroom, I use DXO PhotoLab 4. When I first began using it with version 3, I had all the best intentions of doing the keyword thing, as they provide the opportunity to do that.....but somehow that fell by the wayside and so I gave up. It's ironic, really, since I am a retired librarian and at one time one of my jobs was as a cataloguer! (Never did like it, though -- I much preferred providing reference services to the public!). So it's not as though I don't know how to effectively use strategic keywords and such. Actually I have a sort of hierarchical structure of my own, somewhat loosely developed DAM and that has worked for my older archives to a certain extent, but I haven't maintained that with the newer material that I have shot over the last two or three years.
I rarely leave processed prints in the native camera generated DSC____ file name. As an export of Lightroom I change the name in the process, but all during the shoot have the same name with sequence numbers, and typically are exported to a folder with the same name. For reduced size on a Lightroom export will have "the name - 1500px - sequence.
However as I look at selling a print, it really makes little difference as most order print only. However some specialties are "photographer signed" and "limited edition" that have the standard format of "Edition number" on left, Name/Title centered, and signature on right. While I could name something unimaginative like "Central Park" or come up with some foo-foo nonsense name, I have wondered about giving the person purchasing the print the option to have a name of their choosing on the print. What do you think?
However as I look at selling a print, it really makes little difference as most order print only. However some specialties are "photographer signed" and "limited edition" that have the standard format of "Edition number" on left, Name/Title centered, and signature on right. While I could name something unimaginative like "Central Park" or come up with some foo-foo nonsense name, I have wondered about giving the person purchasing the print the option to have a name of their choosing on the print. What do you think?
Zero. I have a folder structure only. Century/Decade/Year/Month/Date (when photo was taken)
No, nothing. Don't know how to do that with +100K images without going through them all, one by one. Back in the early 90's there was me, a flat bed scanner and an old Compaq (I think) 486 with some advanced Twain driver if i do remember correctly
