Hi all, just wondering what system everyone has for organising their photos on their PC. I take all sorts of photos, nature, family, friends, outings etc etc and right now I am just organising by date but that makes it hard to find anything. I'm getting quite overwhelmed with the amount of photos I've taken since starting the project.
Up until recently I had individual folders by subject, so for an example a folder per person of our family, then subfolders for ages (for the kids). But that is getting really super hard to sort out when I'm taking this volume of photos. So now everything is getting biffed into dated folders, and I have photos all over the place! Obviously the collection is growing by the day!
Do you have a "portfolio" folder where you put your favourite shots? I was wondering about doing this. Help me to sort out this mess of photos so that it's really easy to sort through and access photos when I need them!
I have my photos in daily folders labelled (year-month-day - subject).. At the end of each month i put all folders from that in its own month folder, labelled (year-month) then those folders go into a yearly folder labeeld (year).. It works for me and looks quite neat... It prob doesnt work for everyone xx
lol, i had this problem and for this reason i have gone over to Lightroom as it seems to be what a lot of professional photographers use. im still finding my way with it but have to say that so far im most impressed, and finding photos is so easy as you have so many ways of finding them. And you can tailor it to your way of working.. i realise that probably made no sense at all... :-)
I use Apple Aperture on my MacBook Pro. I import photos into the Aperure library into projects with names of the form YYYY-MM-DD_DescriptiveText, where "DescriptiveText" is some brief summary of where/who/what is in those photos. I can then also tag people and geo-tag places within the photos.
On a PC I used exactly the same strategy but copied photos off the camera into folders using exactly the sdame naming convention.
I have folders for each year since I started taking photos with a digital camera. Then after that I started sorting by month too, so each folder has 12 more folders within our, one for each month. Files are named camera model-year-xxxx
I sort them all by date. year > month> and then the individual dates with what I was photographing. But to make it a little simpler I have made a separate folder for my 365 images and a folder for 365 fillers waiting to be used and I have a separate folder containing images being used for my website. This way, the things I attend to often are easy to find!
I also started using Lightroom last year and love it.
I store the files in folders for years with sub-folders for months. I rename images from dscxxx to the date and time shot. Lightroom then allows you to tag images, create collections as well as its non-destructive editing.
Picasa (from Google) is a free application which gives some of these features.
I do what @mrsbaldy does - each day and then into a month folder, and it's getting that I can't find things when I want them, especially when i'm looking for shots of family members. I have a folder of each shot I've posted on 365, so they're able to be found easily for an eventual book, but I need a better system!!
I make a new folder each month to put my day to day photos (eg 5 photos of a mushroom) in and I put a copy of the photos from my project into their own folder - this made it easier at the end of the year when I made my video http://365project.org/monika64/365/2013-01-11
I also have folders for family events, friends and holidays etc.
I have a folder per year, then inside that I have a description of the folder with a date (e.g. London Zoo, October 2011). I also recently started learning how to tag photos in Lightroom, so I've been doing that with all my new photos, and intend to go back and do my old ones at some point. Fingers crossed it will eventually be nice and easy!
I also have a separate folder inside each year where I have a copy of all my 365 photos. Makes it a lot easier for upload and to tell where I am.
Generally I file mine by date but now, when I add my watermark to my chosen photos I save them in a seperate '365' folder - both a watermarked and a non-watermarked copy. That way I have my 'best' shots in one place and they're easier to find.
I'm terrible at organizing. I dump my full CF cards in directories like card1, card2, temp1, 2 etc. From time to time I can find the time and motivation to start organizing. Then I have the following tree structure: year-month-occasion/subject. A few years ago I also tagged every picture, using a program called Ulead Explorer. Due to the large amount of pictures I now generate and the fact that programs, no matter which one you use, will always become obsolete at one point, I've given up tagging. I found that making enough occasion/subject directories is enough to be able to find my pictures back.
I store mine by 365jan, 365feb, but never on my computer. All my files are on an external hard drive, and I will copy my images to work on my computer. Heaven forbid you have a failure, you will lose (and many have here in the last few months) all of your work. COPY EVERYTHING SOMEWHERE ELSE.@ayrinthelife
I simply use folders... I have one folder for all my photos... and then sub-divide this into folders like; Animals; Family; Scenery; then I divide those folders even more specifically... for example: my "Animals" folder will have, Pets; Birds; Wildlife; and Farm Animals... and I get even more particular... under pets, I will have folder for each one of our pets... under birds, I have a folder for all the various birds I have ever captured (hehe... and a spare folder for not-yet-identified birds!!!).
This might sound complicated... but for me it works really well!!! :)
I do the same as Katie. Good luck in organizing your project. It can get very time consuming, that's for sure and that's what I'm trying to do now before my Year Two is up in April. Whew!
Thank you all so much for your comments. I think date-occasion-subject is going to be the way for me, renaming each picture with this format so I can just use the search function if I want to find something specific. Then in each folder have a "finals" folder that I pull out and edit.
Now I just need to go back through my thousands and thousands of pictures and change them all to that format....any volunteers want to do that for me?
What do you do with photos on your computer that are from different sources, and their 'creation date' has changed due to having transferred them from other computers?
I don't. I have them on my laptop, desktop, work computer, random scattered thumb drives, external hard drives, and going back in time CD's. In theory I have the monthly folder thing going on but that doesn't quite work.
This weekend I finally forced myself to open that Organizer program that came with Photoshop Elements to attemp to inject some order into the madness.
I've seen...things, words, whispered rumors really about this Lightroom. Is it really better than Organizer? Enough better to pay actual money for?
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2012\2012-01
2012\2012-02
2012\2012-03
etc
Then they are tagged in photoshop for broad subjects
Holidays
Animals
Family
365Project
etc
Also rated or labelled in photoshop for favourites (1 to 5 * etc)
Using a combination of these I can find almost any of them based on date, subject, my own opinion of them, or a combination of these.
On a PC I used exactly the same strategy but copied photos off the camera into folders using exactly the sdame naming convention.
I store the files in folders for years with sub-folders for months. I rename images from dscxxx to the date and time shot. Lightroom then allows you to tag images, create collections as well as its non-destructive editing.
Picasa (from Google) is a free application which gives some of these features.
I also have folders for family events, friends and holidays etc.
I also have a separate folder inside each year where I have a copy of all my 365 photos. Makes it a lot easier for upload and to tell where I am.
This might sound complicated... but for me it works really well!!! :)
Now I just need to go back through my thousands and thousands of pictures and change them all to that format....any volunteers want to do that for me?
This weekend I finally forced myself to open that Organizer program that came with Photoshop Elements to attemp to inject some order into the madness.
I've seen...things, words, whispered rumors really about this Lightroom. Is it really better than Organizer? Enough better to pay actual money for?