I'm sure this has been discussed a million-gazillion times before, but...
How do you file your photos?
I usually sort them in to categories, eg. portraits, flower, spiders, etc.
It can be time consuming though, and have recently wondered if just leaving them in their dated folders (in a main folder for each month) would be better.
I store my photos predominatley by location name. If I have visited the area more than once, I will have sub folders under that location which are date related. Then I have a main 365 collection folder, with sub folders ie 365 (for photos i post), 'And Then Some' (the name of my second album on here), Originals (holding the original photos of any images that were cropped or processed), Spares; which has a sub folders called Ghosts, Water, Flowers etc.. If I am workign on a main theme, ie water, all of my water shots will then be sub filed to specific types.
I am a bit OCD with my filing system.. Even worse with my music lol
Oh, erm, well, I used to be really well organized but that's gone out the window. The 365 ones go into a 365 folder with the number of the photo and date but anything else just goes straight to my very cluttered desktop, which I clear maybe once a week. Of course by 'clear' I mean chuck into New Folder :p
I have all my 365 photos in one folder, with two folders in that folder for my other two albums. Otherwise, all my other shots, go on my portable hard drive. I have folders by year, then in each folder, folders for each month. I also have separate folders on my computer for things like holidays, my daughter [also by month], birthdays, weddings, etc. I used to do it differently, but that's what works for me.
I have a seperate folder on my desktop for my 365 shots.
My other pics are neatly filed away in folders by year, month and day. Besides that I have tagged almost all of my photos by location and subject. I'm a bit of a structopath :)
Mine are all organised by activity or area. Some have sub-categories, such as my "Scotland April 2011" having sub-folders for the Wallace monument or Edinburgh zoo. I also have an album for 365, with all of those separated into months, then another folder for 365 randoms, again separated into months. I also have albums for the gerbils, another for my cat and a 3rd for my hamsters. Some activities have lots of sub-folders, such as cricket 2011 having sub-folders for each match. I can get a bit funny about how I organise folders - my bf always complains!
That's the other things I struggle with / forget - to keep the original photos unedited. I'm always in such a hurry to get to them and crop (about the only real editing I do) that I forget to keep an original...
Sounds like 'by date' is the predominant method so far too.
Usually I store the original NEFS in a subfolder called OrgNefs. So that if I ever need to go back to the original, or if I clean out some not so spectacular jpg's, I could still recreate them from the NEFS, and the folder with photos looks clear and to the point.
I find that I can browse very quickly with picasa or just explorer to get to photos I want.
I file by year_month > 2011_05
Then by subject > Family, [Special Event title, if needed] or Other, etc
Then inside each folder, by date > 5/9, 5/10, etc
I can browse through quickly using Photoshop or Bridge.
I've been using this method since 2005!
I started out mostly doing travel photography and so files were given place names and then, if I went to the same place more than once, I would add the year to the sub-files.
I then filed by subject titles of the things I am interested in: flowers, horses, swans etc. Again, these have sub-file by say, species, or whatever grouping would best aid retrieval.
365 has it's own folder for when my photography wasn't subject focussed as it is now. I have a file for each year, subfiles for months and subfiles for weeks. I will filter all these into subject files, though I might keep a specific 365 file of all those I uploaded.
My computer is struggling with so many photos and keeps crashing so I need to have a culling session. I am sure a lot of my earlier photos will be deemed rubbish now.
@miranda - have you considered getting an external hard drive and saving to that? i have two external hard drives one for back up and then another a memory book where i store files of photos that are no longer on my harddrive -- i use lightroom and can easily access the memory book from there -- i shoot only in raw which means i'm shooting close to a gb a day some i had to look for alternate ways to store my photo files..
I used to have everything organized on an external harddrive by year, then by what the event/subject was: boat outing, family dog, flowers, etc. But that all fell apart when I started this project! Haha. I couldn't keep up with the amount of photos coming in so I just shoved them all onto the drive with no rhyme or reason. I didn't make time to organize or back up the files and unfortunately it crashed. I have to wait til payday to buy a new drive. For now I am transferring all of my pictures to an 8GB SD card. I have 3 copies of every photo. The original, the edit w/o watermark, the edit w/ watermark. They are each kept in a separate folder, Then they are all organized by what they are: flower, dog, beach, etc.
I organize mine by date...it would be too confusing otherwise, but I do have other folders for events like Christmas 2010 or, sometimes if I'm making a project, like a calendar or something, I'll copy the originals and put them in a separate folder to stay organized. :)
@cfrantz That sounds like great advice. I am going to cut and paste and follow that up. I was thinking of getting an apple mac (big cost) and putting all pics there, but i will still probably need to keep these separately. Thanks for very helpful advice.
@kcphotography Those files with and without a water mark, I realised what an issue this was when it comes to selling. Need to address that one too. I wasn't expecting to go in that direction, but I have had the pictures editor of a reputable news editor offering to take my pics, so I am going bundle my lack of confidence out of the way and follow that up with other things. You reminded me of something I need to do urgently.
@tashachawner It is pretty simple as long as you stick with it. I'm starting mine over so its easier for me, but if I can ever recover my drive I will have A TON of organizing to do!!
Tweets ahoy!
Join the Group
Pin With Me
I am a bit OCD with my filing system.. Even worse with my music lol
@tashachawner
My other pics are neatly filed away in folders by year, month and day. Besides that I have tagged almost all of my photos by location and subject. I'm a bit of a structopath :)
Sounds like 'by date' is the predominant method so far too.
I export my 365 project pictures from Lightroom into a folder on my Mac to be uploaded, and they are named in this format -
YYYY-MM-DD-description
So, if I took a photo today, of a chimpanzee, I'd export it from Lightroom with the file name -
2011-05-20-chimp
Photoarchive\Year\MM YY - subject\yyyy-mm-dd-hh-ss-originalfilename.jpg
Usually I store the original NEFS in a subfolder called OrgNefs. So that if I ever need to go back to the original, or if I clean out some not so spectacular jpg's, I could still recreate them from the NEFS, and the folder with photos looks clear and to the point.
I find that I can browse very quickly with picasa or just explorer to get to photos I want.
Then by subject > Family, [Special Event title, if needed] or Other, etc
Then inside each folder, by date > 5/9, 5/10, etc
I can browse through quickly using Photoshop or Bridge.
I've been using this method since 2005!
I then filed by subject titles of the things I am interested in: flowers, horses, swans etc. Again, these have sub-file by say, species, or whatever grouping would best aid retrieval.
365 has it's own folder for when my photography wasn't subject focussed as it is now. I have a file for each year, subfiles for months and subfiles for weeks. I will filter all these into subject files, though I might keep a specific 365 file of all those I uploaded.
My computer is struggling with so many photos and keeps crashing so I need to have a culling session. I am sure a lot of my earlier photos will be deemed rubbish now.