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I'm just curious about how you organise your photos. I've just started organising my 30,000+ photos and keywording them for easy search.

Also, i find that it will be in EXIF/metadata and so these keywords would be transferred to my online gallery for general public search.

It is time consuming doing all my photos at once, but save me for later troubles when my database accelerates in its expansion.

I'm terrible at all that stuff.

Photos go in a folder with a date ... and that's it!

If I need to find something, I just scroll through thumbnails :p

This is a huge issue for me as a newcomer to digital. I already have gazillions of photos and finding them is becoming increasingly difficult. My answer so far has been lots of culling and careful naming of folders but I'd love to hear how others deal with this problem.

Stubbsy's done some great work on this .... have you looked at his articles in Chimp?

As well as that ... I place my work into folders that are named for their date, subdivided by year and month. Finally they're named for the event/function/whatever it is that was shot.


A hint ...

when naming folders, start with the full year, followed by a two digit numeric month, followed (where applicable) by the two digit numeric day.

Thus you might have a folder structure like ...


200603
20060305
20060309
20060310
200604
20060402 - Fred's wedding
20060404 - Bill's divorce
20060411
200605
20060515
20060517
20060518

This sort of structure aids the sorting, at the folder level - into chronological order.

Thanks for that hint re dating. Of course I've been putting the date in DDMMYY order but this is a much better idea.

My method for storing unprocessed images is much the same as the one mentioned by Gary. I have a folder/directory for each month:

200705
200706
200707

and the files straight from the camera go there. If I do a dive trip where I'm taking 300-500 photographs per day, I then create a subdirectory for each day:

200705
-27
-28
-29
-30
-31

The bulk of my processed images end up in the same folder on my PC, and I use the file name of each image to provide the information I need. As the bulk of my photographs are of organisms, I usually identify the organism first and that is the first part of the file name. The second part will be the location and year. For example, a photograph of a Herald's angelfish, Centropyge heraldi, shot at Pixie's Pinnacle this year would have the file name C_heraldi_Pixies07.jpg. If I took a second photograph of the same species at the same location, it would be C_heraldi_Pixies07-2.jpg. Additionally, I store the original file name in the EXIF of the processed image, e.g. DSC_9325, which makes it easy to find it if I want to process the image again.

Picasa 2 lets you do some searching on file names and some EXIF info, but for some reason it excludes "Image Description" which is a real pain.

My process is as follows:

I have categorised my Photos main directory into about 7 sub-directories, such as "Family & Friends", "Trips & Events", "Coffee", "Cricket", etc.
When I download a card, I first burn it to CD with a sub-directory name the same as will be used for saving on the laptop.
I then move the files from the CF to the created sub-directory on the PC.

So, if I have a bunch of photos of my son taken over the last few days, I will place them in a directory such as "Family & Friends/Stewie*/Alexander 5".

Whilst Gary's dating protocol makes sense, I personally find that dates are not always appropriate, although using the YYYYMM format (not going to days) might be a great idea.

I have to go through and keyword all my files.

* Don't ask.

I am not sure if you have tried out some software like lightroom.

I use it to import and update all my photo's with keywords.
Allot of the time I can just tag them on import and this is sufficient.

I too have been going through my older photo's (Pre Lightroom) and updating their keywords I do 1000 or so in a sitting and the fact that lightroom has recently used keywords at the touch of a button makes life easier.

I am not sure if I have said Lightroom enough.
Lightroom

There we go that is enough.

There is a great deal of software that will do this for you, but I like ... (the aforementioned software published by Adobe)

ATJ wrote:My method for storing unprocessed images is much the same as the one mentioned by Gary. I have a folder/directory for each month:
.

again i'm similar,

i have some ridiculous amount of photos across a few computers, dating back to 2001 (coolpix 995 days... that camera served me welL!). there would probably be anywhere from 50 - 100,000 images. how many of those are good, is another question.

i have a folder for each year, ie

2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
etc

and then a folder for each month

ie
march
feb
may

and then a folder for the date

so the path is a little something like this

2007/May/1/DSCN1.NEF

and if there is a specific event i will do the date and then a short description in the folder name.

ie 1-Milo Event.

i think my system is a little inadequate, i often spend time searching for THAT SHOOT but in the end it works for me... and i dont have enough time to re-sort everything.

jamesw wrote:and then a folder for each month

ie
march
feb
may

and then a folder for the date

so the path is a little something like this

2007/May/1/DSCN1.NEF

The problem with using text-based stuff like month names, etc is that it doesn't lend itself to any form of chronolgical sorting: April comes before August comes before January, which comes after December.


Going with zero-filled numbers addresses the problem.

gstark wrote:

jamesw wrote:and then a folder for each month

ie
march
feb
may

and then a folder for the date

so the path is a little something like this

2007/May/1/DSCN1.NEF

The problem with using text-based stuff like month names, etc is that it doesn't lend itself to any form of chronolgical sorting: April comes before August comes before January, which comes after December.


Going with zero-filled numbers addresses the problem.

yep your right on.

i might start doing that 08 onwards.

What's the advantage in having separate folders for each month?

I already use the yyyy-mm-dd naming convention, but I'm honestly struggling to see how that's enhanced at all by splitting the months?

It seems to me like you just need to work through clicks for the same thing ... or am I missing something painfully obvious?

young_einstein wrote:It seems to me like you just need to work through clicks for the same thing ... or am I missing something painfully obvious?

Possibly.

It's a lot quicker to drill down to a particular year and month when you don't have several hundred days getting in the way of them.

You say more clicks? Sorry, but it's only one extra to drill down to the day level, but the reality is that, as you shoot more and more, and the number of day level folders increases, you will actually have a lot less chaff to sift through as you will not be looking to get your February, March, April and May folders (there could be up to 120+ of them, remember) out of the way when you're looking for your June work.

Damn you Gary. yes please read my two articles on iMatch in the last two issues of Chimp. A third article (and possibly a fourth) are in the pipeline.

gstark wrote:Possibly.

It's a lot quicker to drill down to a particular year and month when you don't have several hundred days getting in the way of them.

Find the year <click> find the month <click> find the day <click>

I have to admit, I really don't see a lot of appeal in it.

You say more clicks? Sorry, but it's only one extra to drill down to the day level, but the reality is that, as you shoot more and more, and the number of day level folders increases, you will actually have a lot less chaff to sift through as you will not be looking to get your February, March, April and May folders (there could be up to 120+ of them, remember) out of the way when you're looking for your June work.

I don't even bother sorting them into months, let alone days.



I really find it a lot easier to just scroll to a particular date than having to click through multiple folders to get there!

I do mine like the screenshot above YYYY-MM-DD but when culled collapse it just to the month level when I archive them. I don't take enough to drill down by day.

Here is a screenshot of how my photos are organised.

Top right are my folders and it is set to "Name" (date)

Then keyword every photos according to subject.

Every folders contain subfolders like "Low Resolution" "Full Resolution" and so on.



It's not the best form of organising, but it does reduce my time searching for photos.

young_einstein wrote:

gstark wrote:Possibly.

It's a lot quicker to drill down to a particular year and month when you don't have several hundred days getting in the way of them.

Find the year <click> find the month <click> find the day <click>

Please pay attention. For the slow learners.

Please tell me where you have your "Find the year <click> find the month <click> find the day <click>" I challenge you to find that within my posgt.

Again ... One extra click, and no chaff!

I have to admit, I really don't see a lot of appeal in it.

And that bothers me not at all.

You say more clicks? Sorry, but it's only one extra to drill down to the day level, but the reality is that, as you shoot more and more, and the number of day level folders increases, you will actually have a lot less chaff to sift through as you will not be looking to get your February, March, April and May folders (there could be up to 120+ of them, remember) out of the way when you're looking for your June work.

I don't even bother sorting them into months, let alone days.

I wonder what that says to me ....