mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Storing keyword info implies a catalog. If your catalog gets corrupt how will you differentiate your photos? If you give photos to others how will they know, which is which? I personally give all the images in a particular folder the same name with a number appended. For instance, in the folder, "2014-04-22 Washington DC - Air & Space" all the images would be in the format "14-04-22 Washington DC - Air and Space 1.cr2. Catalog or no catalog, search terms or no search terms, keywords or no keywords, old software a change in software, or no software at all, I will always know what the photos in that folder represent. Even if a photo is later stored in a different folder, I'll still know what it repesents. In my opinion after storing close to 35,000 raw images, not have a consistent naming system is a risk I'm not willing to take. Even just using a computers file manager will allow me to find and manage images.

SueMac Loc: Box Elder, SD

I rename the photos because it makes sense to me. I've been doing digital photos since 1999 and have always renamed them. Also in the beginning I didn't use keywords. Once the library grew, I started keywording.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

Oknoder Loc: Western North Dakota

If using optical disks they can last at least ten yrs if store in dark, dry and cool environment.

smith934 Loc: Huntsville, Alabama

You might give PSE a try. The Organizer is easy to use and You can tag your pictures (RAW and JPEG) anyway you wish and with as many tags as you wish, as you create the tags. Mine is set up to store pictures in date folders, but the tags are searchable across all date folders. For example, you could store a picture of a holiday by date and tag it with location, people in the scene, etc. Works pretty well. That said I'm making the transition to LR5

Violameister Loc: michigan

We travel extensively, and 90% or more of my photos are taken while traveling. I store them by trip destination and date. Other pics are stored by subject matter: "animals" and if there are lots of woodchuck pics I make a woodchuck folder. Also "family", "House remodeling" "garden", etc. If there is a pic of granddaughter and woodchuck together, I file it under "family, granddaughter" since that is clearly what I am most likely to be looking for.

I do not have the patience to label or mark every image so I just leave them as the camera numbers them. The date taken is always there as well.

On trips I store all images on both laptop hard drive, and USB hard drive. I would use the cloud, but most hotel links are pretty slow.

Once at home, I immediately burn all images to optical disk. Once my travel pics are organized into coherent shows, I make a backup of those files that are used on optical disk as well as the finished show. I keep about a year of files on my editing computer, as well so I can go back and do more work if needed. I also keep a current backup of my hard drive off site.

Reinaldokool Loc: San Rafael, CA

I always shoot RAW. Store that in a double backup. I don't have any fancy system, but I do give every shot a meaningful name and store shoots in a folder tree. I anticipate that RAW will be supported longer than I am, but to be safe, one of my backup trees holds TIFF files. TIFF has been around longer and can be lossless.

Problem with JPEG is that it throws away a lot of the information. A bit thrown away is a bit lost forever.

JerrysPhotos Loc: Arkansas

Thanks for taking the time to explain this to me......

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Keep in mind, when importing into Lightroom, the process is pretty automated. I give LR the stem of the file name and Lightroom renames the images on import and appends a sequence number to each image. It takes me just a few seconds to set it up during import. I don't rename each file individually, that would take forever.

Violameister Loc: michigan

True, but setting tags "animals, granddaughter, zoo, kangaroo," for every pic does take forever.

Question: if all new pics are kept in a folder called, say, "city tour" and the pics keep their camera sequence number, how is that less useful than when LR labels each pic "city tour" and appends a sequence number?

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

First, I rarely put in keywords because I agree it can take forever. In answer to your question, by naming the files, each one stands on its own regardless of where it is located. I might want to share a number of pictures with someone else or just compile and copy them to a new location where the name of the original folder is no longer relevant. I have also inadvertently moved files around and would never be able to find them without a meaningful name. Additionally, I've also purged large numbers of images and later realized I deleted something I wanted. Without a meaningful file name finding it would be a more arduous task. Folders can also be renamed, sometime in error. To my mind its safe, effective and easy and ensures I don't have to ever wonder about the general subject of IMG_9882.

dat2ra Loc: Sacramento

OK, one more, just to muddy the waters. My folder system goes like this: My Photos - 2014 - POR (portraits) EVNT (event), LOC (location), SUB (subject), and MISC. Then comes a subject code, the date and shoot title. So, Biff and Maybelle's wedding would be in folder '14 EVNT wdg 6-02 Biff and Maybelle

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

I shoot everything in RAW now but that's so I can edit extensively, reverse edits if need be, and then finally I change them to something else - depending on what I'm shooting. Sometimes it's RAW run through Lightroom or Photoshop's ACR to work them over then converted to 16-bit TIFF files that get further edited in Photoshop or Photomatix or whatever. The final step is converting to JPGs that everybody can see or print.

After I've saved up a ton of RAW files for six months and I know I'm 99% sure I'm never going to use them again, I go through all the folders and get rid of the RAW files for the same reason many people throw away or sell about 1/2 of their belongings when they move. If you haven't used or looked at something in 10 years, it's likely you won't ever need it. Same with RAW files in many cases. With family photos that's not necessarily true but with work related files it is.

Also, don't be quick to choose what's bad and what's good with a quick finger on the delete key. I have one photo of my grandmother when she was older that was taken on color film but my brother had a b&w lab in our house and he developed a single 8X10 print of that negative. At the time she was about 75 years old and as strong as an ox. She died at 83 after a quick month of decline. That one print is the only photo I have of her since back when she was 30 years old. It wasn't an awfully good print, just a test print my brother made actually, but it got thrown into a drawer instead of thrown away, and it's a good thing it didn't get "deleted" as being a "bad" shot.

The dog playing with your daughter may seem like a mediocre shot today but if your daughter or the dog passes away in the future, that photo file may hold enormous sentimental value that is gone forever if your finger on the "delete" key got rid of it.

I'd rather save every file unless it is so out of norm that it's not usable at all. I even have all my old 3.5" floppy discs that went into my first Sony Mavica. I have CDs of files I shot with my 5MP Minolta later. I have hard drives with backups of backups. I'm currently using the 1.5TB in my computer with a 3TB backup drive for work related shots and a 750GB drive for personal backup. Plus another 250GB drive with backups of the backups of our family photos. Storage space is so cheap these days that it doesn't hurt to save every shot you take, or at least every shot with at least mediocre image quality.

Anyway, as to organizing files, I'd do it the opposite way that you describe. I'd make a folder called 2014, then at least a sub-folder that is called Sally, then put all the photos of Sally with dates as titles if you like or my personal favorite would be titles like "Sally with ice cream on her head." I actually go one su-bfolder deeper than that.

My family photos are categorized as such: The main folder is the year such as 2014, each sub-folder is a generalized subject matter such as "Travis" "Cats" "Dogs" "Our House" "Cars and Motorcycles" and such things. Then in each one, I may put sub-sub folders. For example, in the "Cars and Motorcycles" sub-folder I may put folders that say "My bike" "My Cadillac" "Jimmy's Jimmy" "Rob's Harley" "July Car Show at VFW Post."

People are pretty good at remembering subjects and details but not necessarily dates. If you start out with main folders labeled with months and dates, there is nothing to tell you which month or date you saw Sally with ice cream on her head. But if you started out with a folder called 2014, then a sub-folder named "Our Family" (and Sally is a cousin), then a subfolder called "Carnival at Santa Barbara" and then put the photo file of Sally with ice cream hair in that folder, you're more likely to remember where to find it. You know you went to a Carnival in 2014 and that's where Sally got the ice cream bath, which is much easier than 2014, then remembering what month the Carnival was, and remembering what day you were at the Carnival. You may also have been at the Carnival on three different days that week and you would have to search all three to find Sally and the ice cream.

Personally I wouldn't use Access to do a folder layout because Access doesn't take you directly to the folders you are actually using. It's just a word processing document that is detached from the actual photos themselves. There are plenty of photo organizing programs out there, most very inexpensive. Probably some simple ones that are free too.

For years I just used Windows Explorer, which was previously called File Manager. Now I'm using Adobe Bridge (comes with Photoshop) which is like Windows Explorer on hyper-steroids. It can search and find photos or folders by date, by key words, by key phrases, or whatever you want. If you go through every photo you have and add keywords to them, then you want a photo of a yellow flower, you just type in "yellow flower" and it will go through all your folders and find the location of all "yellow flower" photos, no matter what year, what location, what kind of flower, or anything else. The Yellow Rose of Texas could be searched for by yellow, or rose, or Texas, or yellow rose, or rose Texas, or Texas or any combination.

Adobe Lightroom also has a comprehensive file management system but I don't really like it much although I dealt with it for over a year. Some people love it but I don't.

This takes a lot of thought and effort in the beginning but it's essentially only at the beginning. Once the system is in place, you just add photos to it and add directories here and there as you do so and it becomes rather easy.