docrob Loc: Durango, Colorado

if the images corrospond to a property your listing why not cross reference that way

bkyser Loc: Fly over country in Indiana

Have you considered changing the "view" of your folders to show thumbnails instead of lists?

I haven't tried lightroom, but so far, no luck with adobe organizers. I have over 180,000 photos, and elements organizer crashes, and so far saving to folders inside picasa is the only way I can keep them somehow easy to find. If I look in folders that I "think" might be correct, thumbnails make it much quicker than just using file names.

Raider Fan Loc: Lake County, IL.

I keep my photos in a directory by year and then the individual topics are catalogued either by date or by a full description. It makes using the file system utuilities in Windows easier to understand. That is my .02!!

Expample
My Pictures
2012 Photos
Flowers 0429
Ballgame 0515
2011 Photos

You get the idea!!

Find what works best for you and stay with it.

SteveR Loc: Michigan

Also, if you have your photos on one backup drive, you risk the loss of your photos if that one backup drive dies. Backup the backup.

nolte1964 Loc: Des Moines, Iowa

You can store and sort photos just as easy o a pc it is just a matter of preference I use lightroom and know exactly where my images are

jprib Loc: Pittsburgh Pa.

Love my Iphone and soon getting an Ipad for business, but not ready to throw down all of that cash for a Mac, we do not use Mac in our RE office either, so for now, i will stay with Windows, my Toshiba Laptop (4years old and never a problem) and my new HP Home office.

Al Beatty Loc: Boise, Idaho

Hi jprib,

You've already gotten some great answers. Your photography sounds like mine, semi-pro and means you probably have many photos to keep track of. Lightroom is really worth the investment AND it's a good editing program as well. I use it to edit about 80% of my pix with Photoshop for the other 20%. Good luck with your search.

Tight Lines - Al Beatty
BT's Fly Fishing & Photography

Lucian Loc: From Wales, living in Ohio

when you plug in your card from your camera, to the computer it is best not to have it automatically open and distribute your images to files all over. You should make sure that a window pops up first asking you what you wish to do with the files and you should say open file to view images or something like that.

Then create your new folder in your "MY PHOTOS" file for example or within that folder you should have another sub folder that says Real Estate General, for example. Then when you open that folder you have further sub folders for each house or job. Then you put each new set of pics into that folder, named what ever makes sense to you and something that you will remember, in order to be able to call it up in future.

When you have your new folder named in that sub-folder, simply drag across all the images from your days shoot that pertain to that folder and then you have them exactly where you want them, and only in that folder. If they are duplicated and scattered all over, you are using up a lot of memory that could be used for other things, wasting memory in fact.

Horseart Loc: Alabama

Works well for me, Jerry. Takes me just seconds to find what I'm looking for. If I had to find a photo by the date it was taken, I'd be in trouble. Hmmmm, now let's see, did I take that in May or July, no, maybe June. I'd be all day finding one.

sloscheider Loc: Minnesota

I vote for LightRoom. When you import photos you assign keywords like:

rambler,full basement,2 bedroom,3 bath,MLS#,purple,steel siding,no garage,Minneapolis,1968,tile roof

Then three weeks from now you can search for purple and find it. There are other programs that do this very same thing but I use LightRoom.

I really like the "spray can" that allows me to paint photos with a keyword. After taking 1,000 photos at a dog show I can select "American Eskimo Dog" and "white dog" from my key word list and just spray any photo with an eskie in it with a tag.

When someone asks me for a photo with a Papillon running agility I can find it in seconds and I don't have to decide if I should look in the Papillon folder or the agility folder - it doesn't matter. I search for Papillon and agility and every photo I've tagged with both words is there.

jprib Loc: Pittsburgh Pa.

Boy, I would love to see some fly-fishing photo's, my son just adores fly fishing, I did it many many years ago with an old "Flame".... but hubby of 35 years never was into the outdoors, I found fishing, even though I was a Girlie Girl, very relaxing !!! and of course there is the photog in me, the scenery is always amazing at the fishing spots !!!!

Photoman74 Loc: Conroe Tx

As a realtor (I) would think that each address would have a folder, do you assign a customer #, also last / first names.
By assigning one or all you can search for the key words in many programs.

russelray Loc: La Mesa CA

Your avatar looks like you are in an office. Offices usually have lots of file cabinets, file drawers, and file folders. Do the same with your computer.

My file cabinet on my computer is "Russel Ray Photos."

Then I have file drawers for "Fauna," "Flora," "Manmade," and "Other."

Within the Fauna file drawer I have individual file folders for dogs, cats, giraffes, pigs, horses, birds, elephants, rodents, etc.

Some of my file folders are those big file folders with pockets inside of them. Inside my birds file folder are pockets for hummingbirds, great blue herons, flamingos, raptors, etc.

For finding something, I simply go to Windows Explorer, type the search term, and voila! there everything is. So to find something takes me only as long as it takes to type the search term.

Been using that system since the mid-1980s when Windows 3.1 came out. Over 73,000 pictures cataloged now.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

I agree. You need to know or learn how Windows Explorer or File Manager creates the image of a "tree" with a main trunk (the C: drive root that is My Photos), large limbs from that trunk that have (folders) on the ends of them, branches coming out of those folders with (sub folders) on the ends of them, and twigs coming out of the sub folders with (sub-sub folders) on the ends of them and the fruit (your photos) are bunched together in a logical way there.

Or think in terms of a file cabinet (root) with a drawer to pull open (computer main folder), big green hanging folders inside the drawer (computer subfolders), and small manila folders sitting inside the big green ones (computer sub-sub folders). Finally you find the singular papers in thse manila folders (in your case singular photos inside the computer sub-sub folder).

Once you have one of those types of images imprinted in your head, you can derive a system on paper as to how you want to lay everything out and create the folders, sub folders, and sub-sub folders accordingly. Then look throughout your hard drive finding and moving the files into the correct locations.

This is just thinking logically and putting things in a definite efficient order like re-arranging a closet, toolbox, drawer, food pantry, etc. You can't just buy a software and have it do it for you because it doesn't understand the real estate business and what you need. Trying to rely on software to organize this mess for you will result in another mess (maybe even worse) unless you plan for your needs first.

With that said, I had good luck using Adobe Bridge to arrange my files into my personal preconceived master plan. It allows you to add key words to the photo files - in your case maybe those would be "owner" "street address" "city" "number of bedrooms" "number of bathrooms" "garage cars" "exterior materials" "square feet" "water source" "sewer type" etc. so that you can do MLS like searches of your photos in Adobe Bridge and find every home or business that fits the key word(s) you type in.

Probably too much detail but hope this helps.

sloscheider Loc: Minnesota