dbfalconer Loc: Salida CO

Very helpful. Seems elementary but very nice to have the simple steps listed. Thanks.

John Solak

Well, I've worked in Nuclear Power all my life. Records are a big thing. Windows uses the folder called "Pictures" - this gives you a variable thumb sized image of the file versus just the file name. BUT, names are most important, a easily remembered name is best when searching. I like using Years, then the Event name, and then sub-event and finally that easily remembered name. Keep the tier system as small as possible. Remember the Windows search feature can be used within a folder or sub-folder, but it keys in on names, though it can use dates, file sizes, etc. - these are also part of the search box criteria but I rarely found them that useful. My best example was a European Vacation we took in 2012. Each Country became a sub-folder, and then City; Example: 2012/Italy/Rome and key names: Vatican, Coliseum, St Peters, Sisters of the Helpless.

JerryOSF Loc: Bristol, VA

Digikam. It is free to download. Tags can be added to each photo - Aunt Lucy, Wyoming, my dog etc. Photos can be displayed by tag, date taken, GPS location, camera, etc. It is not necessary to move photos to certain folders. Tags can be grouped -people, places, animals, etc. Also includes an editor, many more features.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

You might want to do a search for free document management software. A friend of mine uses one and is quite happy with it. I went a different route.
--Bob

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

Adobe Lightroom...
Photoshop Elements has some sort of opportunity to organize images.
Affinity, I think, will have that also in 2018.

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

Lightroom is designed just to do that job!

SusanFromVermont Loc: Southwest corner of Vermont

If all you want is to organize your photos, that can be done from within your computer. But if you want to edit them, that is a different story.

Did your camera come with software that permits organizing and editing? That may be the simplest place to start. Or one of the free programs - Jerry has many lists of choices.

The thing about any program that offers organization as well as editing, is there will be a learning curve. You will need to put some effort into learning how to use it. If you don't want to do anything complicated now, try the free programs. It will give you the opportunity to "get your feet wet" and get an idea of what you like and what you are missing. It is possible you won't want to switch! Try out free trials of different programs to get an idea of how you get along with their user interface.

As OP have said, the Adobe CC subscription [with both PS and LR] is widely used and preferred by many. The reason is that it contains a lot more than most of us will ever need or want to use, but since people's skills and needs in editing tend to change, it provides a program to grow into. I have the subscription, and do not use all of either PS or LR. Periodically I make an effort to learn to use a new tool, and decide if it belongs in my workflow. The point is, you can use the basic functions without ever getting into the more in-depth ones. Learning can be step-by-step. I used only LR for a number of years, and was able to do good editing. But when the subscription came out, I went for it because I wanted to learn PS [previously priced at $500-$600 for the stand-alone program]. Now I am happy and my editing skills continue to improve.

SusanFromVermont Loc: Southwest corner of Vermont

Sounds like you are missing out on the great organizational properties of LR! You can do folders and sub-folders, you can provide descriptions in addition to the file number, and there are keywords to further refine the description plus make images easier to find. As for putting the same photo into more than one album, that is what Collections can do.

Hopefully you do not count on Flickr to store your edits and descriptions. I had an account, loved it because of how I could organize my images, and the presentation of images was excellent. Now that account is still there, but I cannot use it. Somehow Flickr hijacked the account so it would no longer remember me as the Administrator! As a result I could no longer access it and add photos, albums, etc. I can look at it just like any other person, but that doesn't do me any good. And I got no help from any of the online sources. The only place I could see where a real person might answer was in the abuse reporting, but that didn't get me anywhere either. They answered a couple of my messages, then I got the message that the issue was resolved and closed!

Jakebrake Loc: Broomfield, Colorado

And that's the way I do it as well. A workflow that has served me quite well for my 26,000 images, and all done without the $10 bucks a month for lightroom.

don26812 Loc: South Bay of Los Angeles, CA

As others have mentioned, Photos may suite your needs and would be pretty easy to learn and use. However, have you ever taken pictures that you would like to store in two or more folders based on their content or some other criteria? If so, you probably had to compromise in selecting your folder and folder structure.

That is where a keyword tags can help. A given photo can be given multiple tags, so you can select a group of pictures from multiple photos for a given photo album or project. That is where (well one where) programs like Lightroom and Photoshop Elements come in. They both work with the same underlying database technology, Lightroom is the most powerful of the two, but Photoshop Elements Organizer is the easier one to learn.

I may have missed it, but if you have not looked at Photoshop Elements, I would go Adobe and check out the description of the latest version, Photoshop Elements 2018. In addition to the descriptions, and tutorials there, you can even download the program and try it for free for 30 days.

And as you may also know, PSE 2018 includes a Photo Editor that is built on the same engine as Photoshop CC, but has fewer capabilities.

FWIW

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

Don, you bring up an interesting point, multiple tags. That's why, after spending 4 hours looking through color slides to find the one I needed, I designed my own SQL database and have used that since. This was 5 years prior to LR being available. The added benefit is that it is not tied to any processing software and I don't have to change image names.
--Bob

Mistral

A genius simple way to date folders is Year Month Day (name). That way they are all in time order - example 171212 or 180430. Shout out to Gina for that information!

chapjohn Loc: Tigard, Oregon

Look at FastStone Image Viewer.

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

That's what I've been doing for years.
CameraCode-YearMonthDay-RollNo-ImageNo

Each image is stored in a folder based on YearMonthDay/YearMonthDayRollNo.

That provides a unique identifier for each image. Databases love that. Then the image is very easily found.
--Bob

sawdust_128

I looked at a lot of these types of programs and this is the one I liked the most.

https://www.acdsee.com/en/products?msclkid=5c410bc912cb1f72fb6b51f90a2097b7&utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Brand%20%7C%20English&utm_term=acdsee&utm_content=ACDSee