ltom

Hi everyone. I’m looking for suggestions on the best way to seriously start to catalog about 14,000 photos that I have been backing up by just transferring from my camera and cards to computers and hard drive over the years. I have adobe photoshop 11 on a iMac. After loading and reloading over the years I have a lot of folders with random numbers and letters. Some have been named but I still have folders with duplicates pics in them. I have to admit my laziness is obvious in my attempt to catalogue so please be “a little kind in your responses”. With that being said I look forward to suggestions for anyone.

nanasmiles Loc: LaFollette Tn

I don't have that many and I hate that part.
how was your trip to South Carolina..

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I had that issue about 5 years after I became digital. I had just saved the files in large folders without really organizing them.

Eventually I just bit the bullet. I first took the files and sorted them into folders by year. (I took the dates from the EXIF data so I could use the date taken rather than the last date the file was written). That divided the pile up into smaller piles that I could work on individually.

I then started with the earliest files and just went through and looked at them. Tried to determine what they were about (places, events, people, whatever). I then placed them into folders labeled with the appropriate place, event, or people. Those folders were subfolders of the year folder and when I decided where a file should go I moved it into the subfolder. When there were no image files left in the date folder, all the photos had been moved into folders with a label on them so I could look for subjects. I would then go to the next year's folder.

In the process I tried to delete duplicates. When there were a lot of files that wasn't always practical, but I did manage to reduce the total volume of images a bit.

I started with about 55,000 photos. When I finished I had spent about 6 weeks on the project, working in my spare time, which I managed to find about 2 hours/day. I tried to do it all at once so it got done. If I do a year here and a year there I forget where I left off. But you can take as much time as needed by splitting it up into manageable bits.

Going forward, my photos are now organized in Lightroom, which uses keywords in addition to folder names to further refine the search abilities. Lightroom has the capacity to place photos in collections. The collections are all virtual, so no photos are moved. A photo can be in more than one collection without duplicating it so I can have a collection of all my photos with some given individual in it, or all my photos of some particular place, or some particular event or any combination of those.

I also got Downloader Pro, which allows me to rename my files at import time so all my current files have descriptive file names as well as being stored in folders with descriptive names.

My naming convention is described here, but it's probably more than you want to know at this point.

ltom

Cape Town. It was just great. Didn’t have enough money to stay longer. It’s hard not being part of the 1%ers. But what the heck I sleep really good at night.

Rich2236 Loc: E. Hampstead, New Hampshire

Hey itom,
You may have 14,000 pictures, but, I have over 22,000 pictures to re catalog. When you find a good venue to catalog to, let me know also. LOL.
Rich...
P.S. Had not the 1994 Northridge, CA earthquake happened, I would have had over 70,000 images to catalog. I lost 50,000 negs and slides in that fiasco.

Fred Harwood Loc: Sheffield, Mass.

I use iPhoto and its keywords for my 25K+ photos, which have come from many cameras (film, slides, scans, and several digital cameras).
For some years I've been shooting only raw, saving them and any metadata files to backed-up monthly and then yearly folders. The resulting JPGs of all inputs are organized in iPhoto by often multiple keywords. The iPhoto library also gets backedup regularly.
When I want to do anything special with a photo, I use the computer's file search functions to locate the original, then process as might be necessary without altering the original. If the later processing betters my saved JPG, I'll replace the iPhoto one with the reprocessed one.

JD750 Loc: SoCal

Best way to start is to first close your web browser. Sit down and make a few outlines on paper, of a few different organizational structures. When you get one you like then open your file manager program and start working. Do not open the web browser again until you are done.

johnst1001a Loc: West Chester, Ohio

I have 90,000 pictures now. I sort be year, then by topic or event. If I have say 100 pictures on a sd, card which are miscellaneous events, i sort by date, easy to do on a Mac, I create new folders in the respective year and create events and put the pictures in their correct folders. If there are truly pictures that are truly miscellaneous, i create a file called yyyymisc,like 2016misc.
AS for duplicates, If you try putting pictures into an existing folder that already has these pictures, the mac will prompt you to decide which one to save. I then delete the duplicates iff the "sending drive' like an SD card.
As for deleting pictures, I spend very little time doing this as it takes times, an i have way more storage than I'll ever need. I two 8tb drives, and back one up onto, the other.

anotherview Loc: California

Likely you will have to comb through all your photographs.

I use Adobe Bridge to organize all my photographs. I put them in folders by year, month, and date.

For example, a folder name would look like this: 10-15-07, standing for October 15th, 2007.

You could include a brief description of folder content, too. So it would look like this: 10-15-07 John BD (meaning John's birthday).

In the year and month folder, I will sometimes include a separate folder for a road trip. Its label might look like this: Road trip Grand Canyon 10-07.

For your situation, first group all your photographs in their year of production. So the year folder would look like this: Pictures 2007.

Later, within the year folder, set up folders with the month in their name: October 2007.

Be consistent in naming folders and in naming your photographs. If you take pictures of an event, then put the event name in the filename of the photographs when downloading them to your computer or to the cloud.

For example, if you shoot a family event like a birthday, then label the photographs as, say, John BD party.

I do photography with zero consideration for sale of my work. So I keep the organization of my photographs personal and simple..

hcmcdole

I tried categories to begin with and went maybe 3 years before realizing it became a huge mess. Finally decided on year, month, day - small description of the day and have been doing this for 15 years now. Still have the first 3 years as they were since I didn't shoot a lot then. Whatever you choose will affect you through the years so choose wisely.


My file structure is Drive letter\photos\year\month (3 letter but wished I had done 2 number)\day (two number) and small description. I also use Faststone resizer to resize each day into a sub-folder called email for emailing and posting on line. So today would look like "E: (or F: or Z: - both are backup drives)\photos\2019\jan\03 - orange trail of sweetwater park" with a subfolder "\email" for resized photos to 8 inches by 8 inches.

Satman Loc: Indy

2020 once every 100 years

10 th month 100 times in 10 years

2020-10- easy.. decision.l

AzPicLady Loc: Behind the camera!

Why? What does the web browser have to do with file managing? Sorry I'm so dumb, but I just don't follow.

Country Boy Loc: Beckley, WV

No suggestions from me. I have been using the same filing system you have and think I may profit from your post. Thanks,

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

I think the poster was suggesting closing the browser to avoid distractions while designing a folder structure.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

The first thing you need to do is put together an estimate for the total drive space all those images take up. Then you can work on a backup and organization strategy.
It may be a good idea to slowly work on improving your delete button skills. It will make life easier.