bkr2 Loc: Hackettstown,New Jersey

Where do I start deleting or saving 44000 pictures. Should I use name list,a date list, a location list.
Should I save adjusted copy's. The list go's on. Help.

Country Boy Loc: Beckley, WV

Not enough information to understand what you are trying to accomplish.

markngolf Loc: Bridgewater, NJ

It sounds as if you want to "categorize' your images. Give a great deal of thought to this and find 6 (more or less is up to you) that very generally describe your images - for example:
Wildlife, Family, Events, ... (it's up to you, but keep it very generalized). Then create subfolders within each category - for example within wildlife: Birds, Cats, Insects, ...
continue with subfolders until you have system that suits your needs. Some people do this by date.

Maybe this will help?
Good luck,
Mark

Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

Storage is cheap and getting cheaper. I save every raw image on a 4TB external drive. I only have about 8,000 images so my needs are different. I have a second Catalog in LR called Keepers where I have the original raw file and the final edit, heavily key worded.

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

You want to delete 44000 pictures? No problem. Place them all into one folder, then delete the folder.

Oh, maybe you didn't want to delete all of them? That will take a bit more work. Before you start, back up all your files. If you make a mistake by deleting the wrong files, you can recover from that.

After about a decade of digital photography, I had about 65,000 photo files. They included the original files when I was shooting jpg plus several different edits of those files so there were a lot of duplicates. I had never deleted anything except the accidental photos of my foot.

The first thing I did was to collect them into folders arranged by date. That can be tricky. I don't know about Mac, but with Windows, if you use File Explorer and check the "Date" column you will get the files listed by date, but it may be the date the file was generated or the date modified or the date the photo was taken. If the file was copied from one disk to another and back, sometimes that changes the date the file was generated. The best thing to do in File Explorer is to look at the "details" view and right click on the list at the top ("Name", "Date", "Type", etc.). The right click will bring up a dialog allowing you to add or subtract columns from that view. Click on "more", and you will get a long list. From that list you can check "Date Taken". When you see that in the File Explorer view, clicking on it will arrange the files by the date the photo was taken (as long as the EXIF data have not been stripped out). That will allow you to move or copy the file to a folder with the appropriate year for a name.

It took me a couple months to go through my 65,000 photos, but in addition to deleting the junk, I was adding keywords in LR for the remaining images. That was working in free time, a couple hours a day. If you're locked down, you might have more free time to spend on this project.

If you use Lightroom, that process can be easier, as you can filter the photos by year. What I did was to generate a smart collection named by year and containing all the photos taken in that year. Then I just exported the collection as a catalog with the year for the name.

Once you have separated the files into years, you can start looking through them one year at a time. Doing it that way reduces the number of images you have to sort all at once, and also makes it easier to keep track of where you are in the process. At that point you can just look at all the photos, pick out the best one from the duplicates, and then delete the others. When you get through all the year folders, you can just combine the best photos back to wherever you keep them.

If you have a lot of files in a year folder, and if you have renamed some of the files so the duplicates are not next to each other you might consider some duplicate finding software. I have used https://www.duplicate-finder.com/photo.html (freeware) which looks through a folder and makes a list of similar images. It will display the images so you can see how close they are, and it will also give them a rating to indicate how close they are. To use it, you drag a folder into the space at the top of the window when you start the software. You probably want to uncheck "search subdirectories". Then you can search that folder for duplicates. The only problem is the displayed photos are not very large so you might want to just note the names and view them in your normal viewing software.

Keep the backup in case you want to restore something later. So the real answer to "Save or Delete" is "Both". Save them in backup, but delete them in your working folder.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The master has deleted more images than the beginner has ever taken.

Curmudgeon Loc: SE Arizona

Thank you master. I remain seated at your feet awaiting your next words of wisdom.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

It would appear that you might have trouble organizing! First, create a folder and call it something like "main folder" or "all pictures folder," or whatever you want, this is the folder that will hold all of the other folders or images. The next step is to decide how to categorize them in that folder and there are many options. Additionally, you will need to determine how you want to access and use them, as that might also affect your organization. Do all of this on paper first and give it great thought. You don't say how you plan to access them? Will you be using software? Some software, such as Adobe Lightroom, will allow you to use key words, which you put in using the software. I think that Adobe Bridge does this, too. You have left way too much information out for people to actually help you in detail. Putting images into specific folders based on subject matter can lead to great confusion so give that a great deal of thought prior to doing it, it is hard to undo. Good luck with this.

traderjohn Loc: New York City

You have taken all these pictures. You have been involved in the process for a while. Only you can come to a conclusion that is right for you.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

One image at a time. It helps to use organizational tools to categorize your images, add keywords, etc. I use Lightroom to keep things under control.

Flash Falasca Loc: Beverly Hills, Florida

Buy a large portable hard drive, key word the heck out of your images !! you will never regret saving them but may regret deleting them, you never know when you may want one if only to figure out when or where something happened, it doesn't need to be a great photo but maybe a clue to a point in time or a place of interest down the road !!

cameraf4 Loc: Delaware

I've probably asked this before, but just how many fortune cookies have you read?

Paulco2 Loc: Gettysburg PA

Only you can decide on what to save and what to delete. Above are several suggestions to categorize what you decide to save.

Good luck, at least you have something useful to occupy your time!

terpentijn

Word of advice: never delete your RAW files. You'll come to regret it in the future. Delete everything else that's easy to replicate. And use a good DAM.

Jimmy T Loc: Virginia

I would try to get all of the photos into one file before starting anything.
I use "Year, Month, and Day (2020-03-24 Today in my backyard) plus a brief description such as Utah Vacation, Family Reunion, etc.
Then move the files around to suit you.
Light Room is the "Gold Standard" for photo organization
Smile,
JimmyT Sends