Rongnongno Loc: FL

Same as you would renaming files.


As before, changing anything would confuse the uses.


No dispute there.

You mentioned a will to change. Using EXIF will work in addition, not against you current scheme.


Best bet would be to add that (or anything else) at the end of the file name as any other place would disrupt your scheme. Usually a an underscore works well to create a visual contrast
name-whatever-###.jpg
name-whatever-###_NSG.jpg
name-whatever-###.jpg
name-whatever-###.jpg
name-whatever-###.jpg
name-whatever-###.jpg
name-whatever-###.jpg
name-whatever-###_NSG.jpg
name-whatever-###_NSG.jpg
name-whatever-###.jpg
name-whatever-###.jpg
name-whatever-###_NSG.jpg
name-whatever-###.jpg
name-whatever-###.jpg
name-whatever-###_NSG.jpg

(NSG??? Not So good) :wink:

mcveed Loc: Kelowna, British Columbia (between trips)

I recall when I first started shooting slides back in the day. A very capable and aged photographer told that the most important tool a slide shooter needs is a large garbage can. He said that if you keep all of your slides your standard will go down. When you are throwing away those that are badly exposed or out of focus, or just plain bad, you are setting your own standard for your own work. You do the same when you keep all the junk. I stuck by that and sometimes I would get a box of 36 back from the processor and end up keeping none. Eventually my skill improved and I kept more and more of them, but the bad ones still went in the garbage. The culling process with digital is a bit different because you not only have to ask yourself if the picture is any good , but also whether or not you can fix it. Now, unless a picture is badly composed (which I can't, or won't fix), very much out of focus or just plain awful, I keep it. The reason is that software programs are getting better all the time and the picture you can't salvage today may be saved by the next software miracle. DXO Optics Pro 10 has saved lots of old images that I have had archived for years. A raw file doesn't take up as much room as a 35mm slide. I often bracket the exposure on my shots, particularly landscapes, and once I have selected the best exposure I delete the others.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Regardless what people say, there is no one, perfect system for organizing that will work for everyone. I put similar images into one folder - Dogs, Cars, etc. Works for me. I've never been able to get into the Lightroom Keywording system.

Capture48 Loc: Arizona

I would not say NEVER delete. There have been times my flash did not fire and I got a black photo, or I accidentally went faster than my cameras sync speed and got a black bar in the photo. I have and do delete those. Other than that I keep every other photo I shoot. Using the filing system on my MAC every shoot has a name, and every shoot name has three directories as the snapshot shows. The main directory with the shoot name is the ones the client has purchased, or when we cull together they liked the best. The "In Progress" folder just means they are a 3 star rating or above and I have done no processing on them. The Xcrap directory will never been seen by a client. These are all photos I have rated a 1 or a 2 star prior to culling with my client.

AS far as a filing system, this folder falls under the 2015 directory which is a sub of Photos. My naming convention is always the date, followed by Nearest airport 3 letter code, and then the shoot name.

As far as renaming, kind of depends on the shoot. I've done photo booths where folks have got pretty drunk and done some strange things in front of the camera. Begged me to remove that photo before their boss or significant other sees the photo. I do rename in order those photos using LR f2. However since I cull portraits with the clients there is no need, they know and help weed out photos, so they know there will be a gap.

Erv Loc: Medina Ohio

Well I must be a very simple guy:) I do groups of pictures with just the date taken. I have 3, 3t hard drives. I send one to Jason and I send him folders of the pictures I want to keep safe. The other 2 I have at home and load the folders to them. But I do go through my pictures and delete the ones I don't like.:)

Dale40203 Loc: Louisville, KY

Keeping your camera assigned exposure number only works for the first 9999 images. After that - even if you append a descriptor to the end of that number - you're going to have problems sorting or organizing by name. I rename all images beginning with the date (20151113) and a sequential reference for the whole day (20151113_0001). Multiple cameras used on same day? Include them all in the same sequence. Keywords and comments in EXIF rule the search process for me.

JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

No, not with my approach. The number assigned by my camera is "DSC0xxxx". Using Automator I batch change "DSC0" to "DSC2" as soon as I have downloaded the photos into a folder. It was "DSC1" up until Oct 2014, and I will soon have to make that "DSC3". This gives me headroom for 99,999 files. If I ever get beyond that I will use Automator to change "DSC" to "DSC1" on all my files, thereby adding another leading digit into the numbering sequence.

As for multiple cameras, I do keep parent folders for different cameras (my wife uses her own, and I have retired my Optio 555). Admittedly, I only shoot with 1 camera at this time, but if I ever have the (enviable) problem of multiple cameras around my neck I will simply modify my approach. Considering that I seem to keep the same gear for at least a decade I am sure I will remember when I switched to a modified numbering scheme.

That said, I agree whole-heartedly with your date-based numbering system. It drives me bonkers that some people don't appreciate (understand?) that yyyy-mm-dd is the ONLY correct way to use dates in filenames. Why would anyone want to use "Jan 21, 2015; Feb 14, 2015; etc"? Do they want files sorted alphabetically by month name? Good luck with that because April -- and therefore April Fool's Day -- comes first!!! In my job we used automated data collection systems where filenames were "yyyy-mm-dd-hh:mm:ss.ss", and life was good. It is unfortunate that CA and US don't even agree on which incorrect method of specifying dates is the best.

Kuzano

The best organizational system is the one that works for you. Storage is cheap. If you can find a particular image or set of images almost immediately, without fail, It's the RIGHT ONE!!!

I've tried a ton of them and they all have a learning curve and at least one significant problem.

The last system I will ever try again are the Adobe systems, due to their crazy "catalog" style systems, allowing for easy corruption of the catalog.

If that is not so, then why are they so supposedly easy to delete a catalog and create a new one. If they worked well, such actions would not be necessary.

Sounds like you've mastered yours.

Again, fast access is key. Nothing else matters, except redundancy in a backup system. Originals of your data system and at least two backups off the machine. Hopefully one off site in a secure locate (NOT THE CLOUD AND NOT ON OPTICAL DISK)

JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

AMEN to that!!!


Many years ago I used to think that in a fire my treasure trove of slides would be my first grab (the camera could always be replaced). But while photography has been a life-long hobby with me, it is just that -- a hobby. I have encountered a number of situations in my life that I would consider a "restart", and none have been as difficult to get over as I imagined they would be. Humans are amazingly resilient.

And so it is with computers for me today. I have never encountered a catastrophic failure -- accidental or self-created -- that wasn't either "recoverable" or "get-overable". I have faith in hardware (less in software) and believe if it hasn't died within the first 3 months it will probably run for 3 decades. I have a few backups of my files, but all are still on-site. I think there are ways to recover from virtually any loss of important credentials and documents (drivers license, passport, bank records, etc); it is the "hard copies" of irreplaceable items that no one else has copies of that are the real challenge. As for my photo files, they are precious to me, but they are not my life. In case of disaster I might mourn their loss, but I would probably get over it without too much difficulty.

(Heck, how difficult would it be to jump on a plane to Cuzco and hike up to Machu Picchu again for that sunrise photo… at age 65? No, not going to happen. Been there, done that, got the photo, and I would simply enjoy others' photos of such places; there are thousands out there, I am sure.)

Capture48 Loc: Arizona

If you think you have time to grab anything you’re a little silly. Unreal in life you may not even be home when a fire breaks out. If you are home time is too little trying to get wife, family out of the house, no there will be no time.


Misplaced I’d say since most companies put a MTBF on their hardware. Mean Time Before Failure, means the company knows with absolute certainty their product will fail, and they even know about when it will happen. They also try to tell you when it will happen with their MTBF rating.

Of course if you believe you can recover who am I to say otherwise. I just don’t want to see you basing your recovery or taking chances on your false beliefs above. I have friend who suffered a fire and lost 3 disks worth of photos because they were in a fireproof safe. Sure they did not catch fire, but the disks melted from the intense heat generated by the fire. He too had a false sense of security.

JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

Once I got my family out and determined they were safe I would send my kids back in to get my slides; they can run faster than I can [Kidding!!!!] [Oh, darn, another pun on "kid"?]


I know what you are saying, but technically the "B" means "Between", not "Before". What you are really after is MTTF (i.e., "To Failure"; subtle distinction). According to Wikipedia, such numbers are mainly used to improve design as opposed to being like a food "best before" date. [Wikipedia:"However, these "prediction" methods are not intended to reflect fielded MTBF as is commonly believed; the intent of these tools is to focus design efforts on the weak links in the design."] And don't forget the significance of the "M" for "Mean". Some will fail much earlier, and some much later. Personally, I don't use such data in a purchase decision.

I don't feel I have a false sense of security when it comes to the reliability of electronics; I prefer to think I have made an informed decision. I have never purchased extended warranties on any electronics and have never regretted it. I may have had to pay for a repair or replacement the odd time, but in the end I have probably saved money. And if you think of it from a business perspective, an extended warranty plan has to be in favor of the company, not the consumer. They are playing the odds which are stacked in their favor, and they are the winners.

But thanks for your comments.

Capture48 Loc: Arizona

Correct but a failure is a failure either between or before. hardware fails, and think what you like in a true emergency you will be lucky if you have your pants on when you have to leave.

Of course its all moot if you're not worried about recovery.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

Which then leads me to ask if you back this up on an external drive so that your years and years of file naming and sorting doesn't get lost in the blink of an eye.

Personally I use a more generalized folder naming system. For example, a root folder may be "Our Family". The subfolders may be 2013, 2014, 2015, etc. In each of those I'll have folders named as the event, location, person or people in that string of files, or range of days of that year in which those photos were taken. Inside there I'll have a "RAW" folder of everything pertaining to that event (the RAW extension of the file tells me which camera it was), person, location or range of days of the photos, and a "Finished JPG" and/or "Finished TIFF" folder of those I edited and re-saved as a different format.

I put all animal subjects together in a root folder, all family in a root folder, all vehicles in a root folder, all friends in a root folder, all vacations in a root folder, etc. Of course, all those root folders are inside "My Pictures" so they're grouped. So if I want a photo of an eagle, I click animals, birds, eagles, and there I am. Then look at JPGs first to see if I edited the eagles, and if I didn't, switch to the bigger RAW folder. Everybody is different but that's how I simplified mine. The attached data tells me the date it was shot and all the camera information about the shot so I don't need to repeat any of that.

blackest Loc: Ireland

What happens when you have a dog and a car in the same image? it gets complicated doesn't it.

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/keywords.html#keywords

is a useful page as is

http://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom/help/metadata-basics-actions.html

I use Lightroom which by default uses a very simple file system
e.g Lightroom/2015/2015-11-15 this gives me a simple time line basis for storing photo's

Everything else is part of the catalog, i use a few camera's so i can filter by camera model, serial number and lens, focal length ect. so how and when are taken care of you can color code and rate. filter just 5 star images and you look like a great photographer :)

Then there are key words , I like to add events and locations subjects can be added there is a spray can that lets you quickly add keywords to a bunch of photo's I think you can start loose with keywords and get more specific e.g flowers, roses or dogs, bulldogs, you can go looser e.g plants , animals, kids , family, friends.

some loose keywords are probably easier to apply after tighter ones at least initially but if you build catagories and subcatagories you can group them so say plant animal people and so you can have animal groups and dogs and cats are animals and bulldogs and jackrussels are types of dog. its up to you how much keywording you want.

People are a special case and i use picasa face recognition and use a plugin to import the names into lightroom. i don't duplicate my image files just get picasa to look through and identify the people leaving the pictures where they are.

now the only issue is what happens if the catalog gets damaged so i think its a good idea to associate the meta data with the image. Most image formats can have your meta data and keywords embedded in them for the others there are sidecar xmp files. Lightroom doesn't do this by default but I think its a good idea since it will then be part of your backup files and should you lose your lightroom catalog it can be recreated from the image files.

naturally recreating your catalog will take time as each picture needs to be read the data extracted and stored.

The point of the catalog is to make searching and identifying images easier it's easy to pull up say all dog photo's than to browse through the images. Even events some party last summer do you remember anyone who was there then you can search for them and somebody else and pretty soon you have found the event and know where the photo's are.

when you are initially looking at photo's in lightroom you are not looking at the actual photo until you select it to do something with it at the browsing stage its a small thumbnail. Manually browsing your file system will be much slower as the big file needs to be loaded before you say no not that one. Yes there are thumbnails but generally too small to see any detail.

However your existing system can be easily brought in if you keep dogs in the dog folder then import that folder and add the keyword dog to the files you import. Importing doesnt necessarily mean moving the files just bringing the data in to lightroom. Although why not it makes sense to store them under the date they were took. you can make subfolders if you really need them too.

JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

Yes, I use TimeMachine to automatically back things up. I also have photos on CDs and on yet another external hard drive that is usually disconnected from my system (manual backup of selected material).


Having read about LR (I don't have it) and having used a few other photo organizing applications (iPhoto; ACDsee) I would suggest that your higher level organizational structure is what "albums" would be for. When you create albums you don't actually move the photo, but rather create a directory of sorts that contains the pointers to the actual photo. That allows the same photo to be used in several collections, thereby avoiding making duplicates of the photos when, as someone in this thread alluded to, you have your uncle Fred (family) riding an elephant (animals) while on safari (vacations). And yes, I know that keywords are also useful for this purpose.

Perhaps I wasn't specific enough in my original post as to what I am doing and why. My filing approach is based on the principle of filing my photos as my "negatives" -- and ALL of them without deletion -- in numerical sequence based on the file number from the camera (thus, also in chronological order). Since I am not presently using LR or other such organizational software I don't have "albums". However, I do have subfolders of my "negatives" under MyPictures that are named with some high level descriptive title and the month/year of the photos. And since those high level folder names begin with the first and last photo number in the subfolder they are displayed in alphabetic/photo-number/chronological order.

Within those folders I may have more subfolders with similar naming schemes, as in my month-long trip to China where I created subfolders for each day of shooting labelled with the name of the city or activity of that day, but eventually I get down to an actual photo file that is named with the camera-assigned number and then my text descriptions. So if I want to find my photos of the terra-cotta warriors I know to look in the main folder China, then the subfolder with Xian in the name, and then I will find my 150 photos of that subject. And yes, I could simply use the OS capability and search for "terra-cotta" and it would find all of those photos, and maybe even the next higher parent folder if it contained that word in the folder name, and maybe all my emails that contained that word, and… and then I would start filtering the results by restricting the search to MyPictures. Lots of choices to easily locating a specific photo.

Since hard drive space is relatively inexpensive these days, I do sometimes create my own albums/collections based on some topic, but when I do that I actually make another copy of the photo and put it in there. These collections might be anywhere on my hard drive based on the intent. If I am sending/emailing someone smaller files of my China trip I would put this collection under the main folder China; if I am selecting photos for a travel article I may put that collection under publishing/travel_articles/NatGeo [I wish!!] alongside the manuscript. But I always retain the camera-assigned number so that I can always go back to my negative.

Bottom line and the main point of my original post is that I file ALL of my photos as if they were negatives in numerical sequence, and I retain that photo number no matter where I may have other copies of that particular photo. And any manipulation of the photo is done on a copy of that photo so that I can always get back to the original, much as PP does not change the original RAW file itself. Someday I will make the move to LR or similar but for now I do some of that bookkeeping manually.

But I have ALL of my negatives, duds included, so that I don't fret over having misplaced/misnamed/lost a photo. OCD perhaps, but it is simple, logical, it works for me, and I thought it might provide some ideas for folks who were asking questions about organizing their photos.

JF