tinwhistle

O.K. guy's, I'm new here and been hanging around for a few days, making a comment or two, even posted a few pictures, but haven't seen this topic. What kind (or type) of photo filing system do you use? I have thousands of pictures stored on my computers, backed up on an external hard drive, then occasionally I will burn several hundred onto a disc and they are stored off site. However, I do not have a very satisfactory system of cataloging and filing each day's production. I'm looking for suggestions. If you have a successful system you can pass it on here or PM me. Thanks ahead for any help....

Bill_de Loc: US

Search function works pretty well here. It's among the links at the top of the page. I did a search for you on file storage.

http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/search.jsp?q=photo+filing+system&u=&s=0

http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/search.jsp?q=file+storage&u=&s=0


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tinwhistle

Thanks Bill, I simply did not think of the search tab. Went over there quickly and took a look. I'll delve into it tomorrow. Again, thanks...

RWR Loc: La Mesa, CA

I file everything by category. One category starts with AA001. After AA999 it goes to AB001, and so forth up to AZ999. Other categories are BA, CA & etc. Thus I could have 26 categories, each with 25,974 images.

Leicaflex Loc: Cymru

I just use three external hard drives, with folders of my photographs, by title, subject and date order.

All three drives are copied to each other as a back-up.

I can find any photograph, subject or by date, no problems.

Did do a Lightroom course, but at the end of it I thought, that's what I am doing already.

Capture48 Loc: Arizona

Well lets talk about what you have to work with. What editing/cataloging system do you currently have in place now? Are you using Lightroom, or elements? What kind of computer do you have MAC, or PC. Do you want to work with what you have, or are you willing to make an investment? What is your end goal? To be able to quickly locate any file by its contents? As an example do you want to be able to say "Show me every photo with someone doing yoga" Or do you simply want to make sure you never suffer a loss of a photo from a computer crash or virus or theft? Or both of the above.

You see your question is too broad, many will simply reply with what they think is best for you based on what they are doing with no regard to what you have, or what your goals are.

Need more input!!

minniev Loc: MIssissippi

It matters what operating system and what photo organization software you use.

I use Lightroom and all my images live on an external hard drive in folders arranged by date, and keyworded in Lightroom for quick finding. Everything is backed up constantly on a different external hard drive and the images are backed up a third time on yet another drive. I download directly from camera to external drive #1, and import into LR from there. Most of my editing is done in LR, but I use photoshop and other programs as well. However, anything I edit in PS or other comes back into LR to sit beside its original.

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

DVDs and CDs are temporary, not archival. What you do is fine otherwise. Consider using a hard drive and not plastic writable media and you will be good to go.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

You need to find a method that works for you. Everyone has a method that works for them. This one works for me (PHOTOS is off of the ROOT so I don't have to drill down too much.): \Category\Sub-category\<YYYY-MM>

\PHOTOS
...\Places
......\Acadia
.........\2014-10
..........\2015-09
......\Washington DC
.........\2010-05
...\Things
......\Animals
......\Buildings
...\Friends
...\Family

(The ...is for spacing, UHH compresses spaces.)

PixelStan77 Loc: Vermont/Chicago

Welcome aboard. Check into the Adobe program called Lightroom. It is in my opinion the standard today for serious photographers to "file" their images. You then can back up those files also from your computer to an external drive.

tinwhistle

I've been hearing about Light Room for some time now. I will make it a point to check it out. I've carefully considered the posts on this topic and realize that my filing system if not all that terrible, however, my storage and archiving needs improvement. Thanks everyone, I appreciate it!!

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

:thumbup: :thumbup:

rmalarz Loc: Tempe, Arizona

TW, years ago, I designed a database for use with filing my photos. Unless one is a database programmer, this path is not recommended. However, there are several document control programs out there. That is, if one is only interested in filing, which was my intent. I only wanted to file and be able to find a particular image among the thousands I have.

If you want to be able to also post process with the same application, Lightroom is probably the best for both filing and editing.
--Bob

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

I use a two-stage system.

The first step is to download my photos from the camera to the computer. Long ago I started to use a program for that, called 'Downloader Pro'. I find it very useful in that it is configurable. When I put the camera card in the reader it brings up the program. I have the program configured so that the first thing the program does is ask me for a 'job code'. That can be most anything from a PO# to a text string. I use a text string that describes the photos I want to download. The program displays all the thumbnails so I can select the images appropriate to the text string I enter.

When I click on 'download selected' the program renames the image files so I don't have to worry about what DSC_4932 is a picture of. The new file name is
[job code][YYYYMMDD][Index#]. That means that just from the file name I have some idea of what the image is about, I have the date the picture was taken, and an index number to tell me how far into the shoot that particular image was. Further, the files are then placed in a folder /photos/[year]/[job code]/RAW (since I shoot raw only).

That's the first stage of organization. The files have meaningful names and they're organized in folders by year and subject.

The second stage of organization is that I use Lightroom to convert the raw files to images. In that process I add keywords to the images. Using keywords is easier than trying to remember what the subject name of the image is since the keywords can be more complete (I try to keep the file names a reasonable length) and can be placed on individual images rather than using the one-name-for-all approach of naming by the subject of the shoot. In Lightroom I can add keywords to all the photos I'm importing in a batch. As I go through the photos to evaluate them I can add individual keywords (e.g. people's names, location of the image, etc.).

When I edit the images in Lightroom I convert them to jpg. Those files are then stored one folder up from the raw files, i.e. /photos/[year]/[job code]. So the final images are in a folder and the original raw files are in a subfolder.

I started to make a page describing my workflow in a bit more detail. It's at http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/user_page.jsp?upnum=1584

lbrandt79 Loc: League City, Tx.

I pretty much do the same thing, only thing I see missing here is storing at least one of the drives somewhere else. Think that is missing in your process.