Lets discuss: Cataloguing files from RAW to Jpegs

Johnny|lucidcomposure

Johnny|lucidcomposure

Johnny|lucidcomposure

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Joined
5 Nov 2004
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Bet you were hoping for some Chase Jarvis Apple like 1080P video weren't you?

No such luck.

I would like to discuss and explore the systems we have in place or a new one that we can construct as I am never fully happy with the structure of my entire photography library!

I think its important to start with a base structure. Now during import (and to assign the older files that have no previous cataloguing) do we keep file names as recorded by camera or do we change them to something key worded, dated etc..

At the moment my base structure is by Year

RAW
-2005
-2006
-2007
-2008
--landscapes
--portraits
---David Smith
----_IMG_5043.CR2
---Sarah Daken
-2009
-2010
-2011

I kinda like that everything is assigned to a year then I can explore exactly what I have been doing for the year.. However I am still not 100% convinced and if theres one thing I can't seem to apply is how and where to sit the high res and low res jpegs of these files.. I had them in a completely different location to the RAWs and its just been a mess from day 1 that I just can't be bothered to sort.

I am tempted to use the structure I built for work.

05:08:2011 - Joe Bloggs
-RAW
-Processed
-Web

now that works great for client work because most of it will sit per day per client but what if you have been doing landscape work, macro work, portraits and anything creative.

Whats best to approach this situation?

Key wording is something I never did which I wish I had but there we go. I'm the kinda person to import a CF card and leave it for weeks!

I am working in Bridge so I can play with loose files.

Be interested in some ideas thrown forward.
 
I recently recatallogued (sp?) all my RAW's and the structure is now

- 2009
- 2010
- 2011
- 1. Jan
- 2. Feb
- event
- event
- edited
etc

All the raw files are imported into the relevant event folder and keyworded. Once keyworded i select the ones to edit and export the JPEG's into the 'edited' folder with a custom name that included date taken, keywords and original file number.

All this is done in lightroom, seems to be working very nicely for me at the moment.
 
By year, and then date or event. But this doesn't work for me really since I don't really do many events like weddings or bands and would prefer to sort by subject, e.g. mountainscapes, large mammals, bears, SW USA, etc. The problem is that a single photo could have multiple subject and still like to have all photos from a certain trip in 1 directoy. The only real solution is keywording.

However, for my stock photos where i don't at all care about dates they are sorted by primary subject. My professional work ends up in seperate directories and often seperate drives, duplicated in my more personal directories as well. Duplication is not a big deal but one needs to be careful of processing versioning.

Im actually a little ashamed at the quality of my organisation and backup system. I-m slowly making everzthign else as professional as possible so this must be one fo the next things to do.
 
Johnny|lucidcomposure said:
Be interested in some ideas thrown forward.
Click to expand...

I am doing a mix of date and event.

First, I split by year, just to help keep directory sizes down to a manageable level.

Then directories which are a mixture of date and event.

Last weekend we went to Whitley Bay, so I have a directory:

20110813_Whitley_Bay

The date keeps everything in order. The name helps me navigate.

Andrew
 
Gaffer said:
I am doing a mix of date and event.

First, I split by year, just to help keep directory sizes down to a manageable level.

Then directories which are a mixture of date and event.

Last weekend we went to Whitley Bay, so I have a directory:

20110813_Whitley_Bay

The date keeps everything in order. The name helps me navigate.

Andrew
Click to expand...

This is pretty much exactly what I am doing in my re creation. If I have shot under say 10 photos of something on a particular day It'll go in a named directory of that month. Everything else like a portrait shoot, landscapes will go into a labeled date folder.
 
Mine are all date sorted like this:

Year --> Month --> Date and event or photo info, EG:

2011/January/Jan22nd Photoshoot At Gig xyz

Simple and makes sense as we all roughly know when it was.

Then sub folder of the 'event' is always the RAW files with a sub folder called 'edits' for my processed and released stuff.

This way I have all my RAWS incase I need to go back, all my edits in a seperate folder and its all catalouged and sorted.
 
I sort purely by event, with then sub folders for raw, jpg, web, Flickr etc. I don't see the point in having a higher folder level with years or months as date is one of the easiest things to sort in a search or filter anyway, be it in Explorer or Lightroom.
 
I've just started a new system, but will be using purely date for the folders, ie:
2011
.201103
..20110305

The images are then sorted by image tags, which are searchable

will see how this goes!
 
I think it's a mistake to try and keep RAW and jpeg files separate. My catalogue works as follows:

Base folder structure is year/month, so:

\2010\2010_01
\2010\2010_02 etc

I use Lightroom 3 and when importing photos I have it set to automatically rename based on EXIF data, giving me (mostly unique unless I've been shooting fast bursts) filenames like: 2010-11-04-14h58m49.jpg.

I point imports towards the appropriate year/month folder of when they were taken and add suitable keywords ('Holiday', 'Family', 'Dorset' etc). JPEGs are just copied as-is from the memory card, RAW files are converted to .DNG format (keeps all transform data within a single file alongside the image, rather than having a sidecar file for each image if you keep them as .CR2).

That way I can browse the file structure to locate images based on date and can also search for keywords to locate specific images. I only started the system about 12 months ago and had to go back and keyword 10 years worth of images. It's not as bad as you think as you can usually do them in batches from each specific event.

If I then need to utilise an image (for a website or whatever), I export it as a jpeg of the required dimensions, use it and then delete the exported jpeg - why would anyone bother keeping a lower quality copy when I can just re-export it from RAW again if I need it in the future? The beauty of Lightroom is that there is no need to hold both original RAW and edited versions of files. All the edits are non-destructive and held either within the .DNG container or as a side-car transform file, so you can flick from edited version to original at will. Makes life SO much easier.

The only jpegs I retain are from my point & shoot which can't shoot in RAW. All my DSLR shots are held as RAW only.
 
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Yes I agree with a lot of what you are saying. I am also in the process of back organising 6 years of data but it isn't as bad once you know your structure and you have Apple Automator at hand.
I was a lightroom user but I have since gone back to just processing a flat RAW and bring it to life in photoshop so I have to keep a full res jpg which I will from now on store in the same folder as the raw or a subfolder but they will be together from now on.
 
to be honest Lightroom has made me lazy with my structure

i simply use:
-personal
-work
--shootname date

but then do i really need anything further in place outside of lightroom? i only export to temporary folders to send for print/upload then delete and keep the RAW/working copy in LR.
 
I've been meaning to recatalog mine.
I've only been into photography for 2 years now but my photos are just chucked into a 'My Pictures' folder which then has the event folder.

My Pictures
.. Event
.... Jpeg

Probably better to sort it out earlier than later. I'll most likely sort it by:

Year
.. Month.Day - Event
.... RAW
.... JPEG


Just wondering, can you move files about and LR automatically updates the reference?
 
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Razor-BladE said:
Just wondering, can you move files about and LR automatically updates the reference?
Click to expand...

you can move things around within LR.

move them outside, like moving folders around and it will "lose" the folder. however all you have to do is right click on the greyed out album and select relocate and browse to the new location (all of your edits will be retained). easy peasy.
 
Oh, is there anyway to update the 'Folders' edits with the 'Collections' edits?
Because for a show, I didn't split up the photos into subfolders, but as there was so many photos I made a collection in LR and these were 'Before show', 'Interval', etc.

But I didn't realise what you delete and edit, is actually contained within the 'Collections' part. So is there a way of copying the edit history into 'Folders'?

If that made any sense lol.
 
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