How do you organise your photos easily/quickly?

fiveub

fiveub

fiveub

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How do you organise, and store your photos? Do you just whack them all in a folder? Mix them on different hard drives? Or do you have a neat collection of photos stored in an organised fashion?
 
Like Ray said. I have a folder for each year. Inside each of these folders there is a further 12 folders for each month. Inside each of those there are individual folders for the days where I have been shooting. Example folder structure:

'2011' > '02 - February' > '11 - Joe Bloggs Birthday'

It's a good idea to precede the month folders with numbers so that they are in chronological order when arranged alphabetically.
 
On one HDD with a couple of backups on different HDDs.

Organised like this:

My photos
--2009
--2010
--2011
----12.16 - Birthday
----12.25 - Christmas
------Web
--------pic.JPEG
------Processed
--------pic.JPEG
------pic.CR2
------pic2.CR2


I don't shoot too much so I find it easier and more convenient not splitting it down into Month folders.
 
Last edited:
Not a big fan of the yearly organisation.

Tend to go with something simple:
My Pictures
-> Shoot/theme title
--> RAW
---> Post Edits
---> Post Edits no copyright + Full size

kd
 
I currently use Aperture and I also organise by categories and themes.
For example Sports, which then has subcategories for different sports etc.

If you make sure to tag all your photos on import, you can use metadata and filenames to easily find things taken on a certain date or year anyway.
 
Folders on my home Server broken down into a structure I understand depending on the event so for example I have a holidays folder for photos taken on holidays under which is a sub folder for each trip etc.

It's slightly more messy for stuff I've taken when just wanting to take some pictures but I tend to file those away under a general folder with a date and rough subject as the folder title.

Really should consider lightroom and some tags!
 
I currently just dump them all in a few folders, but im trying to get to grips with Lightroom. I need to delete some of the pictures i dont particularly like.
 
a1ex2001 said:
It's slightly more messy for stuff I've taken when just wanting to take some pictures but I tend to file those away under a general folder with a date and rough subject as the folder title.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I tend to do that.

If its not really a proper series, and I can't categorise it into something, I just throw it into a 2012 album.
 
A folder for each year, then I just sort them by date taken. Odd folder within for weddings and birthdays of note in that year.
 
Group into categories eg:

Sporting Events
Holidays
Walks & Bike Rides
Days Out
etc

Then sub-folders in there for each "event"
 
year->month or event.

If I haven't been shooting much then multiple months are grouped together.
Now it i somehwat duplication because searching for files by date is easy so for some people it makes sense to organise by content. The problem is for me that I can't easily subdivide a lot of my content into exactly one category, e.g my landscape and nature work typically mix, I could call it nature but then 80% of my photos end up in one category.
I also prefer evens and photo trips to be complete, e.g. a holiday to yellowstone is one folder, a day shooting lighthouses at the oregon coast is another folder.


I also use lightroom and try to keyword as much as possible.
 
I've stored mine on my HTPC in a Photos folder.

Within that are lots of other folders for images from our wedding, our friends wedding and so on as well as two folders of my own stuff, D80 and D7000 (had D80, sold to buy D7000).

Within those D80 and D7000 folders are the Years, and then within those folders are folders for each shoot with the folder name of YYYYMMDD - Subtitle.

I've named those final folders like that so that if at some point I decide to just have one massive folder with everything in, it will all stay in order without me having to do anything.

Also keyword everything like a loon, people, places, objects, subjects, camera used, lenses used etc etc. I've onyl recently been doing that as much as I should though so when I have some days off I'll be going through my entire collection to purge duds, keyword etc.

Previously I have done everything in Bridge but after downloading a trial of Lightroom (because the Bridge I had wouldn't read D7000 RAWs) and finding it much more to my liking my wife bought it for me for Xmas (£80, Staples) which personally seems like a bargain.
 
cokebottles said:
Like Ray said. I have a folder for each year. Inside each of these folders there is a further 12 folders for each month. Inside each of those there are individual folders for the days where I have been shooting. Example folder structure:

'2011' > '02 - February' > '11 - Joe Bloggs Birthday'

It's a good idea to precede the month folders with numbers so that they are in chronological order when arranged alphabetically.
Click to expand...

Lightroom does this automatically.
 
A sequential number depending on camera used an then subject and date. Eg A001 are b/w film scans up to I001 DSLR pics with various scans/digital compacts Inbetween. I use several cameras at the same time so they don't appear strictly in date order in the directory but I find this method easier to manage.
 
Important using Lightroom into a 'Photography' folder on a dedicated hard drive, which then has folders with descriptions of what the photos are of. In my case, for the last couple of years it's just the bride and groom's name.

I've finished my last wedding now though so I may move to using date formats properly.
 
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