Managing your photo collections?

sityeuropa · 19 Mar 2016 at 14:01

My head is hurting trying to manage the families photo collection from them gazillion different devices everyone is taking pictures with these days.

Any tips what programs you use and how you store? I think bandwidth isn't there yet to upload GB's of videos to the cloud. I don't like compressing videos as storage is too cheap now.

Raymond Lin · 19 Mar 2016 at 14:06

Lightroom, i sort mine by date.

£15 · 19 Mar 2016 at 14:19

I tried LR, but couldn't get to grips with it. I manage it all in Windows; by manage, I mean dump everything on my NAS and never look at them again.

My wife and I have Windows Phones, so use OneDrive.

I have my NAS configured to back up photos and videos locally, to attached USB HDD and also to the Cloud (Crashplan).

Raymond Lin · 19 Mar 2016 at 14:28

When you insert a card into the computer and import, if you have a root folder (just call it Photography) and point to that, it will create folders according to the date. Like this.

DaleTheWhale · 19 Mar 2016 at 14:40

+1 for Lightroom, used it a lot during my graphics course.

Similar setup to the above.

413x · 19 Mar 2016 at 14:44

Was thinking of asking something similar
I find date isn't good enough - I don't know what 14-03-06 was for example

But 2016 folder and Zoo folder works
I'm even thinking about "subject folder followed by date folder

Animals - 2016

I'm not a pro tho and dont have too many dates
I also go through and delete stuff I know I'll never look at again

Soundood · 19 Mar 2016 at 15:33

I use a simple system, relevant person/event/date

for example Mollys Birthday 2016

Raymond Lin · 19 Mar 2016 at 15:46

413x said:
Was thinking of asking something similar
I find date isn't good enough - I don't know what 14-03-06 was for example

But 2016 folder and Zoo folder works
I'm even thinking about "subject folder followed by date folder

Animals - 2016

I'm not a pro tho and dont have too many dates
I also go through and delete stuff I know I'll never look at again

You can add text after the date, so I add "Sarah and Tom", or "Copenhagen Denmark"

Cavallino · 19 Mar 2016 at 16:01

I tried LR. Didn't work for me.

So I use the only notation

<YYYYMMDD Event/Occasion>

Backed up to Synology Nas which has a pretty good app to allow you to view photos from tablets/phones etc.

And you could use cloudstation to access from internet (but I haven't done this).

D.P. · 19 Mar 2016 at 16:44

I subdivide by year and then by event. All photos get metatarsal in lightroom

Tunney · 19 Mar 2016 at 17:53

Lightroom is great for touching up photos but it's a terrible piece of software for cataloging photos.

I use Photos + iCloud Photo Library, importing what I need from Lightroom after processing. Having everything from my iPhone automatically appear in there is a big plus. Obviously I make sure not to keep any nudes in there though in case I get hacked.

Pawnless Endgame · 19 Mar 2016 at 18:06

Just use Windows Explorer and have subfolders for clubbing, family, friends, theme parks, work-related, etc. Inside each section, the photos will be grouped by date.

Kinda related - does anyone know a program that can batch resize photos while maintaining the original datestamp? Not necessarily from the exif info but just the standard/modified date that you see in the file properties in Explorer.

Vimes · 19 Mar 2016 at 18:08

I use Picassa on a Windows PC to view the photos. it is great in arranging the folders by the year they were taken.
The sorted, edited and named folders are then uploaded, automagically (Google Photos Backup), to a shared Google Account which can in turn be shared across devices and people I wish to allow them to be viewed.
As I am too tight to pay for Cloud storage the Cloud ones are compressed etc but at least it is unlimited and good enough for what we want it for.
We have around 400 folders and about 38,000 photos.

The sorted and named folders on my Windows PC are also backed up in another two locations.

I found LR to be rubbish as a viewer / cataloger for our needs.

Take a look at FastStone Photo Resizer for batch resizing photos. From what I have just noted it does seem to preserve the date when the photo was taken.

Pawnless Endgame · 19 Mar 2016 at 18:21

Thanks Vimes. Will take a gander at FastStone :-)

Pawnless Endgame · 19 Mar 2016 at 23:29

Update for Vimes - I've just ran FastStone Photo Resizer, and it's EXACTLY what I was after, so many thanks! Batch resize, but allowing to maintain the original file dates. Extra points that the site offered a portable zip as well, which I swear by :-)

Uhtred · 20 Mar 2016 at 00:54

I have a subfolder for each year and subfolders beneath that with months. If there was a notable event that month I create another subfolder.

For backup I push mine and everyone else's photos to onedrive but as that doesn't offer versioning I also use bittorrent sync to my NAS.

Magic_x_uk · 20 Mar 2016 at 07:01

I use LR like above. But also then use keywords on each photo so i can find what i want quickly when needed.

Vimes · 20 Mar 2016 at 07:58

@Pawnless Endgame.
Thanks for the update and glad that you like it. I have used it for years, often using it for our photo frame display to resize the photos to 800x600 in batches, they display quicker when resized.

neil_g · 20 Mar 2016 at 09:58

Tunney said:
Lightroom is great for touching up photos but it's a terrible piece of software for cataloging photos.

Which is ironic as LR is more of a catalogue app than an editing app..

LR will use your existing folder structure though so if that's pants it probably won't help.

I normally do this as a structure:

Year - Category - Date and Event

So eg: F:/2016/Equestrian Commission/20160318-Jo Bloggs and Ned/

That gets imported (add not move/copy) into LR and keyworded and rated appropriately.

Minstadave · 20 Mar 2016 at 09:59

I use Lightroom but use separate catalogues for events.