Image directory structure

[dw75209]

I am wondering what "photo images directory structure" to use archiving my photos that I am being to shoot.

Thanks,
Don

[Wil_Bloodworth]

Don,

This is one of the extremely opinionated topics and you'll get various answers. Take them all in and decide what works for you.

Personally, I separated everything like so:

<YEAR><MM><DD><Event Title>

For example, if I shot a birthday party (or whatever) on the 18th of February 2006, the files would go in a folder 5 directories deep:

2006
|__02 (directory under 2006)
|__18 (directory under 02)
|__John's 21st Birthday (directory under 18)

I put all my RAW images in that directory and then the final JPGs in a subdirectory named "Processed".

Best of luck to you.

- Wil

[dw75209]

Originally Posted by ParkImaging

Don,

This is one of the extremely opinionated topics and you'll get various answers. Take them all in and decide what works for you.

Personally, I separated everything like so:

<YEAR><MM><DD><Event Title>

For example, if I shot a birthday party (or whatever) on the 18th of February 2006, the files would go in a folder 5 directories deep:

2006
|__02 (directory under 2006)
|__18 (directory under 02)
|__John's 21st Birthday (directory under 18)

I put all my RAW images in that directory and then the final JPGs in a subdirectory named "Processed".

Best of luck to you.

- Wil

Will,

I just did a party event this past Sat, should I have shot in both RAW & JPG? I only shot in JPG.

Don

[bubstang]

I put alot of thought into this and did some probing on other forums before finding this one.

Here's what I ended up with (subject to change as I'm ADD and a little OCD)

Folder names...with a "processed" subfolder
2006-06-15 Trois Rivieres
2006-07-01 Swimming with the kids
2006-07-15 Mercer Arboretum

That's about the best I've found. If anything better comes along, I'm game

[iCe]

Somewhere around here Russell posted a link to a Powerpoint presentation that he did. It's pretty good. I "started" re-oraganizing" my 3,000 + images this weekend. I'm about 1/2 way thru them... Note to self... don't wait so long...

[Wil_Bloodworth]

Don,

Whew... that is a huge discussion all by itself. I prefer to shoot in RAW because I like the ability to "work" on the RAW images and then save them as JPEGs after I've "tweaked" them. In my opinion, RAW is much more forgiving because you can "fix" problems with the photos before you convert them to JPEG. People who typically shoot JPG fall into (I think) three categories:

1. Great Photographers who know exactly what they're doing (I'm lumping PJ's into this category too).
2. People who have a limited amount of memory (RAW images use up more memory).
3. People who just don't know any better.

When you shoot in RAW mode, you are telling your camera (digital) to just store all the "data" and not to do apply any in-camera settings such as sharpening, white balance, noise reduction, et cetera. If you shoot directly to JPEG, those in-camera settings are immediatly applied to the image and you've got a semi-permanent JPEG image that can't be altered as much as it could've been if you had the original data.

The disadvantage of shooting in RAW mode, to name just one, is the time it takes to process the images. Once you've done it for a few weeks though and you learn your tool of choice (Adobe Camera RAW, Bibble Pro, Nikon Capture, etc.) you'll learn to "batch" your RAW files and make your life a lot easier. It still takes time though.

I hope that helps.

- Wil

[dw75209]

Wil,

Thanks for you reply, I will try shooting in RAW mode. I also need to start experimenting with the ISO settings

Don