Photo Filing Tips

[Rmclain3]

Does anyone have any tips or techniques about filing your pictures on your hard drive? I'm going to begin making photo DVDs soon and I'm wondering if there are ant preferred ways to file photos that might make this process easier.

[epoh]

I used to organize my photos by date, but I realized later that it was still hard to locate certain photos in a whole mess of dated folders. I now organize things by event and date. I have them all seperated by year (so one big folder for 2005, 2006, etc) and then all the other folders under that. In each subfolder there's psd files and then a folder of jpg pics for web use.

I think everyone has their own system.. it just depends on how you like things organized.

[amadjuster]

The hardest part of this is the initial organizational tree. More time establishing this takes longer but pays off later. Just uploading tons of pictures into a folder, even by year, can be a nightmare later on.

[Daniel Bates]

I'm just starting to do it now, but I have date & subject folders. For example: \Pictures\Canon 1D pictures\09-07-06_PhotoClub meeting\filename. It keeps the events in order (yyyy-mm-dd) and gives me a quick subject tag. From there, the photos go into "originals", "good", and "web" (along with "layers" if there is some heavy PS work involved).

[Night Owl]

As a vast majority of my work is aviation, I organize by date, registration and image number. For instance, if I went out today and took a pic of Continental's 'Peter Max' ship, it would be filed as "n77014_1_091106" for the final edit and "raw_n77014_1_091106" for the RAW file.

[jordankreationz]

Originally Posted by Night Owl

As a vast majority of my work is aviation, I organize by date, registration and image number. For instance, if I went out today and took a pic of Continental's 'Peter Max' ship, it would be filed as "n77014_1_091106" for the final edit and "raw_n77014_1_091106" for the RAW file.

Whoa! I would never find anything ever. Numbers frighten me!

I usually have year folder, then subfolders detailing event and month/ year. (2006/Pep Rally 9/06). I was redoing mine this morning tho so it is apt to change. I find that my daughters have placed alot of Paul Walker and Camaro pictures all over my hard drive.

DJ

[CobyPhoto]

Ok, I am going to cover my studio's file naming procedure. It might not work for others, but it definitely makes life around here very simple.

Each Session is given a Master # that is used to track the session. That Master # is then the Folder: 24000_MARTINEZ and the files in the folder: 24000_MARTINEZ_001, 24000_MARTINEZ_002 and so on.

We download to the folder, do an initial edit for OOF and obvious Non-keepers. Then the files are re-named using the convention above. ANY subsequent file made from these "masters" will have the same naming convention and reference to the original, no matter what the file type, work done on it, etc., they will just be in another sub-folder or type of file. You can easily search for a file and find it by knowing the Master # and find ALL edits and versions of that original file. Just search for the Master #.

Master # is cataloged on the active session card, and an Excel file that is regularly updated and backed up and printed. We have a short description, date and client name on the list for look up. Plus, you can sort Excel data in ANY order you need it, to expedite finding a session when the number isn't known. The printed list is for reference by my workers and when printing.

Data is backed up regularly, and is stored on a NAS that is raid 5. Further, after downloading, initial edit and re-naming the files are burned to a CD and placed with the session work folder.

When we archive, we use 300 Gig SATA hard drives and move all inactive folders on to the hard drive, seal it in an air tight bag and place it in the large, fire proof wall safe.

Everything is referenced by the Master # on the archive drives in order to facilitate retrieval is a customer returns and wants more prints after we have archived the files.

The hard drives are rotated and the data just written over when we decide it is no longer viable for our studio.

Hope this gives you some ideas about what will work for you.

CJ

[Rmclain3]

Thanks to all of you for your suggestions! It took me several evenings to get all of my photos organized. I decided that dates and occasion names seem to work well for me now. Next step will be to figure out how to make good DVD presentations!!

[Russell]

Here is a PP presentation I did for an outdoor writers group late last winter.

It details my filing system.

www.russellgraves.com/towa/bandera.ppt

Hope it helps!

-Russell

[digitaldooda]

There are some great books out there on DAM (Digital Asset Management) if you want more research. I use this naming sequence :
Belt_060918_subject_0001

This identifies the images as: mine, YY/MM/DD,client/subject, image number. This way the client can easily find which images were submitted by me, they are in chronological order and I know what they are about.