How do you organize your photos?

[Kaitlyn]

So I'm looking for a better/more effective way to organize my growing collection of photos..

I currently have my photos stored as:
\Pictures\YY.MM.DD - Event name\IMG_####.JPG/CR2

This has worked well generally, but I'm looking to do something like:
\Pictures\YYYY\YYMMDD_EventName\[maybe-descriptive-caption]_####.JPG/CR2

There are two main problems I see myself facing:
- What about random/more casual shots that don't really belong to any event?
- What about events that span multiple days/months? If I put it in YYYY folders, new years eve/day photo taking would be difficult to store!

Any suggestions/ideas? I've done lots of searching but they all seem to follow the same guideline and don't account for things like this! How do you organize your photos?

[Winkle]

So I'm looking for a better/more effective way to organize my growing collection of photos..

I currently have my photos stored as:
\Pictures\YY.MM.DD - Event name\IMG_####.JPG/CR2

This has worked well generally, but I'm looking to do something like:
\Pictures\YYYY\YYMMDD_EventName\[maybe-descriptive-caption]_####.JPG/CR2

There are two main problems I see myself facing:
- What about random/more casual shots that don't really belong to any event?
- What about events that span multiple days/months? If I put it in YYYY folders, new years eve/day photo taking would be difficult to store!

Any suggestions/ideas? I've done lots of searching but they all seem to follow the same guideline and don't account for things like this! How do you organize your photos?

Develop your own system!

I do

\Photos\Subject\Specific_Event\File_Name.whatever

So subject is a general tag, like Birthdays, Events, Trips, Family, Random etc., and then I'll do specific event folders like whose birthday is it, a specific trip or whatever with a date in the folder name. For subfolders under Random, it's just a date for the folder name. Works well for me.

If something spans multiple dates, then the Specific_Event folder will not have a date in the folder name, instead I'll create more subfolders one for each date and so forth. I don't think it's critical that you be consistent on how many levels of folders you go into, I go as deep as is necessary.

[TenzoR]

main folder name = "yyyy-MM-dd <event_name>"
under the main folder I usually have another folder name orig for the unprocessed, untouched raw files

the ones in the main folder are the ones I've processed for albums

[chin]

This has worked well generally, but I'm looking to do something like:
\Pictures\YYYY\YYMMDD_EventName\[maybe-descriptive-caption]_####.JPG/CR2

this is what i do. but in case of long weekend events for example, i'll have it:
\YYYY\MM.DD-DD.YY - description

for casual/random shots, itd just put it in its own folder too (\YYYY\MM.DD.YY - randomX)

if i were concerned about year overlap...mmm, maybe put all of the pics in the previous year (say 2009\newyears or whatever) then make a new folder for \2010\newyears) but have them be just shortcuts to the previous folder. that way you have a clear 2010 folder, but no dupes in pics

[Lulz]

why are you guys so concerned about date?
like what difference if the folder's name is 26-10-09/Homer's Birthday or just the name itself.

I use simple method and it hasn't failed me yet.
I just create a subject folder.

For example this summer I went to Russia (like i do every year) so this year's folder was Russia 2009

or last year I went to Autoshow.

want to find that close-up picture you remembered taking? simple...just remember where it was and you will know what folder it's in.

I really don't understand people who have different sub-folders in different years. for example, 2008 has folder called Birthday, which has many other folders like: Peter, Brian, Steve...and so forth.

[ryan_lau100]

[QUOTE=Lulz;9650216]why are you guys so concerned about date?
like what difference if the folder's name is 26-10-09/Homer's Birthday or just the name itself.

I use simple method and it hasn't failed me yet.
I just create a subject folder.

For example this summer I went to Russia (like i do every year) so this year's folder was Russia 2009

or last year I went to Autoshow.

want to find that close-up picture you remembered taking? simple...just remember where it was and you will know what folder it's in.

I really don't understand people who have different sub-folders in different years. for example, 2008 has folder called Birthday, which has many other folders like: Peter, Brian, Steve...and so forth.
QUOTE]

Because going forward after 10yrs or so of photos you will have just a huge collection of stuff but will probably find it hard to come up with what name you attached to the folder.

It is a lot easier remember by date rather than names... I ran into this problem very quickly in less than 2 years.

Also when archiving to disk or HDD how do you know whats on each? I backup according to dates. Think about trying to dump 1TB worth of photos on a backup drive and have to create some type of database listing all the photos on that one drive...

I simply write on the HDD Jan 08 - Mar 08... Take the drive out and now I know exactly whats on it.

[NuggyBuggy]

See the DAM book for better ideas about organizing your photos. Organizing by folders breaks down very easily. I let my DAM program stuff photos into folders arranged by capture month, but only to make things easier on the file system. Information like subject, event, people in the photos, etc. are all done by the DAM program, which makes it possible to look for things that don't fall neatly into single-dimensional labels.

I use Expression Media, but have reached its limit and am looking for an alternative.

[Winkle]

Eh, for annual events like birthdays and fireworks shows etc., I just throw in the year at the end... I don't need to do specific dates since it'll be in the EXIF data anyway. Random shots I usually sort out by months and year. For vacations/trips I will sort each folder by day because I usually take a lot each day.

[CSAgent]

[QUOTE=ryan_lau100;9650355]

why are you guys so concerned about date?
like what difference if the folder's name is 26-10-09/Homer's Birthday or just the name itself.

I use simple method and it hasn't failed me yet.
I just create a subject folder.

For example this summer I went to Russia (like i do every year) so this year's folder was Russia 2009

or last year I went to Autoshow.

want to find that close-up picture you remembered taking? simple...just remember where it was and you will know what folder it's in.

I really don't understand people who have different sub-folders in different years. for example, 2008 has folder called Birthday, which has many other folders like: Peter, Brian, Steve...and so forth.
QUOTE]

Because going forward after 10yrs or so of photos you will have just a huge collection of stuff but will probably find it hard to come up with what name you attached to the folder.

It is a lot easier remember by date rather than names... I ran into this problem very quickly in less than 2 years.

Also when archiving to disk or HDD how do you know whats on each? I backup according to dates. Think about trying to dump 1TB worth of photos on a backup drive and have to create some type of database listing all the photos on that one drive...

I simply write on the HDD Jan 08 - Mar 08... Take the drive out and now I know exactly whats on it.

I know what you mean. I categorize by year then by bi-annual now going back as far as early 2006. I then make an exact duplicate to an external back up drive(s). At the rate I'm going I foresee an external NAS and possibly upgrading to 2TB drives.

Though I think in 10 years time a new hard drive technology will come into play and we'll all have to do it all over again.

[ryan_lau100]

[QUOTE=CSAgent;9650829]

I know what you mean. I categorize by year then by bi-annual now going back as far as early 2006. I then make an exact duplicate to an external back up drive(s). At the rate I'm going I foresee an external NAS and possibly upgrading to 2TB drives.

Though I think in 10 years time a new hard drive technology will come into play and we'll all have to do it all over again.

dude... just wait till you start pumping out those 24MB raws...

im at 5TBs already! lol!

[Kaitlyn]

dude... just wait till you start pumping out those 24MB raws...

Ya, I just started getting those with my new T1i... I have to get new hard drives - fast!

[sfu_engineer]

I organize by date with a directory structure like this:

Pictures/2009/2009-10-22/

I add descriptive tags as well to all the images. This is all done automatically when I import the photos into my computer through Adobe Lightroom. At the import it gets sent to a RAID1 drive so that I have backups of all the images right away. When the drives are full (this happens faster than I would like) I move one of the RAID backups to an off-site location for storage.

I tried organizing by folders before with descriptive text and not dates but it quickly became too crazy as I take a lot of photos for fun and for work. Hope this helps.

[Kaitlyn]

I organize by date with a directory structure like this:

Pictures/2009/2009-10-22/

So how do you handle multi-day events? Or like in my example, new years that may span into 2 days and years?

[sfu_engineer]

So how do you handle multi-day events? Or like in my example, new years that may span into 2 days and years?

Good question. Some of the weddings I photograph go into the wee hours of the morning of the next day. This does separate them into two folder directories. But this isn't what I give to people anyways but its just an organizational system that will give me some sane way to go through 1000's of photos.

One way you could handle multi day/year spanning photo events would be to cheat and put all the photos into the folder of the first day. Within that folder you can create "Day 1" and/or "Day 2" folders if it was a longer event. Otherwise you can just use tags.

[ricsad]

The thing with categorizing them by date or event is the amount of work. Sometimes if you shoot past midnight, you'll have to categorize them into two folders because they're two different dates. If you categorize them by event, then you have to think of a name every time you import your photos. What if you did multiple events in one day? That means you have to sort them into several folders. What if you did the same event on multiple days? It just becomes too much unnecessary work.

A lot of people just do Camera Model > 101CANON > IMG1952.JPG. I was recommended that long ago on FM I think. The problem with this method is that when you use multiple memory cards, the camera can screw up on the file file numbering.

Now I just use Lightroom import feature. It automatically puts them into their own folder by import date. The original filenames are left intact. To categorize them, I just use lightroom keywords and catalog. The date is already in the EXIF so no need to worry about that.