Ok I Need Some Serious Help

[Guest Tess32]

I am the worst photo organiser ever and this is one of my NY resolutions now!

I NEED to organise the thousands of pics I have literally everywhere - about a zillion folders, two different computers and an external hdd, hehe.

Anyone have any idea or good ideas how to START?

:D

[kja]

I dunno where to start...I'm a bit the same way since the crash and backing up to what seems like 20 different places and trying to double check things!

Here's what I'm doing...I'm importing the photos at their own location in LR and then adding keywords etc. there. As long as the folder structure remains the same, I will be able to find things again. If I change the folder structure, I can hit the ? button and point LR to the right place. So far it's saved my bacon a couple of times since the crash.

As for where to start with folders themselves, I did things in date order ... the oldest stuff first. I think anywhere you start is a good place coz that always seems to be the hardest thing for me! I even got carried away with some folders and deleted stuff that I knew in my heart I'd never bother with but just hadn't taken the time to deal with ...

Edited December 30, 2008 by kja

[Luke W]

I'm about to embark on a new workflow using Lightroom.

This will involve importing all my images into Lightroom, adding keywords and copyright data. It'll be quite a project.

There's quite a bit on the net about using Lightroom as a digital asset management tool.

Here's a couple I'm starting with:

http://blogs.oreilly.com/lightroom/2008/06...l-workflow.html

http://www.organizepictures.com/2008/05/ad...word-management

[Guest Tess32]

My problem was that I had half the time been eg:

Go to zoo, download zoo photos, copy the lion photos to a folder called lions etc.

Rather than using keywords.

Now, I'm just a muddle of confusion! I guess I could start with going through it all and deleting the enormous amount I really should have deleted, heh.

[kja]

Why can't you have folders called "lions"? I have "puppies", "underwater", "land" (talk about a jumble of stuff!) etc ...

Do you have a vision of how you would like things organized?

[Clicking Mad]

I organise all mine by date, all the originals keep their download number eg. IMG3098 within the exact date folder eg. 2008_01_02

When I edit them I change the names to what they are eg. Texas, Texas01 etc. within a date folder eg. Jan08

If I have a special event within a month eg. Barwon Heads the edited pics go into another folder within the month folder.

But all the originals are still kept in the exact date folder. With the multitudes I take these days sometimes within the original date folders I have copies in another folder of "bestof" within the exact date folder.

One folder for "2008_01_02" containing IMG3098 originals

possibly within that folder another folder for "bestof" containing IMG3098 originals

One folder for "Jan08" containing Texas01 edited pics

possibly within that folder another folder for "BarwonHeads" containing Texas01 edited pics

I organised all my shots from old cameras via date earlier this year. I copied all originals to an external hard drive/2nd computer, and copied the edited pics to the external hard drive when I'd finished for the month, but often onto flash drives in-between. I probably had it easier than you because until the beginning of this year I wasn't taking half as many pics as I take now. Since I already have this set-up going now with the hundreds per day I take it makes it a relative breeze

Doesn't mean I'll always know where to find a specific picture but it helps cut down the search I think?

The good thing about the edited date thing is that if I find a pic that I've edited and want to have another play around, or do something with the original I can just check the properties to find the date (sometimes even down to the time of day) and then just go to the original date folder, I have done that a few times with success.

Could you start by doing a search/sort by date within your lion folder for example and organise them that way?

edited to add: personally I wouldn't start by deleted the duds 'cause that is what is gonna take the most amount of time, deciding what to get rid of and what to keep. I'd find it easier to get them into some sort of order before I deleted.

Actually I keep most duds (as originals) except the ones that are all blur or all over/under-exposed in camera before I download, the rest stay ... for the moment

Edited December 30, 2008 by Clicking Mad

[Luke W]

At the moement - I organise by date and each 'shoot' is contained in a folder.

Each folder looks like this:

20081226 Keyword1 Keyword2 Keyword3....

So for example:

20081226 Boxing Day Beach Family Barkly

20080824 Melbourne Zoo Animals

20080402 Vacation Queensland Noosa Fraser Island Animals Dolphins

I'm now started to build a hierarchical set of keywords that'll I'll use in Lightroom. That's a big job!

Here's some keyword lists I found on Google:

http://www.outsight.com/stocksearch.php

http://www.imagesbrighton.com/keywords.htm

http://www.esmondephotography.com/viewKeyw...p;cat=651618618

[Guest Tess32]

I've got lightroom 2.2 so I think it might be easier if I use that as the main organising tool.

Then I can have each folder just by date and one keyword eg 12.08.08 Noah, and then I can import into lightroom, colour code unedited/finished and use the scoring system as well. Plus can add all the keywords into there...

[Clicking Mad]

yeh I'm obviously talking "My Pictures" in "My Computer" type folders which is how I copy to external drives

Now that I too have lightroom I think I may look into what lukew's talking about ;)

[Guest Tess32]

Yep that's what I was doing, just organising in windows....but now I think a program will suit me better and so far the lightroom stuff is going well

[Guest Tess32]

I think I'm in love with lightroom..

I've so far deleted about 10 gig of photos, imported for keeping about 1800 so far.

The keywords are easy to use, in a hierarchy.

I've made smart collections so that colour coded means - red (Completed editing/original), Green is an edited copy and Yellow means unedited. So I can click on yellow and get everything I need to edit.

One star means - snapshot I'm keeping

A flag means - going to be uploaded for website display.

[kja]

I love the way you can mark images for various uses in Lightroom...I'm still bad about adding keywords a lot of times, but those colours and stars help me so much!

[Guest Tess32]

Oh god, I just realised I have about 10,000 image to sort through....I have been doing it every day for a week and I've done 2500 only, so only 10k to go, hehe.