HELP arranging my digital library collection!!

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Archive 2010 · HELP arranging my digital library collection!!

spykids777
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p.1 #1 · HELP arranging my digital library collection!!

Hi,

This is my first posting in this forum. I am looking for some suggestions regarding organizing my digital lib collection. I have been a tad bit lazy about my digital photography collection

I have a bunch of photographs imported on to my hard drive organized into folders with names like Soccer games, DIsney vacation etc etc and a lot more of picture (JPEG and RAW) in " To be worked on folder" with default folders from the camera copied directly.

Which is the best way to organize the tons of pictures?
1) Rename the pictures directly with individual names? - will take me years to do it!!
2) Make Folders with Year. Subcategory of months and then move the pictures to the respective months folder based upon date shot information in the EXIF data? - Can Lightroom do this?
3) Should I just import the files into Lightroom library just where ever they are and just assign Keywords so that I can search for a specific topic related files by keyword search?.

Sorry for the long question but I am quite confused and looking for help from the folks out there who have been doing this for a while and also esp from those that have done this after having collected pictures for a few years and then decided to arrange their library.

Thanks in advance.

Feb 07, 2010 at 07:38 PM

mhermsen
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p.1 #2 · HELP arranging my digital library collection!!

Hi spykid,

This is how i do it and for me it workd fine for the last 8 years.

Each time i empty my flashcard i put the fotos in a folder with a name starting with the date (only year and month) and then followed by a description of whats in it. Example:

2010 01 disneyworld

The folder is given this name in the importtool of Adobe LR. I also give the hole import the same keyword(s). Sometimes i ad individual keywords to some of the pictures but not offten.

On my disk the folders are organized in years:

2009
\private
\\2009 08 birthday clark
\\2009 09 garden
\payed assignment
\\2009 04 opening shop x
2010
\private
\\2010 01 disneyland
\payed assignment
etc

Makes you very happy, once you're organized ;-)

marco

Feb 08, 2010 at 10:34 AM

mhayes5254
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p.1 #3 · HELP arranging my digital library collection!!

I have a folder for each year. Within the year folder I create a folder named by month # - title
01- NH ski trip
02- xxxxxxx
03- xxxxxx

Starting with the month number with leading zero for a single digit month (01), etc. arranges them by date through the year and the remainder of the name should be descriptive so you can use it to search later. I generally do not rename the individual files but it may make sense to give them a descriptive series name "ski trip-001.jpg", ski trip-001.NEF"etc

The disk folders must have a logical structure. Some day you may want to change from Lightroom to some other database application, and the database info will probably not be compatible. The pictures need some underlying structure.

Feb 09, 2010 at 05:36 AM

deanwh
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p.1 #4 · HELP arranging my digital library collection!!

You need to buy the Dam Book by Peter Krogh
This is the definitive bible of asset managment and whilst it takes sometime to move over to this method, its worth it in the long run.

If you want a great program for cataloging you cant go past IDImager.

Its critical to get this right and the Dam book lays out all the fundementals.

Good luck

Feb 09, 2010 at 06:37 AM

Alan321
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p.1 #5 · HELP arranging my digital library collection!!

I'd go with option 3 (Lr and keywording; files where they are), but I recommend that you try using Downloader Pro to name the files better as they are imported from card or camera to your computer.

- Alan

Feb 10, 2010 at 09:45 AM

Gerry Kerr
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p.1 #6 · HELP arranging my digital library collection!!

I would second the Dam Book - its a great read and helps sort out a strategy that works long term and I would do it before I bought any software.

For me I tend to treat RAW files completely differently from processed images. I have 2 hard drives, one for RAW images and one for processed images. I use lightroom to import the images and add very basic keywords. I also use light room to go through and rate the images (pick, unflagged and reject) then delete the rejects.

I use IDImager to manage the processed images on the second drive. This has the advantage that I dont get into complex keywording for images that either end up deleted or at best kept just in case, yet I can still find them by the import keywords. I find idImager ( and believe me I've tried most catalogers) to be a superb tool to organise images.

I dont try to use file name or folders to tell me about the images - i use keywords for that. It works for me and I came up with y system based on Peter Krogh's book

Gerry

Feb 10, 2010 at 02:29 PM


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