organising photo files?

[bellbird425]

i know there've been a heap of threads about organising ur digi stuff but i havent seen one re: photos.

so i have heaps and heaps of photos (from 2 diff canon cameras) and currently just create a folder for each month and dump all my photos from that month in it, and sometimes add subfolders for particular events (eg. a b'day) or that i have alot of the same photos of (ie. portrait shoot with green shirt). I then have a seperate folder for photos i have edited (as i keep all the originals in those month folders and the 'edited' folder is just a mish mash). What does everyone else do? i'm finding my system is becoming a pain given the amount of photos i take and having two cameras (some times i have a seperate DSLR folder within the monthly folder but i'm not consistent with that)

[girlflies]

Honestly, who has time to organize photos too? I can't even keep up with kits!
I do what you do basically. At the end of each month I empty my cards into that month's folder (located in the 2009 folder). Scan the kids' art and add it too. Then I immediately purge the crummy stuff. No mercy, 'cause I may not get back there anytime soon.
I don't even sub-group for special occaisions or anything anymore. Frankly, when you want to find something you generally know the year, month or season it which it took place (birthdays, holidays, vacations...),
I have been doing this chronologically for three years now and it really works for me. Simple, simple, simple!! (like me) :D

[jessica31876]

I just organize my photos by the year then put them in individual folders as I upload them.

[jessica31876]

Ohhh and if I have a photo that I REALLY want to scrap I copy it to my 'pictures to scrap' folder so I can find it really easy

[Kim]

I do it so basic... nothing special

one yearly folder with monthly folders in them and every week or so I upload to the appropriate month and label them with the date that I upload them.

thats it. I have a hard time searching for specific pictures that way, but with out a program, I dont know how else to do it.

[bellbird425]

Ohhh and if I have a photo that I REALLY want to scrap I copy it to my 'pictures to scrap' folder so I can find it really easy

i used to do that when i first started scrapping, i should start doing that again

[nun69]

I sorta do the same thing.....

1. yearly folder
2. subdivied into monthly folders
3. also subdivided under year are each child, event, vacation, etc
4. under each child, subdivided into month!

I like the idea of putting photos you want to scrap into a folder "waiting to scrap photos!"...may have to add that folder as well! and I likethe idea of scanning the kids artwork and adding that too!

[Stacey42]

I have a main year folder with months as sub folders. Those are for family & events photos. DS1 has a folder for the pictures he takes. I also have seperate 'random' and '365' folders. Random has subfolders like - food, indoor, outdoor, cats, where I put pictures after I decide whether to use them in my 365 project or not. Photos chosen for it get moved to the 365 folder. It has a seperate 'edited' folder

I delete any duplicates of the chosen 365 photos and any blurry, etc photos from the random folder. I try to delete bad pictures in the monthly folders but I get lazy about it.

[Jennifer]

Simple for me, too. Year/month folders with special event subfolders. In each folder, I have an already edited folder. I have a sep. 365 folder with weekly subfolders. Sooooooo many pics, lol...but I can usually find what I need. :)

[newfiemountiewife]

Mine are just done by the year/month. It's good enough for me, we take a lot of pics, but it's not some insane amount or anything. I can find what I need no problems.

[BrattyMeg]

I just do year/month too. If I see a photo right away that I know I want to scrap, I copy it into a Photos To Scrap folder

[kim21673]

I have folders by

1. years
**months (with all the general pictures...good and bad)

and then within the months
**special occasions (trips, birthdays, haircuts, special "studio" shots that I have taken with backdrops, etc..)
**pictures to scrap folder
**edited pictures or pictures to upload to Costco (those special pictures where I drag out the backdrops for and want bigger prints made)

As I scrap a picture, I move it out of the pictures to scrap folder.

[chloe]

I store them by month, and I name the pix year.month.day, for example a pic taken today would be 09.03.29 001.jpg. Then I tag all my pix in ACDSee, mostly by who's on it, sometimes by theme (weight loss, christmas,...) With the renaming I do, when I choose a tagging category, all are in chronological order when I choose "sort by name".

Oh, and don't forget to BACK UP!!!!!

[bellbird425]

I store them by month, and I name the pix year.month.day, for example a pic taken today would be 09.03.29 001.jpg. Then I tag all my pix in ACDSee, mostly by who's on it, sometimes by theme (weight loss, christmas,...) With the renaming I do, when I choose a tagging category, all are in chronological order when I choose "sort by name".


wow u are organised!

[Jennilyn]

Besides the edited ones, I do exactly as you do :) On my Fotki account I have a yearly folder, then monthly folders within that unless there's a big event with a lot of photos, then I have a separate folder for those (within the yearly one).

[chloe]

wow u are organised!

Wow, that's something I never heard about myself!! :thumbup: Actually, my photos were such a mess before that I got completely frustrated, so I had to overcome my messy nature! LOL

[ColleenSwerb]

I do it by year, then by month. Within the month I have a lightroom folder where everything gets imported to through LR and converted to DNG. After LR editing, they get exported to a JPG folder, and inside the JPG folder is a web size folder. If there's a special event (like this weekend we're going to DC for the Cherry Blossom festival) it gets a separate folder in the main month folder.

That sounds really confusing reading it back now, LOL! But it's basically a year>month system. 365 has it's own folder and images inside are renamed (nothing else gets renamed, I'm way too lazy for that) in XXX.jpg format so that they will show chronologically when I'm done. I have a notebook where I write a description of each photo with the matching XXX number.

Eventually, I'm going to get some catalogs set up inside LR for my favorite pictures of the year so I can tag through that. I already tag with the year, month, description (Tiger, Jordan, house, P365, etc etc), but I haven't started adding ratings.