Sorry ,
I have a very bad knack of not uploading photos as soon as I take
(Reason) not many in my gallery
Is just in process of sorting through 2-3 yrs of Photographs & its a pain in the butt

So my basic question is,
How do you guys keep a track of your images
I have come to conclusion I'll put them into basic folder structures

ANIMALS
NATURE
LANDSCAPE
ETC.
& Try to keep on top of from now on

Any advice would be appreciated

Thanks youagain Renderosity & it's members

Ok I hope all worked well , My 1st image should finally be up (Newest anyway) don't want to clog the forum

**I personally do them by date, starting with my folder for 2007, etc... and then add each new collection by date. Then from there, throughout the year you can put into seperate folders like, flowers, beach, people etc... then at the end of the year, I put them on an external hard drive and free up all that space, and start over...   that's just what I do... **

I do something similar.

Make a year folder "2008" then every time you upload a card you upload it to another folder within the year folder and reverse date it and put a keyword which will remind you what "day out" or scenario you were shooting in: "2008_01_23 - Bill's Wedding" or "2008_07_11 - Walkabout with Dave"

Then when you look back you will remember that on your walkabout with dave (in the summer) was the time you took that nice shot of a field of Poppy's or something.  That way you will not have to "sort" the images at the end of the year, or at least it will make it easier to find that particular picture you were looking for.

ETA - the reverse dating is so that when you click on "arrange icons by > Name" they all arrange into chronological order.

I would warn against using the "themed" approach, i tried and i just kept on mislaying images.  The other thing to do is to keyword your shots - i dont do this, but others do and find it effective at locating shots long after the event.

Photography is about the only thing in my life that I keep in order,

Here is an example of what my folders look like

2008_Jan_05_Jen&DonPortraits_01

This folder will contain all the raw files from whatever I happend to be shooting

My workflow goes like this

lightroom>>>Photoshop/Portrait Proffessional>>>Printsupload folder_(NAME)>>>upload to zenfolio

Everything initially gets uploaded to my 'Work in progress' folder then after any postwork the image gets saved in a seperate folder (leaving the original in place) when that folder has reached the equivalent size of a  what will fit on a CD I start a new one. I also keyword my images with the location and a short description, no more than two or three words. I use 'Picasa' to keep track of folders and also have albums for landscapes, flowers, nature etc. Once a month I backup to CD and harddrive.

It may seem a bit long-winded but it works for me. :)

Everything goes into a folder for the month, which goes on to CD at the end of the month. Then I move the best stuff to themed folders and sub-folders, and as each folder gets to the right size it gets backed up on cd too.

Akk great suggestions , Thanking you &  yeah turning off  date & ttine on the can seens reasonable , Long time since I been out of the game!
 Things beyond my control been going off so know time to research , But thanks again to you all :) better advice then anywhre else
Take Care All
Peace#
& Happy shooting!

I sort mine by the date they came out of the camera...

then two subfolders...

one, postworked (if any) at full size, then a "for web" folder

Date, Venue...within those folders, keepers are new folder holding 16bit full size Tiffs backed onto hard drives, and cd's.

Two piles....one for keepers, the other for trash.
Fortunately, over 90% are trashed...that saves a lot of drive space...LOL!

Quote - Two piles....one for keepers, the other for trash.
Fortunately, over 90% are trashed...that saves a lot of drive space...LOL!

I'm loathe to trhow away shots even if they are utter rubbish... i like to hoard it seems.

@Inshaala...yeah, I used to be that way too....kept everything.  The problem was my rubbish pile got so big, that it was just time to "take out the trash".
Now, I am pretty quick at deleting my garbage....can't do a lot with an OOF macro!..

Interesting tread for sure.

I organizing my pictures by themes. Animals...still life...so on. Every theme folder contains sub folders. 1: Originals: all my pictures start here a way it came out of the camera. 2: Finals: the final picture titled and framed/bordered. 

I have another forlder named Rendo. I keep  pictures here in smaller suitable size with thumbs ready to upload .  Also in this folder I have 2 sub folders 1: Been : containes those pictures  allready uploaded and 2: Yet: waiting to be uploaded to rendo.

Webgallery folder ( not rendo) I use a same sysytem. I go by theme. I have not get cunfused with this method yet, realy works for me.

But when ever I go to holiday I organized those shots by time and place. ( Tasmania.Port Artur ruins. 25/12/05) From these captures I just Copy /paste a picture what I want to use for rendo or my webgalery show and goes to the Theme folder ( landscape) and into  the " original" folder what mentioned above.

seeyus  Tunde

I organize by place, then time, as in

Columbia Gorge
    Multnomah Falls
         07-05-01
             PSD (For anything that gets postworked)
    Wahkeenah Falls
        07-06-05

The photo drive is 500 GB and mirrored and backed up.

If I'm looking for a photo on the drive, I'll be asking myself "where is that shot of Multnomah Falls" not "where is the shot I took on July 1 of this year" so this system works for me. Organize your stuff in the way that will make it easiest for you to find it.

Seems as though theres a great divide heh

Well 2008 Resolution

.Thou shall decide on a system that suits me , They were all labelled by location but now just in Sub-Catergories

.Thou will Keep a Monthly Folder with Sub Catergories indicating location

Thanks again guys & gals for your response :)

I don't sort my images. 

Instead, I file them in this structure ...

My 'CreativeLibrary' folder has several 'sub root' folders:
Upload, WiP, a folder for each scanner,
and a folder for each camera (both film or digital). 

The camera folders have a folder for each year: e.g. 2003, 2004, ...

within each of those 'annual' folders, I have a folder for each session
which is named in the form 'yyyy mm dd location or event name' ...
e.g. '2003 08 02 Pennsic XXXII starting'. 

Those files are on a mirrored drive (RAID 0+1) and currently aggregate
close to 10GBy in 7,700 files. 

BTW, , my music files amount to 5,600 music tracks which is more
than 50 GBy and have outgrown my desktop RAID array -- I will be
building a new desktop PC ... soon ... I think. 

In addition, on about a monthly cycle, I copy all of my files (images,
eMail, projects, ... ) onto 2 external USB HDD.  The latest completed
backup set has close to 70,000 files and occupies almost 30 GBy on
those external USB HDD. 

In the past, I had backed up my files by using WinZip for each major
area: creative, music, eMail, projects, ... and then splitting the resulting
ZIP archives into segments that were smaller than 700 MBy and writing
those files to CD-R disks -- that process included generating MD5
checksum values for each original ZIP file, as well as for each split ZIP
file (each part being smaller than 700MBy) verification while writing the
CDs, verification of the MD5 checksums on the resulting CDs and file by
file verification of the CD-R content -- i.e. ensuring that the CDs were
readable ... BTW, everything was written and verified onto 2 identical CDs. 

Now it's a lot easier to copy to large external HDD -- faster, too. 

Keep in mind that I have all of my essential data in 3 places (3 copies):
desktop RAID array, and also 2 external USB HDD. 

--
Martin

Some very good ideas on how to save them!

Does anyone have a tool/program/method that does a good job of cross indexing of different subjects in the photo. 

Such as Class of 1963 reunion, Debby, and College High School. Sorry, that was the best I could think of that you might want to index a picture on. 

Index for Over all reason, person in picture, location and what is special about the picture.

This might have been covered before, but I do not remember any comments like this is the best tool/program/method.

Here is a way to do that without adding any software to your system ...

For each image, create a small text file -- the file name would be the same
as the image file name ... but ending in .TXT

Just type what ever contents information you want into the text file for
the corresponding image. 

Save the description text file into the same folder as the image.

Search using windows search and type what you're looking for into the
'Containing text:' field. 

If this sounds like a lot of work ... you're right, it is a lot of work -- OTOH,
if you bought software to help with the indexing, you would have the
same amount of effort to supply indexing information for each photo. 

This has the advantage of being free.  ... Except for your time, that is. 

HTH

--
Martin

MGD That is a good idea.

Hurray for Martin!

This solves also the problem of not being able to see raw shots in WinExploder.

Well, my method leaves something to be desired but works well for me.  Since I relate mentally to my photos more by theme than date, I file in folders such as Local, Family, Vacations(named for the particular trip or holiday events), etc.   I also have temp folders for prelim keeping those which may be deleted later.  These themes are also dated .

In each folder are subfolders such as unedited, edited, etc.  All computer work on an image is in a subfolder within the primary folder.

I have similar folders on 2 external hard drives and regularly save to these drives.  When space is needed on the primary drive, a folder is deleted from the pc and all is on the externals.

The problem is recently coming up with a messy solution of too many temp folders.  It was too easy to upload to the temp folders and then these grew and became unmanagable.  So, back to a few temp folders and the rest in the theme/date filing format.  Works for me. 

Within a Renderosity folder are challenge, gallery(by year), forum post and more. These are routinely deleted except for gallery and challenge photos. These are edited duplicates of photos from the other folders mentioned above.             Tom.

Ahh. the .txt file is a fine idea!

Sorted by date, and the ones I've postworked get saved to another folder and re-named.

I sort mine out into those I can delete straight away and those I can delete after I have made some doomed attempt at rescue by postworking them.