Last week I was going to post a picture and realized I had made a terrible mistake.  The edited photo I had, was sized for a website and was a bit small.  The mistake I had made was, I did not move the master into the folder with my edited work to keep all of them together.  I went ahead and posted the version I had apologizing for my smaller size explaining that I was simply too lazy to dig out the master and redo it hoping people would laugh due to the fact they have found themselves in the same situation somewhere in their past.  MrsLubner posted a comment that she in fact had no organization to her photos and it made me think…….how many of us are overwhelmed by a sea of bad photos with no organization system for the good ones??  I recently adopted my system and thought I might pass it on to the rest of you in hopes at least 1 person might benefit….

Step 1:  When I pull my pics off my cards I put them into a folder on my desktop labeled “unedited pics”.

Step 2:  When in the mood to do some post work (by now I have sent several batches of pics to the folder) I go thru the “unedited pics” folder using either the bridge or just my Windows Media and delete out my immediate rejects.  I basically filter down to pics that I want to take a closer look at.  Then move those pics into a folder named just that, “ready for a 2nd look”.  (I have that “ready for a 2nd look” folder so if I only get that far in my sorting process I can keep track of what stage everything is at.  Many times I'm too busy to get it all done in one night.)

Step 3:  Now for some serious editing….  Using my photoshop I open the pics from the folder “ready for a 2nd look” and start looking too see if it’s a TRUE keeper and start doing my post work.

Step 4:   Personally, I do a duplicate, do all my photoshop edits EXCEPT CROPPING.  I then save both of these.  Say Im going to name the pic Wall of Color.  I save the master as WallofColor-M.  Then the postwork version gets named WallofColor-EM.  M for master, EM for edited master.

NOTE:  When I save these, I have several folders named appropriately:  Macros, Landscape, Animals, ect. and put them in the appropriate home.

Step 5:  THEN I duplicate the edited master and crop.  And of course I name it appropriately but for myself in a unique way….by the size and if its for web.  Say the pic ends up with a size of 1000px x 800px and its for the web to go on Renderosity.  It would be named WallofCorlor-1000pX800p-FW.  I do this for a specific reason, I have been known to crop for more than one size or format.  For example, if I want to print a pic I would save the pic for the size I made it (WallofColor-8iX10i) and so on. 

So why all the saving in different ways??  Simple…….I”M LAAAAZY!!!!!  Because I have done a master full version photoshoped version and saved it……I NEVER HAVE TO AGAIN!!!!  If I want to crop it different and whatnot, no prob but the brunt of work is done.  If a friend wants a print out of a pic, cool, I go to the folder and see if I already have that sized version………you get it.

So my end result in the folder might look like:

WallofColor-M

WallofColor-EM

WallofColor-1000pX800p-FW

WallofColor-8iX10i

WallofColor-5iX7i

I challenge the rest of you to share some tips, ideas or your organizational formats to pass along to others!!

I also was a victim of my own making. Thousands of photos and no rhyme or reason to them. I would not say I am cured but certainly reformed. I used the following method to help me sort through the sea of bad to get the gold.

1.all photos imported with date as folder name.

2.Since I shoot in raw I have an extra step once my post work is done, I have to save the master and then save again as a Jpeg.(I only do this for the stuff I am looking at presenting.

3.When I look through the batch the first time I pull out the keeprs and move them to a folder called Best of..(2012 or whatever the year may be)

1. After the post is done I save the master back to the 'best of' folder and then the jpeg to a subfolder called 'web ready'.

5.Once I have uploaded I move the file to another subfolder called 'posted to renderosity' This way I know that if there is a file in web ready, I have not yet uploaded it.

When I feel nostalgic or want to find something new to work on I can just go back through the dated folders and pick a time of year that I think might hold an interesting hidden gem. It isn't perfect but it has helped me sort out the mess.

As for all of the saving of same but different files, by shotting in raw(for Nikon) I can edit and save as many versions as I want inside of the one raw file. This way there is only one file with multiple versions of the same picture.

Do you save all of this to an external hd? I can't imagine how much room I'd need to store all this on my internal hd...

I save my photos in Year/month/day on my Backup drive D, whish i call g because that was its name before i got this computer. Just so I know what drive it was before. :-D.... and a backup to that on my drive F

What I want to post on RR is ready, resized and done and put into a folder named RR upload. Same with other places, my homepage, Flickr. All this is in Drive C

Later I will sort them out in genres for backup on another backup drive D which is called G. In a big folder called" Organized Photos" and another called "Organized Paintings"

The Homepage pictures will stay in the folders.   They will stay there being identical to what I have up there.  I have a backup of that on the drive D, which, as said,  is actually called G.

Then I have many other folders for scanned art and fractals and this and that. That is in folder C, which I sometimes backup to my backup drives.

I have three harddrives. The C, the big backup drive G, which is actually drive D and an extra Backup for photos and things i would cry if i loose :) They are in Backup F

That means, that if i get a new computer, it happens, that it will have an extra, extra drive, or a BIIIG folder  with 2 backup drives folders in it LOL! 

I have an older F drive in the G which as told is actually the D drive and many old DOCUMENT folders as backups. Untill now i can still have SOME order it it all. Can you believe that?

OH, and then I have a little external harddrive where i keep a backup of the backup Photos LOLOLOL!

Are you confused?

To make clear,

Drive C has a terabyte space.

Drive D (called G) has 500GB

Drive F had 500gb too.

The little External has 150GB

I have exactly 23008 photos alone in my 'photos' folder(where I import), I just checked lol. This is not even comparable to what I HAD before formatting and backing up clients sessions on DVDs! I'm happy EOS utility takes care of the sorting mostly for my RAW files, otherwise I'd be swamped!

I have a folder for exporting after minor editing(main after RAW), then subs for Renderosity ,500px/ DeviantArt,ModelMayhem and Facebook for my personal photos. Then I have sub folders in another folder for clients per name/date and their various sizes for websites, e-mail and Hi-res.

I need a new harddrive or two ;/

I do plan to store onto an external HD in the future.  I am a complete amateur at photography (my husband go me my first digital camera last Easter) because I would drive him crazy wanting him to take me a specific shot and he just wasnt getting the shots I wanted, lol.  Now I have to get it myself!

Anyways, I have not accumulated the mass amounts of photos that a pro would, but if I were to put them on an external I would easily be able to work on my photos in bed at night as our laptop has photoshop too.  Now i just have to fight hubby over the laptop, lol.

Either way, on internal or external, I was able to go thru approx 1700 pics with my first step filter system in about an hour and a half, maybe less.  Ive ended up with about 100 to take a 2nd look at so you can see how this can be a time saver once you get your system down.  1700 down to 100 is far less daunting.

PS:  I do have a friend that does pro photography (weddings mostly).  She uses an external.  Names the folder by client name (last, first).  Then in subfolders organizes them.  She has had the same client use her more than once (grad pics, weddings, etc) so she will subfolder the events and dates them.

I take 10,000 to 15,000 photos every year, and storage and archiving are important concepts to me. Most cameras have only a four-digit number, automatically preventing you from using the number as a unique locating tool. I shoot in raw mode and immediately use an Excel macro to add one or more digits to the front of the camera's number. Currently I am in the 60,000 range with my present camera. Other letters distinguish the file name from those taken with my other cameras. So, every photo I take has a unique number. The next step is to relate a name to that number so you can find the photo whenever you need it.

I store raw files sequentially on DVDs by the file numbers. These files are unchanged raw files. A disk might be marked 47312 - 47794 for example, the next DVD might be 47795 - 48231, and so on. Every DVD is completely filled so very efficient.

Now the tricky part. Edited files, usually JPGs, are placed into folders with a name that will be searchable, such as "Sweet Carousel Corsetry Fashion Show 2012 02 10" for a recent file. I edit all photos so there may be 600 photos in this folder. It can be searched by several different words and the date is there too, 2012 Feb 10. These folders are also stored on DVDs, all of which are marked with the word "Photofiles" followed by a unique number, say, 0241. I try to have as many folders as needed to fill the DVD. Next we need an Excel file to store and relate the information. It has two columns. The first is the Photofile disk number, 0241 in this case. The second is that title shown above. You can add additional descriptions if needed, but I rely on my first description in the folder title. When I burn the Photofiles DVD, I copy the folder titles into the Excel file under this same number, 0241. Often there may be ten or more folders on any one DVD, each with a unique name. When done, sort the Excel file by the second column, the titles. Now you have an alphabetical list which will tell you which Photofile disk number contains the folder you are looking for. When you retrieve the correct folder, the photo numbers are unique and would allow you to quickly find the raw file if you wanted to make something else with it.

What about different versions of the same pic? I append a number to the file name that will not affect its searchability. My D300 files all begin with WMH, my initials. So I might shoot another photo tonight and the camera sequentially numbers it as WMH_0642.NEF, and my Excel macro changes it to WMH_60642.NEF, a unique number. I convert it to WMH_60642.jpg and edit it and decide to make several variations which then will become WMH_60642-1.jpg and WMH_60642-2.jpg and so on. My Lumix camera uses the letters LMX rather than WMH, and those raw files are stored sequentially on DVDs but in a different box than the Nikon raw files.

Finally, to those who do not trust disks, research has shown an expected life of >200 years if handled correctly. Any DVD might fail and I might lose 350 photos. It is unlikely to have multiple failures. I have many hundreds of CDs and DVDs. I handle them correctly, access them very often, and have had NO failures. Handling is important and is another subject entirely. I have had many hard drives fail. A bad bearing can cause a failure of the entire disk and you may not be able to retrieve anything. Perhaps you lose 500 GB of data all at once. Think about it. Look into the MTBF (mean time between failures) for hard drives. If it does not fail, you have everything right there handy. That's nice! If it does fail, you lose everything. That's not nice!

Please don't tell me about your bad experiences with DVDs. Few people handle them properly, and your experience is anecdotal, as is mine. I deal with facts and research. Hope this is useful to someone.

Wayne (whaleman)

I have a 500 GB partition on my hard drive where I store all my pictures using a folder structure (yes I'm running windows) H:yyyymmdd - description.  Under that last folder, I have a folder for my unedited original JPEG/CR2 files, a folder for my selected/edited files, and finally a folder for my Adobe Lightroom catalog.

Once the original files are copied to the hard drive, I then use Sync Toys 2 from Microsoft to backup my files to my network storage and run Sync Toys regularly to backup new & edited files.  Every 6 months or so, I create another backup on my USB drive.

As I have been late in beginning to use Lightroom and had tens of thousands of pictures, I never went back to create a master catalog with tags.  I'd rather spend my times working on new pictures than cataloging old stuff.  I'll do that when I retire in 25 years.

Oh and no, I do not trust DVDs, CDs, etc. I have lost lots of CD/DVD even though they were kept in binders in a closet in a room where temperature and humidity was controlled far away from UV light from the sun. I've seen layers from DVDs delaminating from one another ripping apart the data layer. I'vee seen DVDs simply go blank without any reasons, etc.

In my opinion, Hard Drives remain the cheapest storage media and a proper HD rotation routine and backup scheme/schedule will ensure you keep your data safely.