organizing your pictures on your comp

[Orgnoi1]

Since there are two of us uploading to two servers at two locations.... heh...

we do each download by YEAR_MONTH_DATE-(initial)... they go first into a folder called "Non-Disk-Archived-2006" and then each month they get burned to DVD and the folders also moved to "Disk-Archived-2006-Month" where they sit till we run close to end of room on the 500gb we run on each server... then it is taken off and the only way we can access it is through our backup dvds... its pretty flawless when everyone is on the same sheet of music...

 

[Moose]

I downloaded and use Adobe Lightroom for the organisation of my photo's.

It is an awsome program that Intergrates with Photoshop easily, allows for the creation of albums, some modifications to images, search functionality etc etc.

Check it out on the Adobe website.

P.s. It also handles my pentax RAW files well.

 

[seanberry]

I use my Mac for photo storage and have quite a process.
Within my "Pictures" folder I import each shoot by date and short description (ie. 10/25/06 Walk in the Park). I then import all of my RAW files to Lightroom by referencing them within their location. I then do my WB, tonal and crop adjustments. Then, i deemed worthy of moving further, I export them to a folder called "Lightroom Exports" and work on them in photoshop as necessary. The final product of such images is then saved in "Final Edits". I like my folder structure but am still trying to work out some other kinks in the line such as file type and color space.

PS: I agree with Moose, Lightroom is a great little program and am VERY happy with its support for Pentax .PEF files!

 

[mike421]

Something else worth considering is a DVD burner. Newegg.com usually has decent deals on them where you can get a drive for $50 or less. Much easier to use DVD-RW's than CD-R's.

I use a similar method where I date each folder and then put a breif 2 - 3 word description of the event. RAW files I seperate though so I can burn them and then delete them easier. Also any file I edit ... I just Save As and put a letter at the end. So DSC123456 is the original DSC123456a is after basic editing (Levels and Curves) DSC123456ab is with some type of affect. Works for me.

I know there are other programs out to do this type of thing but I've use Adobe Lightroom (I think that's the name) and wasn't really impressed. Maybe I'm not using all of the features but I didn't really see any great value that it provided.

best thing i ever bought!!! i didnt buy it for photos but 4.7gig of memory come on!!!! a cd, whats that?

 

[astrostu]

I used to just take the pictures off the camera, throw out bad ones, edit the good ones, and file them away in various category folders.

But my OCD-nagging voice in my head has been nagging me persistently, and as of this weekend I now have folders based upon the day of the shoot, and within that the RAW files (keep all), a folder for the 16-bit TIFF exported files (delete ones I don't like), and a folder for final adjusted images, kept in layers as PSD files as well as flattened versions in JPG. When I have enough, I'll burn to DVD. Also, I'll be keeping an index of what's in each day's folder, and import the JPGs to iPhoto.

 

[mentos_007]

well... I am dreaming of a program that will generate thumbnails of the photos I have on my drive and save the thumbnails on the drive. this way I might be able to get rid of original pics and burn them on dvds while I will still have thumbs on my disk. it will be much easier with finding a proper photo later on. right now I have everything organized like this: d:\photography\album 1 ... up to album 43.
in every folder I store about 700mb of files - I used to shoot with 3mp camera so it was enough... but the recent 8-9 folders are about 4.7 gig. in every folder called "album ..." I have a few subfolders described for example: foerst, sea, Spain, Italy, John ... and such...

 

[Scurra]

Well on my PC I have a dedicated hard drive for my images, 180Gb to be more specific, When you open the drive I have two main folders, edited and unedited, and within those folders I store any images I took on a given day under a folder named with the date. All of the unedited images are in a .RAW format so I import all of the unedited folder into an Iview MediaPro album so that I can flick through them quickly in thumbnail format and enlarge them/open them within photoshop with ease.