Labeling and organizing photos & videos

[cricket1001]

I did a search for labeling and/or organizing photos but nothing came up. I would think this would be extremely important to learn how to do this. I know that many have different ways of doing this but it would be great if they shared how they do this. I would think this is especially important for beginners so they don’t waste time trying all sorts of ways and still have problems.


Sent from my iPhone using ThePhotoForum.com mobile app

 

[Original katomi]

I have a folder for the year, sub folder for the month. Then sub folders for events eg Harley Davison’s bike rally
I have a general folder called Dark room for photos that I am editing
Hope this helps

 

[vintagesnaps]

I put the date, maybe just the month and year, depends on what it is. I name it what it is - more general, maybe just Fall 2019; a specific place I went; or the event/game I photographed, etc.

Shoot a reasonable number of photos that make for organizing a reasonable number of photos.

 

[Derrel]

The Macintosh operating system has long had different color labels which can be applied to photos. I have been using this for over two decades now. Color labeling allows you to categorize your photos by color. You can label each color with a verbal description,which is the characteristic. For example dark blue files mean ( in my own personal system) backed up to another piece of media or to another Drive. Light blue files are crappy ones. Orange is glowing hot like a hot coal,representing the best of the best or what I consider to be essential. Red means a very good file. Green means average file Yellow means needs work, while purple means in progress-work started but not yet completed. I also have gray files, and unlabeled files. This works with the search function which is built into the operating system.

Let's just say I wish to compile the result of a search of three hard drives by searching for files which have already been backed up or copied to another Drive. If I enter the label category of dark blue and images, within seconds I will be shown which files on my local network have been copied to another drive or to removable media. Another example would be if I wish to search for really good pictures,labeled Orange on three hard drives. I can do a search for image files which I have assigned the orange label to, and the search engine built into the operating system will tell me where I can find these greatest pictures. Conversely without opening it, I can spot a lousy photo by the light blue label. This is a really good feature of the Macintosh operating system. We are not labeling by words or letters or numbers or Stars, but by characteristic, using the color labels that we decide upon and the term or characteristic that we determine is correlated with each color. The user picks his or her own color and is allowed to enter the characteristic. This is customizable, and only needs to be done once, but it can be easily reset at any time.

After using the system for a few years it is easily possible to search through hundreds of thousands of files and to locate within seconds essential pictures which I have myself labeled as Orange, or to weed out crappy files which I have labeled in light blue,or to find files which are already copied to removable media or to another hard drive. If a dark blue labeled file is found on a compact disc or a DVD or an external drive, the fact that it is labeled in dark blue means it is the second copy, which allows me to keep track of multiple backups quite easily.

 

[Derrel]

Metadata can be easily searched, but only by specialty applications. I have found that adding specific keywords can be of great help when searching for files let's say I shoot a child's sixth birthday. If I add the name of the child to one folder that really helps. If I add the word birthday that also can help. I have found certain keywords to be of great use such as first, birthday, anniversary, wedding, win, loss, baseball, football, basketball, volleyball, track meet, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Xmas, Etc. You of course could add any desired keyword such as school play, recital, graduation, Etc.
After having shot hundreds of thousands of digital files over the past 18 years a number of strategies that I adopted years ago are now paying dividends. For example about a year ago one of my nieces asked in and email,"hey do you still have my wedding photos?"

I told her that I was certain I had them archived, so I asked her, "what year was it?" And she told me that she got married in 2004 so from there it was a simple matter to search in my 2004 library of compact discs, and there it was, " Shan and Pat's wedding"...

 

[dennyr]

I did a search for labeling and/or organizing photos but nothing came up. I would think this would be extremely important to learn how to do this. I know that many have different ways of doing this but it would be great if they shared how they do this. I would think this is especially important for beginners so they don’t waste time trying all sorts of ways and still have problems.


Sent from my iPhone using ThePhotoForum.com mobile app

What do you consider a photo.?
I organize my negs by date..... month and year and then a letter if there are more than 35 negs for one month. When i print a "Photo" a take a fine point sharpie, and write the date from that neg sleeve on the border, along with the frame number and f/stop and time and filter that it was printed with.

 

[Original katomi]

Re post 6
Even though I am digital when I do prints I put the file name date and the print info on the back of my print

 

[smoke665]

I use a file tree, that as I click further down files are automatically sorted. I use two Master headings one "Personal", which is family, travel, pets, etc. and one "Outside" anyhing from work to friends, with separate Lr catalogs on each. I'm old school in that I don't believe in having all my eggs in one basket. The Master is broken down into broad sub category headings. IE: "Personal" (Family, City Landscape, Travel, etc) or the name of the event/function under the "Outside" heading . Further separation by category goes under each heading. For example Family has Children, Grandparents. Grandchildren. Then there are categories by name under that. Once i reach the lowest level in the tree each folder has 3 files 1-Raw, 2-PS, 3-Finished (which has two more categories, Print and Web)

I use Bridge to make my first cull of obvious duds. Then make a backup copy of the files to CD. Then use the batch tool to rename and transfer the files to my HD, under the appropriate category. I use recognizable/searchable names with the date and original file number. In LR when I import I add the first tags in the metadata. Once I'm done with editing I back up to my external drives using "Sync" tool that compares my HD to my backup copy and adds or deletes files as necessary.

Using the file tree gives me a thumbnail (searchable) of everything at the top level, but as I click further down my images are already sorted. Once down to a bottom level searches are fast.

 

[Nwcid]

I know many people have their ways that work for them. So far I have always used software.

As an amateur I used iPhoto that was on my computer. As I progressed and need more processing options I moved to Lightroom. Both, along with many other developing software have cataloging features built in.

 

[CherylL]

My file tree is by year with sub folders by the date shot with the date and description, 01.10.19Cheer for example. I take a lot of dog photos so I have just one main dog folder for each year. I do download into a date folder and cull, edit then transfer to the dog folder. I rename my files after import by date, example 011019_001. Video has a separate folder with the same file tree. I rename 011019_V_001 for example. Sometimes when I take 3 cameras on vacation I will add a brief camera notation in the file name.

Every few months I go back and cull again. I keep only some of my raw and/or psd files. Everything I keep gets copied as a jpg.

 

[wfooshee]

My images go in folders by date, named "yyyy-mm-dd subject desription" so they sort chronologically in the window, and are searchable in Explorer by subject, for example "Blue Angels," or "Lightning."

I've gotten away from tagging my photos. Tagging made it really easy to find a particular picture type, like "great blue heron" or "hot air balloon," but was tedious to input, and one day I found myself far enough behind that I just said to myself, "Bleep it! no more tagging." I'll probably be sorry about that someday, as tags also pull out in Windows searches.

I cull my images for keepers, and the RAW files for images that I've selected to keep go on one drive, the JPGs I build from them during editing go on another. Both of those drives get backed up to a third drive, which is removed between backup jobs for malware protection.

One of the reasons I quit tagging was back in the day, I was tagging with the Picasa application, which is no longer supported. Tagging was EASY in Picasa.

 

[johngpt]

Even before I began using Lightroom, I'd organize using date.
Top is the year, then sub-folders within that year by month and which camera.

2019
2019-10_iphone
2019-10_X100

When appropriate I might have a sub-folder within the year folder for an event or location.
2019-07-04_fireworks
2019-05-29_butterfly_pavilion

Before Lightroom which has the ability to import and rename from the memory cards as the photos are imported into the appropriate folders, I used 3rd party apps to rename after importing. I'd rename using year, month and date with a letter to designate the camera, then a hyphen followed by the four digit number assigned to the photo by the camera.

191015t- 7808 would be a photo taken today by my X-T1.

This way every individual image has a distinct file name from any other image.

Before Lightroom I'd use a variety of viewer apps to review photos.
I'd use Adobe Bridge at times to review then bring into Photoshop.
Now I use Lightroom for cataloging, basic editing and exporting to Ps.

.

 

[dennybeall]

Sent from my iPhone using ThePhotoForum.com mobile app[/QUOTE]
What do you consider a photo.?
I organize my negs by date..... month and year and then a letter if there are more than 35 negs for one month. When i print a "Photo" a take a fine point sharpie, and write the date from that neg sleeve on the border, along with the frame number and f/stop and time and filter that it was printed with.[/QUOTE]


Whats a negative?

 

[Winona]

All good information. I am floundering in digital pictures. Lol.

 

[Strodav]

I use to use Picasa, which was an excellent tool for organizing photos and minor edits, but it's no longer supported. It taught me not to rely solely on any one piece of software as they tend to disappear with time. So FWIW, I transfer all the unprocessed images from my camera to a camera backup hard disk organized by date and a short description in the file name. I back this drive up to an external drive every week or two. This is my database. I use LightRoom to import the raw images from the backup camera hard disk then assign a rating from 1 to 5 stars and add keywords. LR is one of the better photo databases out there. LR creates a backup DNG file, which is saved to a separate hard disk as part of the import process. I process the images I like in LR, sometimes using PS and even Topaz right from LR, then save them as jpgs at full resolution and 2000x1333 pixels (for posting on social media) on yet another separate hard drive. So, I've got backups of backups all on separate internal drives, which themselves are backed up on external drives. You can search LR by date, keyword, or star rating (you can use colors and flags to). I'm figuring LR and PS will be around for the foreseeable future, but if not, I've got all the data I need to create a new database.