Lightroom Organizing Disaster...Need Suggestions

[Dave442]

Like the barn shot. With tags you can go crazy. I would add Red as many people only want a Red Barn.

 

[nerwin]

Like the barn shot. With tags you can go crazy. I would add Red as many people only want a Red Barn.

I tried the folder structure you suggested, but I really didn't like it. So many folders I had to go through. I can't understand if you had tagged everything previously so stuff was easy to find for you..but I didn't and its just a mess. I just prefer to give a folder a name of the subject.

A lot of my photos pre 2009 has wrong capture date, so photos that were shot in 2008 were marked with 2004 because the internal battery of the camera died and so the date never stayed when you took the battery out to charge it. Most of these photos are from home renovation projects and a car restoration project. I just don't know if I even need these images in lightroom...but then again some people think of using Lightroom has a library for ALL their photos. I just don't know what to do with these images that have wrong capture date.

Once I get the WHOLE catalog organized, then it will be easy when imported new stuff.

 

[Dave442]

My shots from before 2010 are just in a 2010 folder and many of those are in folders with names of the event. Only from 2010 and on am I using the Year and then every day folders as that is when I started using LR and taking better care to keyword the images.

 

[nerwin]

My shots from before 2010 are just in a 2010 folder and many of those are in folders with names of the event. Only from 2010 and on am I using the Year and then every day folders as that is when I started using LR and taking better care to keyword the images.

I suppose I could do that. I made a folder called "#Pre-2009" - I put the pound sign so it would stick above the 2010 folder. I am really making this folder structure thing more complicated than it needs to be I think haha.

I don't think every day folders work for me, I just prefer to dump all my photos of my cat I took in march into a folder one folder under march. That works for me. But like others have said, I just need to figure out what works for me.

 

[Dave442]

The problem I have is there is often no one top subject in my photos. So, I may have the cat sitting on the bed, but then the cat with the kid and then the cat with the dog. That is the main reason I moved away from trying to make folders with names, over time I found the main subject changed.

With keywords I can pull any of those together, and along with a date filter show just that one month of photos of either the cats or the dogs.

 

[Braineack]

use keywords, dont worry much about the folder name. Although whatever you name the folder will be added as a keyword.

Naming them helps when you need to go back to a particular shoot instead of having to remember a date.

Keywords worked well fo rme afte rmy cat passed, I wanted to look at every single picture I've taken of her -- I type in Belle and I can see every picture of I have of her since 2002.

 

[nerwin]

use keywords, dont worry much about the folder name. Although whatever you name the folder will be added as a keyword.

Naming them helps when you need to go back to a particular shoot instead of having to remember a date.

Keywords worked well fo rme afte rmy cat passed, I wanted to look at every single picture I've taken of her -- I type in Belle and I can see every picture of I have of her since 2002.

So I could just do the automatic folder naming that LR does on import and if there is important shoot or event I could give the folder a name but if its just random stuff around my house, I can just leave it be and add tags to the photos.

Back to tagging again...if I take a picture of a cake, I can add the tags "cake, food" but if it's a wedding cake, I could add "wedding cake, food"?

I'm still trying to figuring out this keywording thing, its a lot different than Flickr because with Flickr I add tags for SEO and SEO doesn't matter in Lightroom. I think the keywords in Lightroom should be used for you to find the photos you want.

@Dave442 You mentioned earlier that you like to add an S to some keywords like your desk analogy. I tried this, I have many pictures of my desk, and I just keyword them with Desk and searched for Desks and all the pictures of desks with the keyword Desk showed up even though I searched for Desks. So I'm not entirely sure if adding the S will make much difference.

 

[JacaRanda]

I'm not sure what you mean by automatic folder naming that LR does. On import, I tell LR where to look and where to put.

Keywords in LR are used for whatever purpose you decide you need them for.

 

[Dave442]

@Dave442 You mentioned earlier that you like to add an S to some keywords like your desk analogy. I tried this, I have many pictures of my desk, and I just keyword them with Desk and searched for Desks and all the desks with the keyword Desk showed up even though I searched for Desks. So I'm not entirely sure if adding the S will make much difference.

Interesting, I just tagged a shot with Table and when I filter for Tables it does not turn up. I am using LR 5.6 in case they made some changes with CC. In general any search the more specific the more you filter out. Are you in the Library Module in Grid Layout and using the Library Filter for Text?

When you put in the filter selections you want you can then use the LOCK to keep the filter selection active as you look in other Folders (remember to unlock when done).

 

[JacaRanda]

Desk and searched for Desks and all the pictures of desks with the keyword Desk showed up even though I searched for Desks. So I'm not entirely sure if adding the S will make much difference.

Because the word desk is included in the word desks. There are options that can filter exactly what you want to be included or not included (hard to think of where they are since I don't have LR in front of me at the moment).

 

[Braineack]

keywords arent tags. keywords will help you find your own photos through search. tags will help you categorize and organzie your photos online through metadata.

I might keyword a picture Pookie.

but tag it: cat, fluffy, persian

Back to tagging again...if I take a picture of a cake, I can add the tags "cake, food" but if it's a wedding cake, I could add "wedding cake, food"?

I'm still trying to figuring out this keywording thing, its a lot different than Flickr because with Flickr I add tags for SEO and SEO doesn't matter in Lightroom. I think the keywords in Lightroom should be used for you to find the photos you want.

 

[nerwin]

I'm not sure what you mean by automatic folder naming that LR does. On import, I tell LR where to look and where to put.

Keywords in LR are used for whatever purpose you decide you need them for.

You can have Lightroom to automatically apply a date based folders structure when importing photos. I suspect this is what @Dave442 does.

 

[nerwin]

keywords arent tags.

Back to tagging again...if I take a picture of a cake, I can add the tags "cake, food" but if it's a wedding cake, I could add "wedding cake, food"?

I'm still trying to figuring out this keywording thing, its a lot different than Flickr because with Flickr I add tags for SEO and SEO doesn't matter in Lightroom. I think the keywords in Lightroom should be used for you to find the photos you want.

I just wish there was an option to automatically disable "include keywords on export" when every time you create a keyword.

 

[JacaRanda]

I'm not sure what you mean by automatic folder naming that LR does. On import, I tell LR where to look and where to put.

Keywords in LR are used for whatever purpose you decide you need them for.

You can have Lightroom to automatically apply a date based folders structure when importing photos. I suspect this is what @Dave442 does.

View attachment 113246

Okay gotcha. As long as I know I'm still telling it to do even that.

 

[nerwin]

@Dave442 I hope you don't me picking your brain.

I'm just curious, how would you keyword a storm photo?

Like this one for an example.