Organization question...

[paranoidandroid13]

How do you guys organize and catalogue your photos? I have an 80 gig external hard drive, but plan on getting something substantially bigger in the next few months. I really don't have a system right now of saving pictures into different folders, organizing them, etc. Any suggestions?

 

[domromer]

If you have a mac I'd say use iphoto. It's free and gets the job done. Otherwise you could use bridge, or Aperture. Thats all I can think of for now. I think if you do a search you'll find a similar thread was posted recently. Might have the answers your looking for.

 

[Big Mike]

I save the RAW files in a folder that is named for the date of shoot or the day of the upload. My RAW processing software creates a sub folder for the output files (TIFF or JPEG). These will be my working files. From there, I'll have another sub folder for print files and another for web ready files.

It keeps everything organized but it doens't help when searching for particular images. You could use something like Picasa to view your archive and tag files with key words etc. This is good because you don't have to move the actual files. Picasa is free.

Another free program is Irfanview, which is good for viewing large numbers of images and it's also good for some batch processing tasks.

 

[paranoidandroid13]

I read in another thread that with Picasa, you lose all rights to your photos. Is this true or do you have any input on this?

 

[paranoidandroid13]

11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

So do I or don't I retain the copyright?

 

[D-50]

I simply use file folders on my PC. Organized by original RAW images and then by final edited tiffs. for example to get to a final edit of a boston skyline at night the steps would be drive k--> photography-->finals--> boston-->Night skylines

alternatively to get a a RAW image of a beach in Chatham MA the steps would be drive k-->originals-->nature-->beaches-->Chatham

I only title my finals and only use desciptive titles so I know roughly what the photo is by its name. I have over 10,000 RAW images and probably 300 Finals (for some reason I do not delete RAW images unless they are terrible I should probably start) and could get you any photo you want in seconds.

 

[paranoidandroid13]

I simply use file folders on my PC. Organized by original RAW images and then by final edited tiff.

I'm going to assume you have a Nikon D-50 (from your name). Can you shoot in Tiff mode? I haven't found a way. Or are you just shooting in RAW and converting to tiff?

 

[Big Mike]

11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

So do I or don't I retain the copyright?

I'm not sure...but that sounds like a clause for when you upload photos for the purpose of sharing...I assume that this is a feature/service of Picasa or Google. As far as I know...you can use the program Picasa to organize the photos on your hard drive, without giving up any rights or giving Google access to them.

 

[D-50]

Ive actually moved onto a D200 but I shoot in RAW and keep all my files in RAW I do a RAW edit and thena final edit in tiff ultimately saving the final product as a Tiff. RAW gives you a lot more freedom when editing. I also use two 320GB hard drives to save and back up my files I would rather pay for more storage than save in a compressed file, you never know when you might want to do a small re-edit to a final shot.

 

[smcaskil]

Picasa will let you do several things.

- It will import from your camera card in RAW format as well
- It will convert to JPG (not sure about TIFF)
- It will let you organize your photos, move them to other folders, flag the best ones, and all sorts of other things.

I use Picasa this way:

1. Import from the card into a folder on the hard drive that is descriptive of the event or date
2. Discard the completely bad images
3. Fix them either in Picasa (very simple) or in something else for more advanced
4. Go through the images and place Stars on the ones I want to upload and share
5. Move those to an Upload folder that is a subfolder of the original folder I imported into
6. Upload those pictures to my SmugMug account
7. Move the pictures back to the original folder and delete the Upload folder, just to make things easier to find.

When I am finished with all of this, I then run a backup to my external hard drive so that I have the files there as well.

I don't use the file sharing part of Picasa because of the fact that Google only gives you 1024 MB of space. I would suggest, if that is the wording of the User Agreement, that you be careful what you post through Picasas to Google's service, which is by the way, Picasaweb.

 

[paranoidandroid13]

Ok. Thanks everyone. I might download picasa then and just use it for sorting photos and such. I also found a free 30 day trial for Adobe Lightroom, so I will probably try that out too. I guess I might do a combination of things suggested on this thread. Thanks for all the input!

 

[vladiator]

You have probably started organizing your pictures by now using Picasa...at least that's what your last message says. Not sure if you're still using Picasa or not...I have personally tried it many times and uninstalled it the same amount of times...I personally don't like it.

I would suggest that you consider one important question first before you start the "not trivial" task of picture organization. The most important question is: What is the criterion for organizing your pictures? Most people use their camera to shoot events and in this case you can do year/month/event. Other people shoot geographically and for them it makes more sense to do Continent/Country/City. So, it really depends on how you plan to use your structure. Here is an article that might help you with this question:
Divide and Conquer for efficient picture organization

I believe that an efficient folder structure beats any tag collection (or labels in Picasa) by far (in most cases). At least that's what I've been using for years with great success. Here's another article that might help you create an efficient folder structure:
Organize your pictures in 5 easy steps

And in case you're wondering about tags versus folders you might find this helpful:
Tags vs. Folders - the great debate

I hope this helps.

 

[Kentanner11]

I personally use Picasa..
I just read the Tags vs. Folders and am probably going to start tagging my pics aswell.