Organizing my images, what I found that works.

[WanderingSol]

Hi,

I've been trying out different ways to organize my images, about 15,000 taken over 40 years. Those that started on film have been scanned. The last ten years have been digital to begin with.

I use Windows, but know how to drive a Mac and unix boxes.

I wanted a method that would be OS and application neutral, I wanted to save all the information I have in the image file itself. Using EXIF metadata appears the way to do this.

All of my images are in a master directory, then broken down by year directories, then by date uploaded or developed, and then the files themselves named YYYYMMDDNNN for year, month, day, sequence number. All file names are unique. I have been going through my images and adding tag/keyword information, who, what, where, and generic keywords, such as 'beach', 'mountain', 'camping' ... Anything I think I may want to search for the image.

This is working quite nicely for me, I can use Windows Explorer and search by tags (or combos) and find the images in seconds. This information goes with the files, as I mentioned before, so copying the files to another computer copies the tags. Even to other OS, like Macintosh, the tags are still there. I can give images on a flash drive (or CD) to others and they too can search the tags to find specific images.

I find I can select multiple files and edit tags for all of them at once. So if I take 40 pictures at a car show, I can select the 40, bring up properties, detail, tags and enter the location, event name, and other common info once to do all 40. I can then go image by image and add more detail if desired.

Using the free DOS program EXIFTOOL I can also change the date taken field for the images I've created from film scans. There are many, many fields available, such as camera make and model, lens types, GPS info, and so on.

As I tag my images, I find myself enjoying them again, not only when viewing them when adding tags, but just being able to search by tags and seeing all the images that are associated. It is really neat when searching 'beach' and seeing images from the Great Lakes, Atlantic, Pacific, and other places all being displayed together. Search on my son's name and sort by date taken or by 'car' and see all the cars I've had over the years.

I've played with my files on Windows XP, Vista, 7, and 8; on Macintosh 9.x and 10.x, all appear to use the tags for searching.

I still have many to tag, I try to do a few each time I sit down at the computer.

If you have questions about this, post a reply.

Tim.

 

[papafrankm]

What program are you using to apply the tags?I am fooling around with photo gallery, windows photo viewer, in win 8.
I find tags to be very inconsistentnwhen searching from windows explorer.

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