Question about photo organization...

W

wvasweetness

New member
Right now I have everything broken down into main categories...
WESLEY
EVENTS
HOLIDAYS
VACAS & TRIPS

And then sub-categories like this...

WESLEY
--- Wesley in 2007
--- Wesley in 2008
--- Wesley in 2009

HOLIDAYS
--- Christmas 2007
--- Christmas 2008
etc...


Now I'm second guessing this and wondering if I should re-organize before I get 40,000 more photos in there. I'm thinking I should have reorganized by year, and then by event, like this:

2009
- Wesley
- Events (new babys, parties, etc)
- Holidays

How do YOU organize your photos?

I'm using SmugMug, so if any other SmugMug users would like to tell me how they're organizing, that would be great! :)
 
I organize by date.

2009
-01 (I use numbers for months so they are in order. And put a 0 in front of 1-9)
--01 (Same thing for days, by number).
--16
--30
-02
and so on.

Hope that even makes sense. lol
 
How do you scrap? chronologically or by subject?

I like the way you have done it because I would think it would make it easier to do comparison type layouts (i.e. holiday traditions over the years, Wesley growing up, etc.)
 
Year<Month<Date Taken

my folders look like this...

*2009
-1Jan
-2Feb
-3Mar

my photos go into the month folders by date taken. I don't scrap in order..i'm all over the place lol
 
scrap2day said:
How do you scrap? chronologically or by subject?

I like the way you have done it because I would think it would make it easier to do comparison type layouts (i.e. holiday traditions over the years, Wesley growing up, etc.)
Click to expand...

Yes, that is the reason I originally did it this way... so I could do comparisons. But now that Wes is 2 I find myself going to look for things by date (month), instead of by subject. And while I used to scrap by subject, now that I'm caught up with scrapping, I scrap and do albums chronologically.

Figured I would get some ideas before I start reorganizing, b/c that is a lot of work! :cursing:
 
I organize by month as well. Since I shoot RAW each month has multiple folders inside it. If I ever get my act into gear and set up a good workflow in Lightroom, things will be tagged in there so I can pull up all of the Tiger photos in a year, or all of the flower photos, etc etc

2009
>01 - January
->Lightroom (houses all my imported DNG files)
->JPG (all edited LR photos exported as JPG's; photos further edited in PS (such as a sepia toned conversion, or a different crop) have - 2 added to the file name to distinguish between the original and the further edits)
-->Web (all files edited and saved at 72dpi for posting to the web)
>02 - February
->Lightroom
->JPG
-->Web

etc etc etc
 
nikkiARNGwife said:
Year<Month<Date Taken

my folders look like this...

*2009
-1Jan
-2Feb
-3Mar

my photos go into the month folders by date taken. I don't scrap in order..I'm all over the place lol
Click to expand...

Me too! :) I order them by date taken then batch rename so my 365 project has been easy, but June'09_225 doesn't really tell me much until I look at my pics in ACDSee!
 
2009>January>event

I tried doing the date but sometimes I forget when I took the picture b/c it takes me so long to get them off of the camera. LOL
 
I have a folder for each month, then within the month I have folder for special events, if there is any.
 
Mine are in folders by date ....

2008 folder has inside it folders for 2008 01, 2008 02, 2008 03, etc.

within the month it is divided into folders as to exact date (2008 04 15 Easter, 2008 04 20 grandmas house)

...the exceptions are this:

BOWLING (and inside is organized same way 2008...inside 2008 is 2008 05...inside the 2008 05 are specific dates)

BASKETBALL (same way)

ROBOTICS (same way)

SCHOOL (by child and then broken down by year)

...since I take sooooooo many for certain repeating events (i.e. sports & robotics)...they have their own folder.

works for me...I have 3 boys but they are in all the pics for holidays and such so I don't save them by boy because then I would have triplicates of pictures...I have over 175 GB of photos...and even more on negatives!
 
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Mine are ordered by date too, but I have been thinking about adding some subject tags to them too. I just can't seem to find the time to do it!
 
I'm a date girl too. Everything is 200901, 200902, etc. I don't worry about the exact dates since it's in the photo data. Once the year is over, I transfer the folders to a year folder. Occasionally, I will have a sub folder. I keep professional photos separate. Some times, I wish it was easier to find a particular picture. Since it all hinges on whether I remember what month it was taken, lol.
 
My first digital camera imported the pics by date (that I imported them) so I've just kept that system. Year-month-date is the format, and it works for me. Sometimes I have to remember when a certain pic *might* have been taken, then go through folders around that time period to find it, but yeah...
 
I used to organize by category, but starting in 2009, I just started organizing by month. If I have a lot of pictures from an event during that month, I might make a separate folder within the month folder just for those.

So, my folders just go like this:

2009
January
-----Birthdays (because we have 3 January birthdays in our family)
February
March
April
etc...

So far, I'm liking this much better than the way I had it before.
 
I have my photos organized 3 different ways.

First is my folder system that is organized by date as that's how I download them off of my camera. I don't make changes to the folder system at all.
2009
-2009-01-01
-2009-01-02

Then in Lightroom I organize them in Seasonal Category Albums like this. All photos are broken up by season, then month and then any events that I think I may want to find/scrap later on. I tend to keep my events to a minimum but I like that it allows me to put an entire series of photos together that may have spanned many days (like vacations).

2009 (1) Winter
-01Jan
-02Feb
--Superbowl

2009 (2) Spring
-03Mar
--Adam's B-day
-04Apr
-05May

Then finally I use keywords for my categories. These are broken up into 4 main categories: Us, People, Places and Things, a la Stacy Julian's Library of Memories system:

US
-Adam
-Lynnette
-Us Together

PEOPLE
-Extended Family
-Friends
-Penacho Family
--All Together
--Alyssa
--Dad
--Mom
--Mom & Dad
--Susan

...and on all the way through all 4 categories. Most of these sub-categories are broken down even further (like the Penacho family one) but I didn't want to type them all here, haha.

Hope that helps some! When I actually keep up with organizing them, it's pretty rare for me not to be able to find a photo that I need. :D
 
My system is a little different than the ones mentioned so far.

I have my photos split up into Friends, Family, Us, and Me & Misc. (which usually includes random landscape photos and self portrait photo shoots).

These are further divided by year and month. Finally, I have event folders depending on how many pictures I took on any certain occasion.

For instance, Christmas always has its own subfolder(s). The weekends we celebrate Christmas with my family or his family are put into a Family --> [Year] --> December --> Christmas folder. We always celebrate Christmas Day at our own house (though family is welcome to come over if they so choose), so those photos (and any Christmas prep photos in the weeks before) go into a Us --> [Year] --> December --> Christmas folder.

Make sense?

I have a very good photographic memory (no pun intended), so this is enough organization for me to keep things straight while also not going to extra trouble to sort my photos out when I can almost always remember when I took a series of photos or where an event's photos are located.

HTH!
 
Nettio said:
I have my photos organized 3 different ways.

First is my folder system that is organized by date as that's how I download them off of my camera. I don't make changes to the folder system at all.
2009
-2009-01-01
-2009-01-02

Then in Lightroom I organize them in Seasonal Category Albums like this. All photos are broken up by season, then month and then any events that I think I may want to find/scrap later on. I tend to keep my events to a minimum but I like that it allows me to put an entire series of photos together that may have spanned many days (like vacations).

2009 (1) Winter
-01Jan
-02Feb
--Superbowl

2009 (2) Spring
-03Mar
--Adam's B-day
-04Apr
-05May

Then finally I use keywords for my categories. These are broken up into 4 main categories: Us, People, Places and Things, a la Stacy Julian's Library of Memories system:

US
-Adam
-Lynnette
-Us Together

PEOPLE
-Extended Family
-Friends
-Penacho Family
--All Together
--Alyssa
--Dad
--Mom
--Mom & Dad
--Susan

...and on all the way through all 4 categories. Most of these sub-categories are broken down even further (like the Penacho family one) but I didn't want to type them all here, haha.

Hope that helps some! When I actually keep up with organizing them, it's pretty rare for me not to be able to find a photo that I need. :D
Click to expand...

Are you adding keywords in LR? Or where?
 
I have a huge folder titled "PICTURES". In the folder I have sub folders named with dates. So I have a folder for each day that I took pictures. For example I took some photos today and when I uploaded them to my hard drive they went in a folder names 2009-07-30. Now it's not the best system considering I have pictures on my computer from as far back as April of 2002 when we got our first digital camera, but then when I purchased ACDSee I got smart and started tagging all my photos!!!

Here are my categories:
Tag every member of the family
Tag for big family events like Christmas and vacations
Tag for my nieces & nephews
Tag for my extended family
Tag for miscellaneous

When I click on the tag for my oldest DD I see every picture I have of her dating back to 2002 (and a few further since I have started scanning her baby photos in) and I can sort them by file name (all my photos are named year-month-day ###). Then can just scroll down until I find a picture I want to scrap!!!
 
I don't think I explained mine well so here are how mine look!!

My Picture folder on my hard drive:
picture-folder.jpg


What my photos look like (are named) with in each individual folder:
picture-folder-2.jpg
 
Mine are by year & then month. But vacations have their own folder under the year as does Xmas. So our vacation in Wheeling this month has it's own folder seperate from July09. each folder has an 'edited' subfolder because I don't edit all my photos. I also have a 2009 Random folder for pictures taken for my 365 project and a 2009 Daily folder for the photos that actually made the cut for that day. I take abotu 10 random photos a day.

I keyword the photos in Lightroom by who is in them & what is going on - birthday, camping, sxhool, fall festival, reading, bathing, swimming, Halloween, etc. I used to have it that way in ACDSee but my version won't work with Vista on my new laptop so I am having to rebuild it all in Lightroom
 
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I have mine organized by year and then by the upload date. So say I uploaded a bunch of pictures today it would go into the 2009 folder and it would be dated 2009-07-30 I date it like that cause that is how my camera dates it. I do sometimes copy some photos into a need to scrap folder but I can pretty much remember which photos I want to scrap from each folder and I only upload about once every two or three weeks.
 
Year/Month

I do have folders for events like weddings and stuff, but for the most part, everything just gets dumped into the monthly folder
 
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