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I'm having such a hard time trying to organise all our digital photos. I keep changing my systems (i.e. whether I'm organising them by date or subject, and then I keep changing what my subjects are too) which is the main problem. I try extremely hard to immediately delete any that are out of focus or just not very good, but there are still just so many. How many is too many to keep? Argh.... too many questions. I am looking for guidance from a photo organising guru.... Anyone.... :D
I'll be interested to hear what others have to say...
I am terrible, I keep them all, even the really bad ones. I've bought a separate hard drive to store them on...other than that the only thing I do is keep them in separate folders, according to subject, and I number each folder so they are always in order oldest through to newest, if that makes sense?
Will be interesting to hear others ideas.
I'm definitely no "guru" but we organise our folders like this
Photos - then the subject, ie, Mehkelti, Aricyn, Aricyn & Mehkelti, friends, Family, wedding etc- then we have folders for each year.. and then in each year we have the months for that year with the pics organised in each one. So even if I don't go through and pick out the out of focus ones, at least I can pick a month to go through and select the good ones from it (if like, I'm uploading to facebook)
So yeah - not exactly organised, but it works!
ETA - I just read that over once I posted, and I should clarify that I don't have years under the "wedding" folder - there's just one lot of pics under that.. LOL
OK here I go with the anal librarian stuff - BUT I keep two - an "original archive" - every image that hasn't been deleted from the camera - downloaded in date order.
The files are organised Photos>Originals>Year (ie 2009)>Date Downloaded (with the month first eg 12 jan is 01-12-2009) so they sit in the correct order.
From there, the favorite ones that will be used, rotated, resized, are copied into folders based on loose subjects, again sorted into year folders.
IF only I could get DH to put them in the right place I'd be right :wall:
I have a separate folder for each year.
In that folder I have a folder for each month. All the photos are sorted by date in that folder.
I also add a folder inside a month if there is an event on, for example in my August folder (inside a 2009 folder) I have all my pics sorted by date but I have a separate folder(inside the August folder) for DD's birthday & inside that, are 2 folders one for her birthday & one for her party as they were on different days.
I hope that makes sense
I made a vow when I tried to go through my mum and dad's photos (hard copies) and they couldn't remember where many were taken or sometimes which child it was in the photo - that I would always keep track of my photos and of course digital does make it easier but I have tried out a few different systems.
Originally I did similar to suggestions from others, using folders to organise the photos. I then moved on to using Adobe Photoshop Elements to catalogue the photos but have since moved on to using Picasa from Google which is free. This retains the folder structure that you already have for your photos but also allows you to tag them and geotag them. So you can tag certain places and then find all photos from that place for example, or tag certain events. Epacris - if you keep changing how you organise things this is great as you don't have to change your folder structure you can just add tags e.g. can have a tag DD and Christmas.
It also has a face recognition element where it recognises faces in photos and then you name them and it attempts to group faces together (works reasonably well - not so great on babies) - required some time investment getting it sorted on all the photos I have from past 10 years but now is pretty cool - I can click and get a link to all the photos I have of DH or DD (is a bit scary DD is only 6 months and already have more of her than DH who have been with for 10 years! and I thought I had alot of him!)
Can also mark photos as favourites, create collages and do automatic resizes for emailing plus will do basic effects, e.g. crop and red eye.
This is Picasa for Windows/Mac is not the same as Picasa Web albums so everything is still kept on your PC, but if you use Picasa Web has an easy upload process. (Also a plug-in for uploading to Flickr - which is what I do in addition to facebook)
So my folders have various different naming systems as have done differently over time, but now just have a folder given the default name when uploaded by the camera and then use Picasa to tag, or put into albums (photos stay in original folder but can also get to via an album - e.g. over Christmas I might upload photos several times and will all go into different folders but then I will select the best and make an album Christmas 2009 which can then playback as slideshow make into a movie etc).
I'm in the process of sorting through all of mine - not just digital photos but digital artwork too.
I've got an "optimised" folder for each directory, where the pics I have optimised for upload sit. All my originals are also "read only" so I don't inadvertantly save over them.
Currently using the default directory structure for the camera & the phone on the computer - will have to rethink it when I get my new camera next week.
But I'm watching this closely. Will have to invest in an additional external harddrive (my 1 terrabyte drive died with 750gig of files on it - so I'm a bit worried saving all onto that)
I have a "photos" folder & then within that I have a whole bunch of different folders.
I have years folders & within those I have folders for each date that has photos so today the folder would be called 2009-12-18. I do it backwards so that way they will be in month then day order. If it's just hanging around the house there is no description, but if it's something specific there is (eg 2009-12-16 Preschool Concert) so I can find specific events quickly.
I have my pregnancy photos separate so I have a 2004-2005 Pregnancy & a 2007-2008 Pregnancy folder. Within those are folders for ultrasounds, IVF things, belly photos & misc (room decorating, purchases etc). Then photos within those are sorted into date folders like the others.
Then I have a scanned photos folder & that's just chaos at the moment! One day I might organised it by dates etc, but for the time being I only scan things when I want to use them then never look at them again!
I then have a professionals folder but you don't need that craziness ;)
We also have photos burned to DVD every 6 months & we keep a copy in the house & a copy at PIL's house JIC.