Photo Filing System ???

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Permalink Reply by Dave Murray on January 30, 2012 at 5:04am

Brad I like to think I am organized..I can lay my hands on a shot usually very easy.

People

places

insects

flowers

hdr

within these folders are other folders which has the raw,the original photos and the enhanced images.

I am probably more lucky than other people, as I build my own computers and I have 6 hard drives for storage and the operating system is on an SSd drive,and a backup drive that I can just push in on a docking bay and update every day

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Permalink Reply by Brad Whistler on January 30, 2012 at 5:25am

Thank you Dave. Sounds like your filing system is very similar to mine. Your computer system however.... WOW! Very nice.

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Permalink Reply by Guy Manning on January 30, 2012 at 6:10am

There are a couple programs that are developed for not only cataloging your photos but also to edit and prep for output:

Aperture and Adobe Lightroom.

I use Lightroom. I create a catalog for each hard drive and make "collections" by way of topic: People, places etc. Some people make a catalog for each topic or job, but you then have to close the catalog to open another. My workflow works better for me.

I am able to edit the raw (or jpeg) files, to the same point I would be able to in most any RAW conversion program. I can then output to print, monitor, slide show, flash or html slide shows, etc. I can move the images around within the collections if need be and import to photoshop for high end editing is necessary.

The program keeps track of any changes to the image by way of a xml file that does not change the original RAW file. So all changes are non destructive to the original. This is a big plus, you can always open the original in any other program and start over.

You can download a 30 day free trial at adobe.com. This program is sufficient for 95% of what I do and probably 99% of what most people on MSS would need. The ability to easily find images in a large collection is its best feature.

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Permalink Reply by Brad Whistler on January 30, 2012 at 7:12am

Thank you Guy but not quite what Im looking for. It is an awesome program I have to admit, but, I dont care for Lightroom, especially the "collection" process it creates. I much prefer Capture One Pro for my RAW conversions. I do the same thing as I import from my data card without the restrictions of working within the Lightroom collections. I still maintain all of my original data as in Lightroom and can open my original files.

What Im looking for is more the basic criteria most shooters use to decide What does into what collection? How do you tag and name the images? How do you group them? Im set on great software. Just looking for some thoughts on organization. For instance if I asked you "Hey Guy.... I need a great shot of a red sports car taken in a city setting." How would you find that for me? How is it tagged and organized so that  you can find it later?

Im not a loss for organization, just looking for options to tweak what I do.

Suggestions?

Thanks

Brad

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Permalink Reply by Dave Murray on January 30, 2012 at 8:26am

Hi Guy, I would be worried with these programmes like lightroom cataloguing all my captures. My sister in law Hilda Murray was doing this and I got her out of the habit as her hard drive was also her operating system drive and if the system went down, she would have lost everything, which she did a few times..You really need an extra hard drive with your photos on it,or another alternative is to partition your hard drive. Your OS would be on c.drive and your other photos,music,work etc.would be on other partitions, and if you got a bad virus and had to re-install, then your only formatting the c.drive..

Maybe you know all this,if so I appologize..maybe this will help other members

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Permalink Reply by Brad Whistler on January 30, 2012 at 8:33am

Sister in law? Really? The things we learn when we listen and read. Kind of explains why I like both of your styles. You must compare notes a lot. ;)

Your right Dave. I have all of my work on TWO external drives. The last thing I need is for a client to be looking for an image that I lost in a crash.

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Permalink Reply by Guy Manning on January 30, 2012 at 10:08am

Dave,

I agree. My pc has 4 drives in it, C: and D: are both mirrored. C: is programs, D is documents and backups of catalogs. I have 2 catalogs, each one for one of two other sets of drives: E and F, both external RAID 1 (mirrored) esata drives in SansDigital enclosures. My next step is to swap one drive from each set with a spare after every major shoot. I then move the pulled set offsite.

Partitioning doesn't help if the drive goes south, both partitions will be lost. My system looks something like yours. I finally broke down and upgraded to 64bit in December. I can finally work on some 4X5 2400dpi scans without LR or PS taking a dump. I'm in IT and also built my own.

Brad,

I use the most obvious general tags for images. For instance a 57 ford: Cars, auto, ford, classic, 57, (location). For a landscape: mountains, desert, snow, location (city, state, park etc), plus a good description. As I go through images I sort with stars for ones I will come back to. LR makes an automatic collection of them so I don't have to look at hundreds of images finding them. Once these have been processed I further mark them with colored tags, indicating how finished they are. Red means I'm done and hands off. I think you just need to use a system that makes sense to you. I know that I had to reorganize everything after a few months of LR because I tried using someone else's system and it failed me.

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Permalink Reply by Dave Murray on January 30, 2012 at 11:06am

Hi Guys,Glad to know I'm not the only computer freak out there, and yeh your right Brad,if the c.drive goes,then everything is gone.I use my SSD for  OS only...Gosh the SSD are so expensive now after the floods in Tiawan..Happy shooting and computing , I will get back to my Amstrad now haha

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Permalink Reply by Bear on January 31, 2012 at 4:16pm

The system I use is Aperture from Apple. It is the best system I have found but I am always looking and this is the attitude I think everyone should have. Keep an open mind and the best systems will present themselves to you.

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