Looking for some insight and ideas. I have a ton of photos and iPhoto is no longer cutting it. Furthermore, I detest iPhoto's bizarre and obtuse "library" that functions like some mini-finder inside the finder with it's own rules and methods. So, if you were going to start from scratch with nothing but photos and the date taken, how would you organize? I am thinking of using the date as the main organizer but then batch-renaming the photos to accurately portray the event. Inside Picasa I'll tag the pics and make albums to keep my stuff organized without being wholly dependent on the file structure. But...I want a consistent and effective file structure because otherwise (as iPhoto has taught me) exporting pics becomes cumbersome and non-intuitive. Anyone with a gazillion photos have some advice or war stories? I'd like to avoid expensive solutions, so the idea is to use a combination of the file system and a free viewer (probably Picasa) to make sense of all these pics...
Picasa... It will automatically sort it for you... It also can detect faces and compile pictures by people.
Another qualifier - I am switching from a mac back to a pc with windows7. Please don't turn this into a mac vs pc debate...
Aperture is mac only. EDIT: It's also complicated because my mac is old and Picasa does not run on the old G4s. iPhoto's library system makes copying the originals from the finder a pain, and the export option crashes with 15k+ pictures (and I have no idea how that would effect the folder date structure). Quite a mess and I (bitterly) get the impression this will be a lot of manual organization...
Store your pics in folders on your hard drive based on date, with master folders for each year. Then, use TaggedFrog to apply tags to each photo. With this method you can sort by date, or you can view only pictures of Uncle Fred, or you can view only pictures of Disneyland, or any combination (such as Uncle Fred and Disneyland, etc.) Tagging is, by far, the best method for such organization. I just wish more applications supported tagging (and I wish there was a standard for tagging.... and I wish it was built into the OS and could be applied to any file, such as MP3s, MS Office docs, etc.)
- File and Folder Structure * %YEAR% (2009) ****** %YEAR%-%MONTH% (2009-11) ************ %EVENTNAME% (Dinner With Friends) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 001.jpg (Dinner With Friends 2009-11 001.jpg) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 002.jpg (Dinner With Friends 2009-11 002.jpg) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 003.jpg (Dinner With Friends 2009-11 003.jpg) ************ %EVENTNAME% (Thanksgiving) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 001.jpg (Thanksgiving 2009-11 001.jpg) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 002.jpg (Thanksgiving 2009-11 002.jpg) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 003.jpg (Thanksgiving 2009-11 003.jpg) ****** %YEAR%-%MONTH% (2009-12) ************ %EVENTNAME% (Kid's Recital) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 001.jpg (Kid's Recital 2009-12 001.jpg) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 002.jpg (Kid's Recital 2009-12 002.jpg) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 003.jpg (Kid's Recital 2009-12 003.jpg) ************ %EVENTNAME% (Christmas) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 001.jpg (Christmas 2009-12 001.jpg) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 002.jpg (Christmas 2009-12 002.jpg) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 003.jpg (Christmas 2009-12 003.jpg) * %YEAR% (2010) ****** %YEAR%-%MONTH% (2010-01) ************ %EVENTNAME% (New Years) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 001.jpg (New Years 2010-01 001.jpg) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 002.jpg (New Years 2010-01 002.jpg) ****************** %EVENTNAME% %YEAR%-%MONTH% 003.jpg (New Years 2010-01 003.jpg) This is somewhat manual but if I do it often it is not that much work and for me it is organized but I am ridiculously anal about things being organized. I use an app called Quick File Renamer to rename all of the files once I have the pictures sorted into my folder structure. Here is a link to the software: http://www.rebrandsoftware.com/showsoftware2.asp?soft_id=15 I use picasa to clean the pics up and get them up on the web.
I take a SHOOTload of photos. I usually run out of hard drive space and have to delete some folders. Raw photos are usually at around 17 MB per file... and since I'm a pack rat, I keep EVERYTHING either in DVD or External Hard Drive form. Here's my usual process: 1. Transfer to laptop as soon as possible. 2. Backup all "User" data to an external hard drive as soon as I can. 3. If no space available, delete oldest folder in topmost folder for photos. Folders are named: YYYYMMDD_Event_Name_or_Person_Name (eg. 20100520_SwoLy_bday_and_trip) Most of my photos are .CR2 (RAW Canon type), so they're viewable with Picasa, but I don't do tags or keywords. I know that if it's Xzy event, and people were present there, I just remember I took photos of them. I usually take around 400 or even more per event... if it's a family thing, it's around 100 photos.
I like this. Use Picasa also to tag/album the pics. But it also keep a very neat file structure in place that is readable and easily exported for backup. Curious why you don't also include the day in the filename? Drox - that looks quite handy except that it's a month or so until the x64 win7 version is released.
Swoly, that might be the first (and probably last) post of yours I have not considered a complete waste of my time and the internet's potential. Color me shocked.
Anyone know if Adobe Lightroom is any good? I've heard some friends who are into photography say that it's much better than Picasa.
Because sometimes I have pictures from multiple days in one "Event" folder. Also, my camera stores date taken into the metadata of the picture file.
