Best folder structure for LR and other apps

[process]

I've got many photos which haven't yet been imported into LR, but they have been organized (using Adobe bridge) into dates/event descriptions. Apart from adding my name/copyright info upon importing they don't have any metadata, but fortunately I've been told I can easily copy a folder's name (i.e. event description) to the metadata by using John Beardsworth's "Search replace transfer" LR plugin for this. Should save me some time and work :grin:

The thing is, although LR doesn't depend on a specific file structure I want to keep my photos roughly organized in such a way that it's not a total mess even if I for some reason stop using LR and need to use something else (e.g. Bridge). At this stage I haven't seriously started using LR, having just a few photos there, so I'm free to organize things as I want. On my hard drives I have a folder structure similar to this:

• Photo archive 01
  • Jason growing up
    • 2008 05 May
      • Camping out
      • A day at the beach
      • Bike riding with Ken
    • 2008 06 June
      • Aunt Mary visiting
      • Doctor's visit
    • 2008 07 July
    • 2008 08 August
  • Mom and dad
    • 2010 02 February
      • Moving into the new house
      • Coming over for a visit
  • Composites for Photoshop
    • Sky and clouds
    • Grass
    • Textiles
    • Wood
  • Friends
    • Peter
      • Getting a new cat
      • Travelling around in China
    • Alex
      • Backyard barbecue
    • Samantha
      • Fun in the snow
      • 23rd birthday party
      • Sam and John

Apart from copying the folder events over to the enclosed photos I haven't settled on which way to organize things in LR, but for now I'm wondering what the best way to further organize my folders would be? As you see I've started off by grouping them by person/subject ("Jason growing up", "mom and dad", "Photoshop composites", "Friends" etc.), then by date or narrowing the subject down. But this makes for a very wide structure. Would it be better with a deeper but narrower structure (i.e. organize by date first, then subject etc.)? Does anyone have any good examples they'd like to share?

 

[Replytoken]

You will probably not like my suggestion, but I would recommend using a date-based folder structure as it is scalable. I would then use LR's features, like collections and/or keywords, to organize your images. What are you going to do if you have a phot that could fall into two different folders under your proposed scheme? It may not happen right now, but I suspect that it will occur at some point in the future. Give it a bit of thought. Your structure would make a good LR collections structure, so your work would not be for naught.

Good luck,

--Ken

 

[clee01l]

Your folder structure is reality the basis for keywords and collections. If you have keywords that correspond to the current folder labels, you would not need to worry about what folders were being used. There is considerable risk to access the images outside of LR with any other app because LR loses the ability to completely manage the images. They can get lost, altered or damaged.

If you stop using LR you will be starting over with another nondestructive editor and DAM tool. None of your LR edits and crops will be available in a RAW original file. Keywords won't be written to the master original RAW file although they can be written to public file formats like JPEG,DNG & TIFF. If someone offers a better DAM tool than LR, they will likely offer a migration plan like Adobe has done for Apple Aperture. So I suggest that you truly embrace the asset management features that LR offers, even if you think that your relationship with Adobe might not be permanent.

Lightroom offers 12 or so different date named folder structures as defaults. I'm sure as a part of their program analysis Adobe studied the most efficient folder schemes and decided that date based folders were efficient and required no import pause for user decisions. There is nothing that I have found to beat it for streamlining the import process. I insert the camera card, Select an import preset if it is not already selected and press the {import} button. I can the walk away and have a cup of tea or start culling images as soon as the first one appears.

I keep my Folder panel collapsed as I don't use it. I challenge you to do the same and figure out how to use LR with Keyword Collections and the Filterbar. Think of an image (perhaps one of Samantha) Now think of what you need as characteristics of that image to find it. If the keywords were there a Smart Collection would already have found those images. Now Think of an Image that might contain both Peter and Samantha What folder do you put it in? A Smart Collection will find those images. A Static Collection could hold all of the images of Samantha, Another Static Collection could hold all of the images of Peter. Both of these Collections would contain the image that has both Peter and Samantha. You can't do that with a folder based organization scheme.

 

[process]

Cletus: Yes, I know LR edits can't be viewed on other systems. A non-proprietory folder structure could be useful if for instance I attach my hard drives to another computer without LR installed, and I could easily view and browse through the original RAW/JPG files using the OSX Finder, Windows desktop or whatever. I do find that organizing each "event" (e.g. "Picnic with uncle Bob" or "Visiting the Eiffel tower") as a descriptive folder name with all those photos inside (sometimes with sub-folders) being very useful and would like to continue doing that. I haven't looked into it yet, but assume I can create and name a folder when importing photos into LR, within a pre-defined main structure.
So far I've used this folder structure (mostly within Bridge, sometimes in Mac OSX' Finder desktop) to find photos by browsing through those folder names and sometimes searching for specific words/terms used in the folder names. Certainly not as efficient as giving each photo specific and individual keywords, but since we're talking thousands of photos I don't see myself doing that with all my old photos, but probably something I can start doing with new imports.

So you guys import your photos without looking through the folder structure but instead organize them within the LR app itself using Smart Collections or searching using keywords? But how about if you don't remember much about the photo, but will recognize it when you see it, and you therefore want to browse instead of search? How would you do that if you don't look at the folder structure (with descriptive event names)?


Replytoken: I understand what you mean about photos falling into two categories (and have already run into this issue because prior to using Bridge I used iPhoto and had many photos in different albums), so my existing folder structure isn't satisfactory alone. The ultimate solution IMHO would be to keep my "event folder name" structure AND further organize them in LR using collections/keywords as you suggest.
But getting back to my original question about the actual folder structure (I believe it would be benefitial to get this out of the way before organizing things further in LR): I'm not sure I understand what you mean about using a scaleable date-based folder structure, but my guess is a "deep" structure like this:

• Photo archive 01
  • 2008
    • 05 May
      • Jason growing up
        • Camping out
        • A day at the beach
        • Bike riding with Ken
    • 06 June
      • Jason growing up
        • Aunt Mary visiting
        • Doctor's visit
      • Mom and dad
        • Mom's 75 birthday
  • 2009

What I haven't quite figured out yet is how to organize different subjects (i.e. "Jason growing up", "Mom and dad", "Friends" etc) without redoing the whole date thing or repeating "Jason growing up", "Mom and dad" etc.).

 

[Tony Jay]

All good information so far!

Trying to organise one's images according to subject-based folders is a recipe for disaster.
It may work to a point until suddenly images need to exist in two or more folders simultaneously because of their subject matter.
As soon as duplication occurs confusion, complication, and complexity ensue.

In a small image collection, with a lot of effort it may, for a time, be possible to keep track of things.
Fast forward to an image collection of 500 000 images - all the images your system will essentially be lost and inaccessible.

Lightroom, in common with other comparable Digital Asset Managers, has tools for very complex searches using metadata-based criteria. Keywords, although important metadata, only represent a subset of the possibilities available for search utilities in digital photography.

So, in a large image collection that has been appropriately keyworded it may be possible to find a single specific image out of 500 000 in a literal instant. Cletus has mentioned Smart collections and they are very helpful. The library filter is another tool that operates on similar principles to Smart collections in the sense that it gathers images based on metadata criteria, be they simple of very complex.
Your concern about what might happen if Lightroom is not available to organise one's images is somewhat misplaced because the days of folder-based organisation are over. Every alternative will use a metadata-based organisational philosophy.
Even without a migration option offered by a new vendor there are other possibilities that could work in retaining keywords and other metadata.

As far as a folder naming strategy is concerned one does need one.
As already suggested a date-based strategy is the way to go.
It is easy enough, when logical to do so, to add certain shoot information into the folder name as well.
I usually do something like this 2015-01-29-champagne_falls which links location to the date.
Images will also be similarly named as well.
The key issue though is to start with the date - this way all the shoots will automatically arrange themselves chronologically.
The principles behind a folder naming strategy are simplicity, repeatability, and scalability.
In reality all those principles are interrelated - none stands alone.

Unfortunately, the examples that are posted of the folder system are very complex and therefore will become difficult to understand and maintain as one's image collection grows.

As an illustration think of the folders merely as bricks in a wall - they all look very uniform - yet the miracle of metadata nonetheless allows one to quickly and accurately find individual grains of sand that make up the bricks.

So, the message is: store your images in a simple, repeatable, and scalable folder system and then forget about folders and get your images keyworded and get the rest of the IPTC metadata up to date and then use that metadata to make Smart collections that logically group images in the way that you need.

Tony Jay

 

[clee01l]

I haven't looked into it yet, but assume I can create and name a folder when importing photos into LR, within a pre-defined main structure.

Yes, you can do exactly what you have been doing and continue to create the exact same folder structure that you have now. What Ken & I are saying is that this is not very efficient as a particular image can not reside in more than one folder. It can reside in more than one collection. Most people agree that trying to organize by folder is a weak method of organization and most people do not recommend using LR in that way. Still, LR is very versatile and will permit you to create any folder structure that you can conceive of as long as one image exists on one and only one folder.

But how about if you don't remember much about the photo, but will recognize it when you see it, and you therefore want to browse instead of search? How would you do that if you don't look at the folder structure

Chances are you won't remember much about the photo to know which folder to eyeball scan either. If all you can remember is that photo had Samantha in it you can either filter on the photos with the keyword "Samantha" assigned to it and hope that you assigned the keyword "Samantha" to the photo that you want to find OR you can scan all of the folders that are related to Samantha and hope the photo that you want to find is in the right folder. In less time than it took me to type that sentence, I can bring up all of the images in LR that have the keyword "Samantha" assigned. If that returns only a few images, then my job is nearly done. If I know more keywords then the result set gets even smaller. Anytime I find myself doing a visual scan of image thumbnails, I know that I have not used LR to its most efficient.

You don't need to isolate "Mom's 75 birthday" in a folder. If the date of the birthday was December 1, 2005 , then you can filter on that Create date (or one nearby if the party was not on the birthday itself) Add the "Mom" keyword and you isolate the photos of the party that have "Mom" in them.

 

[process]

OK, I think I'm slowly getting into the LR way of thinking keywords, smart collections (based on the keywords) and collections
Just letting LR take care of the physical folder structure alone and thus not naming any folder with subjects/events seems scary and a recipe for photos getting lost, but I can see how much powerful the consistent use of keywords will be. The analogy with the grains of a brick vs. just the bricks is a good one to illustrate this!
Perhaps I will start off with both methods (adding keywords AND creating a folder with the subject/event while importing) until I get fully acquainted with LR's organizing capabilities.

So, the general concensus is that most of you don't see the need for creating named event folders in addition to the keywords/smart collections? I actually heard a pro photographer say that a "double system" such as the one I've been talking about (proprietary organizing in LR or whatever in addition to folder organizing) is highly recommended. His reason being in case the proprietary software fails and he really needs to find a photo. I agree that having named descriptive folders would be a lot easier to browse/search through than just dates alone.


Regardless of how I handle photos from now on I need to import and organize my old photos in LR. Using the "Search replace transfer" plugin to transfer the folder names to keywords should help (haven't tried it though), but since I haven't given each folder a subject name (who's in the photos) but mostly just an event description (e.g. "Trip to Paris") I should probably add a subject name to each of my existing folders before importing into LR, right? That way I also wouldn't need to repeat the date-hierarchy for each subject, but keep them all within the same year/month. In other words, renaming/restructuring my existing folders like this:

• Photo archive 01
  • 2008
    • 05 May
      • Jason growing up -Camping out
      • Jason growing up -A day at the beach
      • Jason growing up -Bike riding with Ken
    • 06 June
      • Jason growing up -Aunt Mary visiting
      • Jason growing up -Doctor's visit
      • Mom and dad -Mom's 75 birthday
    • 07 July
      • Jason growing up -8th birthday
      • Friends_Samantha -backyard barbecue party
      • Friends_Samantha -Sam and John
  • 2009

That should take care of grouping subjects and events. Then there are photos which aren't based on dates but rather just subjects such as my "Photoshop composites". They should be quick to keyword in LR as each folder just contains numerous photos of the same thing (e.g. "Clouds", "Textiles"). Not sure where to put them in my folder structure, but perhaps I shouldn't put too much thought into this as I could easily search for "Photoshop" or "composites" using any computer's OS and locate that main folder. And for any new composites added to LR from now on I could probably just create a named folder (e.g. "Clouds") as a sub-folder for the imported date folder in addition to keywording it (or once I've gotten to the point that I'm putting all my trust into LR, just leave the folder naming part alone and only give those photos appropriate keywords)
Just thinking out loud here as I'm getting ideas but would like to hear from more experienced LR users than myself what you think and if it's a workable solution, both for LR and as a stand-alone folder-organized setup?

 

[Tony Jay]

OK, I think I'm slowly getting into the LR way of thinking keywords, smart collections (based on the keywords) and collections
Just letting LR take care of the physical folder structure alone and thus not naming any folder with subjects/events seems scary and a recipe for photos getting lost, but I can see how much powerful the consistent use of keywords will be. The analogy with the grains of a brick vs. just the bricks is a good one to illustrate this!
Perhaps I will start off with both methods (adding keywords AND creating a folder with the subject/event while importing) until I get fully acquainted with LR's organizing capabilities.

So, the general concensus is that most of you don't see the need for creating named event folders in addition to the keywords/smart collections? I actually heard a pro photographer say that a "double system" such as the one I've been talking about (proprietary organizing in LR or whatever in addition to folder organizing) is highly recommended. His reason being in case the proprietary software fails and he really needs to find a photo. I agree that having named descriptive folders would be a lot easier to browse/search through than just dates alone.


Regardless of how I handle photos from now on I need to import and organize my old photos in LR. Using the "Search replace transfer" plugin to transfer the folder names to keywords should help (haven't tried it though), but since I haven't given each folder a subject name (who's in the photos) but mostly just an event description (e.g. "Trip to Paris") I should probably add a subject name to each of my existing folders before importing into LR, right? That way I also wouldn't need to repeat the date-hierarchy for each subject, but keep them all within the same year/month. In other words, renaming/restructuring my existing folders like this:

• Photo archive 01
  • 2008
    • 05 May
      • Jason growing up -Camping out
      • Jason growing up -A day at the beach
      • Jason growing up -Bike riding with Ken
    • 06 June
      • Jason growing up -Aunt Mary visiting
      • Jason growing up -Doctor's visit
      • Mom and dad -Mom's 75 birthday
    • 07 July
      • Jason growing up -8th birthday
      • Friends_Samantha -backyard barbecue party
      • Friends_Samantha -Sam and John
  • 2009

That should take care of grouping subjects and events. Then there are photos which aren't based on dates but rather just subjects such as my "Photoshop composites". They should be quick to keyword in LR as each folder just contains numerous photos of the same thing (e.g. "Clouds", "Textiles"). Not sure where to put them in my folder structure, but perhaps I shouldn't put too much thought into this as I could easily search for "Photoshop" or "composites" using any computer's OS and locate that main folder. And for any new composites added to LR from now on I could probably just create a named folder (e.g. "Clouds") as a sub-folder for the imported date folder in addition to keywording it (or once I've gotten to the point that I'm putting all my trust into LR, just leave the folder naming part alone and only give those photos appropriate keywords)
Just thinking out loud here as I'm getting ideas but would like to hear from more experienced LR users than myself what you think and if it's a workable solution, both for LR and as a stand-alone folder-organized setup?

I have to say that I don't really think that you are getting the hang of things yet.
I see an unhelpful obsession with complicated folder structure and naming that is completely unnecessary.

I accept that sometimes it may not be possible to retrofit a good folder structure to an already existing image collection.
In that instance the general advice is to just import the image collection into Lightroom "as is" and then concentrate on keywording and metadata acquisition on those image.
However, prospectively, the advice would be to convert to a simple date-based folder system that looks nothing like your current proposals.

This forum is one where friendly advice is given - strong advice is given only because it is in the best interests of the OP and not because we are being prescriptive.

Tony Jay

 

[rob211]

I was you...until I got hopelessly lost in all those subject folders.

Grasshopper, you need to turn loose the concept that folders are a good way to impart info about your images, or that they are a good way to find things.

First, the very cool thing about images is that they can contain metadata in standardized formats, and this can be used on everything and just about any system. If one of your "Jason growing up" photos goes outta that folder, how do you know it's Jason? or that he's growing up in it? You don't. Ouch. And what if you wanted to send one to Aunt Mary? That folder info disappears when you do that, or post online, or whatever.

Second, to solve the problem above you add info to the IMAGE itself. Each one. So, if I keyword or caption a photo as "Jason" and "growing up" and "Aunt Mary" I can just use Spotlight to find it on the Mac no matter where it is, or in File Explorer in Windows. I don't even need to add the date...the camera already did that. Keywords are usually best for this; a smart person here convinced me that ANY permanent info about the picture's subject should be in keywords. Folders are temporary; keywords aren't, and they move with the photo. So now you send it to Aunt Mary and she just searches "Jason" and bingo, sees photo.

Third, keywords are more flexible. You can only put a photo in one folder, which is the same as saying only one folder's name can apply to the photos within. In your scheme, you limit yourself. What if Jason is at a BBQ while camping with Aunt Mary who's riding a bike? Silly, but at some point you WILL face an either or choice, like does it go in "Doctor's visit" or "Aunt Mary visiting." If those are keywords, it can be BOTH. SOOOOO much easier.

Fourth, let the software do some of your work. Cameras add dates, model type, lens settings, location, aperture, etc. All of which can be searched in virtually any computer system now. Why add that stuff yourself? LR is reputedly adding faces too, which will probably be addable as keywords.

Fifth, keywords and other metadata makes things much easier to find. Trust us on this: at some point you're gonna look at a folder, even if it's got a 132 character description, and you won't remember all of what's in it. In your scheme, if you search on "Jason" and "birthday" you get just a folder; you still have to search within those pictures in each folder (and you'll start to have many), and if you haven't keyworded you'll have to look at each one. If you keyword, you can just keep drilling down: "Jason" AND "birthday" and "<2008" and "mom" and "location=home" will be much more useful. And you can always look at a dated clump of photos in a folder; we still need folders and date works as well as anything.

Sixth, what ARE folders good for? Consider what you really really need a folder for. At one point, for me it was clients: it was their property, and they needed certain permissions, and security. Easy. Or "Work" and "Personal." But, like so many before us, I ended up at the lowest level with dates. The chief reason, for me, was that it gave me a rough guide to what I needed to process, sort of a workflow. But perhaps more importantly, it gives me info when I go to backup; I have to move folders off of my SSD, backup online, etc, and in those programs it's useful for me to be able to look at the dates on folders. YMMV.

Finally, back to safety. I dunno what your "pro" advisor was talking about; it sounds more like managed library in Aperture and referenced library in Aperture, a completely different scenario. Keywording and adding metadata to the photos themselves is bar none the safest, easiest to secure, most universal, and ultimately most usuable way to store valuable info. That's why it was invented. You can even get standardized content to use as keywords, in case you do a lot of sharing. You will use it eventually; best to jump in before you put too much work into a system that won't scale.

 

[process]

All good and valid points.
All my folder organizing is finally done now and I'm ready to import and continue organizing in LR.
I see that organizing photos is different for everybody, but I finally found a setup that'll work for me, where every folder within the month folder starts with the main subject or person (what or who), then a brief description of the event:

Photo archive 01/

• 2008
  • 2008-01
  • 2008-02
  • 2008-03
  • 2008-04
  • 2008-05
    • Jason_Camping out
    • Jason_A day at the beach
    • Jason_Bike riding with Ken
  • 2008-06
    • Jason_Aunt Mary visiting
    • Jason_Doctor's visit
    • Mom and dad_Mom's 75th birthday
  • 2008-07
    • Jason_8th birthday
    • Samantha_Backyard barbecue party
    • Samantha_Sam and John
• 2009
• 2010
  • 2010-01
    • Composites_Clouds
    • New York_Big Apple winter break
    • Jason_Fun in the snow
    • Nature_Flower macro shots

I prefer having my photos roughly organized like this so I'm not 100% dependant on LR in order to find something. If I know the approximate date and the subject I should be able to find it in the Mac OSX Finder, Windows Explorer or whatever. The next step is to add keywords, organize into groups etc. using LR.

 

[Led]

I think everyone is different, but I seem to work best in a "date based" format. I've tried other ways, but I'm just not good at categorizing things -- I'll either be way too specific or way too generic.

What I've settled on is date based, which goes Year -> Month -> Project.

It would look something like this:

- 2015

- 01​

- Jordan's Basketball game​

- New Year's Party​

- 02​

- Valentine's Day​

That's just what works best for me. I do keyword fairly heavily, but I'm not crazy about it. I tag people, and I tag locations in hierarchal fashion (i.e.: Travel -> Europe -> England -> London).

For the photos that I've scanned in from old photo albums, I'm very general about the dates, for example:

- 1940-1949
- 1950-1959

Keith

 

[Tony Jay]

I think everyone is different, but I seem to work best in a "date based" format. I've tried other ways, but I'm just not good at categorizing things -- I'll either be way too specific or way too generic.

What I've settled on is date based, which goes Year -> Month -> Project.

It would look something like this:

- 2015

- 01​

- Jordan's Basketball game​

- New Year's Party​

- 02​

- Valentine's Day​

That's just what works best for me. I do keyword fairly heavily, but I'm not crazy about it. I tag people, and I tag locations in hierarchal fashion (i.e.: Travel -> Europe -> England -> London).

For the photos that I've scanned in from old photo albums, I'm very general about the dates, for example:

- 1940-1949
- 1950-1959

Keith

Keith I think you are definitely on the right track but try this approach:
2015
2015-02-12_birthday_party.

Doing this will allow each shoot to automatically arrange itself in chronological order.
The subsequent description of the shoot may or may not be helpful depending on one's genre.

Tony Jay

 

[process]

Keith I think you are definitely on the right track but try this approach:
2015
2015-02-12_birthday_party.

Doing this will allow each shoot to automatically arrange itself in chronological order.
The subsequent description of the shoot may or may not be helpful depending on one's genre.

That's also a good idea for eliminating yet another sub-folder level (as my system consists of). But for me I worry that this will just add to my already very long decriptive folder name.
How would OSX or LR handle seeing all the folders for a whole year at once as opposed to just a month at a time?

For the photos that I've scanned in from old photo albums, I'm very general about the dates, for example:

- 1940-1949
- 1950-1959

Great advice! I have several scanned photos of which I don't know the original date, so the above will come in handy.
But since I do know (at least the month) of some of my scanned photos and they would be suitable for putting in a dated folder (e.g. "1940-04"), maybe an additional folder named "1940-00" or "1940-unknown month" could be added for the unknown ones.
Do you usually change the EXIF date in scanned photos to match their correct dates or don't you ming that LR will organize it by the date it was scanned, instead relying on organizing them in groups?

 

[Tony Jay]

That's also a good idea for eliminating yet another sub-folder level (as my system consists of). But for me I worry that this will just add to my already very long decriptive folder name.
How would OSX or LR handle seeing all the folders for a whole year at once as opposed to just a month at a time?

Quite fine!

Tony Jay

 

[clee01l]

... But for me I worry that this will just add to my already very long decriptive folder name...

About 6 months ago a went from letting LR create a folder structure as:

YYYY
YYYY-MM-DD
to
YYYY
YYYY-MM

The result is the Folder panel is much cleaner now and rarely will I have more than 1000 images in a month.

I've already stated the reasons why it is unnecessary to have a descriptive folder name tacked on to the folder name generated automatically by LR.

 

[rob211]

And it's not like you can't easily change it.

I want recent stuff front and center (yet another reason why I like date based folders), but as the year gets longer I move stuff into subfolders, and maybe even into subject folders for archiving. There is no reason to commit to a rigid system since it's so easy in LR to just move and/or rename stuff.

Much of how you set it up and work with it depends on how you are planning to access it outside LR. If you use subject info in folder names (I'm with Cletus on this) you probably don't want to use subfolders since you will have to do a lot of opening/closing in your system to see what you are looking for.

 

[Led]

That's also a good idea for eliminating yet another sub-folder level (as my system consists of). But for me I worry that this will just add to my already very long decriptive folder name.
How would OSX or LR handle seeing all the folders for a whole year at once as opposed to just a month at a time?



Great advice! I have several scanned photos of which I don't know the original date, so the above will come in handy.
But since I do know (at least the month) of some of my scanned photos and they would be suitable for putting in a dated folder (e.g. "1940-04"), maybe an additional folder named "1940-00" or "1940-unknown month" could be added for the unknown ones.
Do you usually change the EXIF date in scanned photos to match their correct dates or don't you ming that LR will organize it by the date it was scanned, instead relying on organizing them in groups?

Yes, I change the EXIF date, again in a very general way. If I know exactly when the photo was taken (e.g. Christmas day 1960) then I set the date exact.

If I just know what decade it was in, such as the 1950's, then I'll set its date to 01-01-1950.

Keith

 

[Led]

Keith I think you are definitely on the right track but try this approach:
2015
2015-02-12_birthday_party.

Doing this will allow each shoot to automatically arrange itself in chronological order.
The subsequent description of the shoot may or may not be helpful depending on one's genre.

Tony Jay

Tony,
I used to actually do that, but I stopped because of two reasons. (1) I don't take that many photos, and (2) it makes for really long folder names. If I was shooting photos every day or every other day, I probably would go back to using that type of folder name.

I do, however, always name the individual photo files with the full date. For example, "20150211 Jordan Basketball Game 1", "20150211 Jordan Basketball Game 2", etc. That way if I ever do lose my catalog database, or my hard drive, I can recreate the folder structures fairly easily from a backup download from the cloud or wherever.

Keith

 

[Led]

I was you...until I got hopelessly lost in all those subject folders.

Grasshopper, you need to turn loose the concept that folders are a good way to impart info about your images, or that they are a good way to find things.

First, the very cool thing about images is that they can contain metadata in standardized formats, and this can be used on everything and just about any system. If one of your "Jason growing up" photos goes outta that folder, how do you know it's Jason? or that he's growing up in it? You don't. Ouch. And what if you wanted to send one to Aunt Mary? That folder info disappears when you do that, or post online, or whatever.

Second, to solve the problem above you add info to the IMAGE itself. Each one. So, if I keyword or caption a photo as "Jason" and "growing up" and "Aunt Mary" I can just use Spotlight to find it on the Mac no matter where it is, or in File Explorer in Windows. I don't even need to add the date...the camera already did that. Keywords are usually best for this; a smart person here convinced me that ANY permanent info about the picture's subject should be in keywords. Folders are temporary; keywords aren't, and they move with the photo. So now you send it to Aunt Mary and she just searches "Jason" and bingo, sees photo.

Third, keywords are more flexible. You can only put a photo in one folder, which is the same as saying only one folder's name can apply to the photos within. In your scheme, you limit yourself. What if Jason is at a BBQ while camping with Aunt Mary who's riding a bike? Silly, but at some point you WILL face an either or choice, like does it go in "Doctor's visit" or "Aunt Mary visiting." If those are keywords, it can be BOTH. SOOOOO much easier.

Fourth, let the software do some of your work. Cameras add dates, model type, lens settings, location, aperture, etc. All of which can be searched in virtually any computer system now. Why add that stuff yourself? LR is reputedly adding faces too, which will probably be addable as keywords.

Fifth, keywords and other metadata makes things much easier to find. Trust us on this: at some point you're gonna look at a folder, even if it's got a 132 character description, and you won't remember all of what's in it. In your scheme, if you search on "Jason" and "birthday" you get just a folder; you still have to search within those pictures in each folder (and you'll start to have many), and if you haven't keyworded you'll have to look at each one. If you keyword, you can just keep drilling down: "Jason" AND "birthday" and "<2008" and "mom" and "location=home" will be much more useful. And you can always look at a dated clump of photos in a folder; we still need folders and date works as well as anything.

Sixth, what ARE folders good for? Consider what you really really need a folder for. At one point, for me it was clients: it was their property, and they needed certain permissions, and security. Easy. Or "Work" and "Personal." But, like so many before us, I ended up at the lowest level with dates. The chief reason, for me, was that it gave me a rough guide to what I needed to process, sort of a workflow. But perhaps more importantly, it gives me info when I go to backup; I have to move folders off of my SSD, backup online, etc, and in those programs it's useful for me to be able to look at the dates on folders. YMMV.

Finally, back to safety. I dunno what your "pro" advisor was talking about; it sounds more like managed library in Aperture and referenced library in Aperture, a completely different scenario. Keywording and adding metadata to the photos themselves is bar none the safest, easiest to secure, most universal, and ultimately most usuable way to store valuable info. That's why it was invented. You can even get standardized content to use as keywords, in case you do a lot of sharing. You will use it eventually; best to jump in before you put too much work into a system that won't scale.

Rob, that's a great post and it all makes sense to me. I just wish I could make myself do it! I guess I'm just so old-fashioned --- I think I started out with DOS 2.0 and I just can't break my reliance on physical folder names.

Keith

 

[Tony Jay]

Hi Keith.

The most important part of a folder name is the date part.
The descriptive part that follows is much more discretionary.

As for Rob's post he is just reiterating a very important point that I certainly highlighted:
Metadata is the key to finding and sorting images, not folders.
The problem with folders is that an image has to be present in a folder if it belongs there.
Using metadata and the capabilities of a digital-asset-manager such as Lightroom images can be instantly found, sorted, and grouped in all sorts of ways without any necessity for duplicating images in the way that folders would dictate.

Tony Jay

 

[Led]

Hi Keith.

The most important part of a folder name is the date part.
The descriptive part that follows is much more discretionary.

As for Rob's post he is just reiterating a very important point that I certainly highlighted:
Metadata is the key to finding and sorting images, not folders.
The problem with folders is that an image has to be present in a folder if it belongs there.
Using metadata and the capabilities of a digital-asset-manager such as Lightroom images can be instantly found, sorted, and grouped in all sorts of ways without any necessity for duplicating images in the way that folders would dictate.

Tony Jay

Very true. It's probably not that big a problem for me, because I don't have that many photos (9,000).

Keith

 

[Led]

Keith I think you are definitely on the right track but try this approach:
2015
2015-02-12_birthday_party.

Doing this will allow each shoot to automatically arrange itself in chronological order.
The subsequent description of the shoot may or may not be helpful depending on one's genre.

Tony Jay

Tony,

I just re-read your reply to me and realized that I had missed your intention. You're saying I should "flatten out" the folder structure by not creating folders 01, 02, ... 12?

That makes lots of sense - I think I'll do that! Thanks!

Keith

 

[Tony Jay]

Tony,

I just re-read your reply to me and realized that I had missed your intention. You're saying I should "flatten out" the folder structure by not creating folders 01, 02, ... 12?

That makes lots of sense - I think I'll do that! Thanks!

Keith

Indeed!

Tony Jay

 

[rob211]

Tony's right. We can't seem to persuade you to use a more robust system, but if you are going to use the photo's locations in the file system to describe them it makes sense to have a flat folder structure since then you can see all the info at a glance. You can expand all, but not as easily in the Finder or in dialog boxes (I seem to recall you use a Mac). It will get obnoxiously long over time, but scrolling is faster than diving into subfolders.

In LR, of course, you can choose to flatten the content of folders, i.e. view all the photos in a folder AND its subfolders. Or select the folders. So in LR it's easier to manage.

You should at least try the keyword list on the side panel. It is virtually the same as the folders, if it's the virtual folder list view that is what you're used to. You seem to like to conceptualize around events; if you're like me then even though photos have events, you perhaps lose track of when they were (did I camp at that beach in 2008 or 2009??). With your folders you are creating dates that are really events that hold special significance aside from the calendar date. For example, if you had a photo of a pelican someone emailed you that was dated 05 May 2008 you wouldn't want it in the 2008 05 subfolders, since they are all Jason oriented. Maybe even if Jason isn't in each photo. But if you plop it in the root 2008 05 folder it's likely to be lost. If you go the Keywording Way you could have this keyword list:

_Events

• 2008
  • May
    • Camping with Jason at Yosemite
    • Day trip to Malibu Beach with Jason
    • Bike riding in Cupertino with Ken and Jason

_People

• Family
  • Jason
  • Aunt Mary
  • Ken
• Friends
  • Samantha

Those "Jason growing up -Camping out" photos would all be viewable by simply clicking the arrow next to "Camping with Jason at Yosemite." If you wanted to see just the photos with Jason in them, you'd click the arrow next to "Jason" as well. Sure, the event names are kind of duplicative with person or activity keywords and maybe even with captions. So what...the beauty of keyword is they CAN be duplicative. And with LR at least it gives you a visual structure in the keyword list you might like to try.

Good luck...just wanted to take one more crack at convincing you :grin:

 

[process]

Hehe, at least you tried :grin:
Seriously though: It's not a question of one or the other organizing method for me, but both:
- a folder system which allows for finding photos by navigating through folders (or searching, as long as I search for words used in my folder name descriptions)
- a much more detailed, cross-referenced and flexible system within LR

I started organizing photos in folders with descriptive names years ago, so I don't want to trash that (besides, how could I ever remember what all those events were about now that I don't have any keywords?), so I'm currently in the process of transferring the folder names over to the images as keywords which should be a good start in LR, then add extra keywords as I go along. So please understand that I'm all for the LR way of doing things. This is just in addition to that :grin: