Image Catalogue (s)

[NigelD]

It's come to the time where I need to be brave. I have 2 x 500GB hard drives on my PC and although they are backed up - the file naming system on the second drive means instead of having a proper name like "Lake District - 2013" , the folder says "imported on September 1st, 2013".
Added to this, I have a back up external hard drive which contains files older than my PC which I stored in there when my original PC died in 2009.
Added to this I have 2 x smaller external hard drives which have copies of the first external hard drive but nothing from the new PC.

Can anyone recommend a good way of consolidating my files and keeping the naming hierarchy consistent?

[Shadowman]

Your editing software should have a dialogue setup for you that allows everything you are asking.

[NigelD]

I think my lack of using this correctly over the past 10 years has led to my current situation! I think it's going to be a long slog.

[Geoff F]

If you just want a reasonably easy system without cross referencing and the use of Keywords, it comes down to a standardised method of naming.

For example, besides keywords I name every image with the basic description plus date and photo shooting number. I then place them in suitably named folders. Sometimes, at the end of the year I will drag folders of similar subjects into one 'super folder'.

Which means, for example, in my folder named 2013 Boats - November & December I will have individual images such as Davrik crossing the Bar 20-12-13 #5032

And if I want to tidy up even further, I can drag all my Boats folders into a 'super folder' 2013 All Boats

But you do need to think out a suitable naming sequence and stick with it.

In reality, I do often add Keywords into the EXIF information as well. But remember that unless you save using the correct formats you can lose the exif data. Saving in the native format of your editing software should retain the information.

But this might fail to work if you change your editing programme.

There are also cataloguing programmes but once again you may have to stick with the same software for maximum success. Which is where a simple image name could work better, although with only limited wording.

[NigelD]

"But this might fail to work if you change your editing programme"

... and this hasn't helped me either - I used to use Canon DPP, then changed to Photoshop CS then to Lightroom and have naming issues with all of them. I need to write a large spreadsheet with folder names and compare what's in them, then consolidate the lot I think. At least it will keep me busy a while.

[Mike Buckley]

For best practices, consider this web site.

My folder system:

Galleries
---Family
------This Person
------That Person
------Two or more people
---Location
------Continent
---------Country
------------City
---Household Inventory

Once you've done that, your best bet is to establish and implement a file-naming convention that creates a unique name for every file. The naming convention for my and my wife's files:

Mike XXXX-XX-XX--###-N.ext
Joellen XXXX-XX-XX--###-N.ext

The X's indicate the year, month and date the photo was captured. The ### is a three-digit sequential number. The N stands for NEF so I can quickly determine the file format.

I also use IDimager cataloging software. If I ever decide to use different software, I can export the catalog and import it into whatever competing software I select.

[NigelD]

Good information Mike thanks - but its not the file naming convention that's got me, its the fact that I have files on one drive called (for instance) 2013-03-27 River pics, but because of the format of the back up drive, the same file was named "imported on 27/3/13" when I backed up. For whatever reason, I chose to ignore these differences but am now of the opinion that I need to correct the anomaly, so really I suppose I have a lot of work to do and lesson learned. Unless of course there's an easy way to match the files from one drive with the other, despite the fact they're named differently.

[drjuice]

Hi, NigelD -

I'm with Geoff and Mike in saying find a system you're comfortable with and stick with it. It will be EXTREMELY tedious to get everything organized that way, but you'll break both arms patting yourself on the back when you're finished.

I do one thing similar to the way they do some things. All of my photography, except for a subgroup of images that I use a lot for work and keep in a directory called bmpfiles, goes into a directory named newstillcam. Within that directory are monthly subdirectories with names in the form yyyymm. In turn for each day that I take ANY pictures each of the monthly subdirectories will have other subdirectories in the form yyyymmdd, whether it's 2 pictures or 1500. Within the daily subdirectories, I have four more subdirectories in the forms AllARW (that's Sony's RAW format images), AllJPG, AllPNG, and AllTiff, and Paperwork. All my raw images for that day go into the AllARW directory from which I organize them and tag the images with the date and location. Additionally, if any people are in an image and I have a signed release from them a .pdf of that release goes into the Paperwork directory. Finally, even though I don't get signed releases from everybody, I identify as many of the people in the images from each day and file that information in the Paperwork directory.

This directory structure is perpetuated into every kind of backup medium I use. These days, I generally keep the most current six months on my computer but back them up every day to an external USB disk (I try to always make the drives Western Digital Caviar drives, regardess of the form factor of the container for the drive) and to Delkin Archival DVDs. The internal directory structure and the external labels on the DVDs follow the same directory structures as the hard drives.

The really hard part for me and which I am about 20% of the way through is scanning my 15,000+ 35mm slides and putting them into the same structures, except there isn't any AllARW subdirectory because I don't have any RAW images for these.

All of the information you have already about things needs to be organized into some structure otherwise all your other work will be for naught. I thought a LONG time about whether I wanted to actually scan the 35mm slides. I finally decided that it needed to be done before I forgot all the details and, if you read the contribution I made to the thread about older relatives' pictures, you know how glad I am that we did this work with my Mom's and Dad's pictures.

Hope this helps.

virginia

[drjuice]

Hi, NigelD -

I'm with Geoff and Mike in saying find a system you're comfortable with and stick with it. It will be EXTREMELY tedious to get everything organized that way, but you'll break both arms patting yourself on the back when you're finished.

I do one thing similar to the way they do some things. All of my photography, except for a subgroup of images that I use a lot for work and keep in a directory called bmpfiles, goes into the following structure which is explained by a narrative below:

newstillcam
201301
201302
.
.
.
201312
20131204
20131209
20131216
20131219
20131223
20131224
20131225
20131226
20131229
AllARW
AllJPG
AllPNG
AllTIFF
Paperwork

Within that directory are monthly subdirectories with names in the form yyyymm. In turn, for each day that I take ANY pictures each of the monthly subdirectories will have other subdirectories in the form yyyymmdd, whether it's 2 pictures or 1500. Within the daily subdirectories, I have four more subdirectories in the forms AllARW (that's Sony's RAW format images), AllJPG, AllPNG, and AllTiff, and Paperwork. All my raw images for that day go into the AllARW directory from which I organize them and tag the images with the date and location. Additionally, if any people are in an image and I have a signed release from them a .pdf of that release goes into the Paperwork directory. Finally, even though I don't get signed releases from everybody, I identify as many of the people in the images from each day and file that information in the Paperwork directory.

This directory structure is perpetuated into every kind of backup medium I use. These days, I generally keep the most current six months on my computer but back them up every day to an external USB disk (I try to always make the drives Western Digital Caviar drives, regardess of the form factor of the container for the drive) and to Delkin Archival DVDs. The internal directory structure and the external labels on the DVDs follow the same directory structures as the hard drives.

The really hard part for me and which I am about 20% of the way through is scanning my 15,000+ 35mm slides and putting them into the same structures, except there isn't any AllARW subdirectory because I don't have any RAW images for these.

All of the information you have already about things needs to be organized into some structure otherwise all your other work will be for naught. I thought a LONG time about whether I wanted to actually scan the 35mm slides. I finally decided that it needed to be done before I forgot all the details and, if you read the contribution I made to the thread about older relatives' pictures, you know how glad I am that we did this work with my Mom's and Dad's pictures.

Hope this helps.

virginia

[Mike Buckley]

One of things I forgot to mention earlier is that you should take into consideration who is going to be searching for image files and what method they are likely going to use. As an example, my physical file system accommodates the needs of my wife, allowing her to look up files if I'm dead and gone without having to learn how to use our cataloging software. If I was the only person searching files, I would use our cataloging software and, thus, might use a different system for storing the physical files.

you'll break both arms patting yourself on the back when you're finished.

I very distinctly remember writing a post at about 02:00 one night in the forum pertaining to my cataloging software. It was about how thrilled I was with myself that I had just completed cataloging nearly 30 years of photographs.

[Manfred M]

I started into digital photography long ago enough that Lightroom hadn't even been thought of, so I had to come up with my own system, and I continue to use it today. I just put images into folders by date. If they are related to specific events, I will set them into a subdirectory based on the event. I've never really had any issues finding my images.

What is far more important to me is having the files backed up so when the hard drives die (and they all will), having the images (especially the ones that mean something to me) stored for easy recover.

[Mike Buckley]

Manfred brings up an excellent point that he doesn't need a catalog. Relatively very few people do.

The most important decision is to determine whether one will make regular use of a catalog. If not, it's difficult to justify the time required to catalog image files.

The reason I need a catalog is that I present slide shows based on virtually any theme that interests me. If I want to present a show of images where the color red is dominant, that is so easy to do thanks to my catalog. Moreover, using the catalog ensures that I can easily include my best photos that meet that criterion. Doing so would be far less practical using only a system of folders because it would be so time-consuming.

[NigelD]

Thanks for your input Virgina, Mike and Manfred.

I've had 5 days of nonstop renaming and organising and can now say that it is an intense slog but everything I have from the last 12 years is now named the same way and I have back ups on 1 internal and 3 external hard drives.
The worst part was cross checking across drives to make sure that I had got one complete file correctly named and that I hadn't missed out anything because I'd named it something else on back up. I won't make that mistake again.

[Mike Buckley]

Congratulations, Nigel! If you ever need those backups, you will be very glad that you went through that exercise.