Organizing your Gallery

[Nicks Pics]

One ambition of mine after the holidays is to try and put together a gallery out of the 7000 + images already on my hard drive. When I'm browsing through them I see ones that are almost forgotten, that I like and never got around to processing. When someone wants to see my images, I have to show them the good ones among the bad ones ( and sometimes they want to use my bad ones rather than my good ones because they don't know the difference! ) So I would like to put together a gallery aside from my own work-space for the purpose of having a collection that I can present to people who want to see my photos, so I have something to show for my work. It would make me feel like I have made more of an accomplishment. I wouldn't want to populate my galleries with junky images, but there are very few images that aren't worth keeping for some reason or another. So I have a hard time trying to draw a line between a "keeper" and a "recycle bin" image, and which ones I would want to put in a gallery and which ones I wouldn't. For example, if I only put great photos suitable for high-res printing in my gallery then what if someone wants to look through my images to find some suitable for greeting cards? However; not all images suitable for greeting cards are what I would necessarily call a great photo. There are also ones that I keep for other reasons, such as something interesting captured in them, and not because they have many qualities as art. I know there is no right and wrong answer to this situation, but for any of you who have already crossed this bridge, I'd be interested to hear your suggestions.

Thanks in advance!

( BTW just to be clear, I'm not looking for a "first step" to all photo management, I'm just trying to put together a presentable gallery out-side of my usual workspace)


Nick

[Downrigger]

Would be interesting to know what software options you have available, Nick. For instance Lightroom easily can archive all your images by date, and simultaneously allow you to sequester collections from among these under topics relevant to your interests. You can also tag and/or keyword your images (7000 would be an awful lot, if starting from scratch) and easily pull up subsets of your images for viewing or storing in discrete collections by using these keywords (or tags, say for quality).

Perhaps others here know of similar cataloguing and organizing capacities in other software vehicles, but lightroom is very strong in this regard.

One of my most useful tools for these sorts of issues is the <delete> function, which I have an emotional tendency to underutilize.

[Nicks Pics]

Thanks Mark,

I do have lightroom, I was thinking of it being where I keep all my images, and having an external gallery of my "presentable" work, such as that I could share with people who might want to see my photos. But I take your suggestions about marking images by levels of quality etc. I haven't used LR as much as I could in that regard.

I have the better part of my photos tagged by subject/ place, but it's an awful lot of work to do that.

One of my most useful tools for these sorts of issues is the <delete> function, which I have an emotional tendency to underutilize

This could be part of the issue too

[Mike Buckley]

Your first task is probably to rate your photos using the star ratings. Then use that software to display only the images rated 5 stars. Then use that software to place only some of those images in a special collection or group of collections perhaps arranged by theme. I use IDimager PhotoSupreme to do all of that (and much more).

[Nicks Pics]

Stars... another thing I have been ignoring. Could be a useful tool. Thanks

[Mike Buckley]

Now that you have confirmed that you haven't rated your images, I have another suggestion: Once you rate all of them, wait a week and revisit at least the images rated 5 stars. If you are like me, you will probably re-rate some of them to a lower rating. Once you have done that re-rating process a couple of times, you will be glad that you have fewer 5-star images from which to consider for display in your gallery.

[Nicks Pics]

Thanks for your in-put Mike.

[Stagecoach]

Nick, you talk about others being able to view your images. Are you talking of producing just a gallery on your computer or an 'online' one, e.g. website?

[IzzieK]

I would like to suggest a different drive for the images you would like to show people. Your best should be there and no other files so it is easy to not make a mistake on showing them with your "other" files. Make that drive your "Gallery" drive.

[Nicks Pics]

I would like to suggest a different drive for the images you would like to show people. Your best should be there and no other files so it is easy to not make a mistake on showing them with your "other" files. Make that drive your "Gallery" drive.

I have been wondering if I shouldn't get another drive to keep my images safer, and if I had one with all my best stuff on it that might work out well.

P.S. My, how you've been getting younger everyday Izzie

[Nicks Pics]

Nick, you talk about others being able to view your images. Are you talking of producing just a gallery on your computer or an 'online' one, e.g. website?

Maybe Grahme, I guess I need to think about it more.

[Manfred M]

Nick - in Lightroom,not only can you give (or not give) your images a star rating, you can also give them a colour code (six choices) and add a flag. You can then filter on any or all of these tools to provide a multi-layered rating methodology.

I do my first cut of rating, sometimes in Lightroom (just about the only thing I use it for) and then rework the best of the best in Photoshop. These are the images that I show other people. Anything I give a low rating to gets deleted, but I will save the higher rated ones. I don't find I do what Mike does and revisit and rerate my images. Over time, I have discovered that my first impression is the best and if I agonize over an image, the lower rating is usually the correct way to rate it.

I have two online portfolios; my Behance one is purely for the best of the best and my Flickr account is a bit broader. I keep the best of the best in two or three different location at home (network backup on two different NAS drives as well as the originals on my editing computer).

[Nicks Pics]

Interesting, Manfred. Thanks for sharing your ideas.

[TonyW]

Nick, I am still working towards an answer to this question for myself. Firstly, I never delete any of the raw files on the basis that storage is cheap and I like to have a more or less complete sequence. So far, I have a bit over 10,000 images stored (which means that I should never take another bad photograph - I wish). I use the Adobe Bridge ->ACR->Photoshop sequence which suits me well enough. In Bridge, I assign key words and rate any photos worth anything, and then process a selection of them with ACR and Photoshop. For those, I store the photoshop file and a jpg file. I can then use the ratings, keywords and file type to pick out a selection that I want.

In addition, for photos that I want to show other people, I put them on Flickr (e.g those that I post here). On Flickr, I tend to keep family/personal ones private but make the majority public. This gives an extra form of backup.

[Nicks Pics]

Thanks Tony,
I appreciate your thoughts. I tend to delete obviously bad shots, though I could probably delete more aggressively than I do. I haven't rated most of my images, and having more than 7000 it would be inconvenient to do so for them all now, but it sounds like many people find that to be a useful strategy, so it's worth considering. Online back-up is also worth considering.

[IzzieK]

....
P.S. My, how you've been getting younger everyday Izzie

Android (cellphone) shot -- my first and only granddaughter. Nearly 2 years of age, talkative, blabbering, skype hugging, button pushing, exhausting little girl.

[Mike Buckley]

I haven't rated most of my images, and having more than 7000 it would be inconvenient to do so for them all now

You might be surprised about how relatively little time will be required. If it takes you 3 seconds on average to rate an image, you could get the job done spending one hour each day for only six days.

Once you've done that, you would build your rating process into your everyday workflow to ensure that you never again get so far behind.

[Manfred M]

You might be surprised about how relatively little time will be required. If it takes you 3 seconds on average to rate an image, you could get the job done spending one hour each day for only six days.

Once you've done that, you would build your rating process into your everyday workflow to ensure that you never again get so far behind.

Great advice, Mike. My wife just did the 4000 or so shots she took on our trip over a couple of days.

That was the upside; the downside is that I ended up with around 400 5-star shots that she wanted processed. Very few were done in the same light, so the automation tools were of limited use.

Guess what I spent most of last week working on... Her images, not mine.

[Brownbear]

Hi Nick,

You've received some great advice. All I can add is to learn from my mistakes. I'm one of those people who is especially behind in my workflow because I've taken thousands of images over the past few years, only hitting the delete button for the obviously bad ones. I did give stars to the ones that struck my fancy at the time (easy to find), but not consistently enough, so my present task of culling the poor images; finding and processing the better images is indeed a daunting time consuming task.

I use Photobucket to share my photos here. Even though it strips the exif data, I like it because I can set my galleries to private (and still share here), and or make them available for family/friends/one person (only) to see. I don't use it for anything else but it does allow for public and private galleries. It's a small annual fee, and associated with receiving some promotional emails.

I back my images up on an external hard drive, and also a Cloud system as a precaution.

[DanK]

When I'm browsing through them I see ones that are almost forgotten, that I like and never got around to processing. When someone wants to see my images, I have to show them the good ones among the bad ones

Nick,

It seems to me that you are mixing two things together: how to organize your photos for yourself, and how to organize them for other people to view.

I agree with others that Lightroom offers great tools for rating and organizing photos, although like Christina, I haven't made good use of them up until now, and sometimes have a hard time finding photos. I am trying to use the rating tools more consistently.

Re showing things to others: My solution is to have both public and private sections of my smugmug site. There are lots of galleries there that you won't see. I can show them to people easily enough, by giving them a link. I limit the public galleries to things I want to make available to anyone, although over the years, I have put too much stuff there, and I am in the process of moving photos from those to the private galleries.

I have been wondering if I shouldn't get another drive to keep my images safer, and if I had one with all my best stuff on it that might work out well.

IMHO, all images that you might want in the future should be backed up, not just the ones you like the most. I use two backups. One is an external drive that sits next to my computer. The other is a Crashplan online account, which I think costs me about 49/year. This protects me against something that could damage both my computer and the external drive, like a roof like, a bad electrical spike, or a fire. True, the are not likely events, but I buy fire insurance for my house precisely to protect against serious but unlikely losses.

Dan