What digital photo organizers do you use?

[ScottDesantis]

Just curious as to what photo organizers everyone uses to store their photos on their computer. What are your suggessterions?

[Biomech]

Lightroom

/thread

[Rentham]

I use Adobe Lightroom to catalog my images. I have Lightroom set up to convert to DNG and rename on import. Import also applies a baseline metadata preset, some broad keywords for the job, and some modest capture sharpening. I have a directory tree structure set up for my collections, starting with broad job categories (weddings, editorial, portraits, etc) which then drill to the level of individual assignments.

The images get routed to a series of folders on my HD that I use for my RAW workflow. I only keep the jobs I'm actively editing on my computer HD. Stuff that has already been delivered to the client or has completed the editing phase gets synced over to a 2TB external drive, which in turn occasionally gets synced to a second external drive. This second drive is then disconnected and stored. The external archive drives are set up in a directory structure where each folder holds around 4GB, give or take. Once the folder is "full" I burn it to a DVD, store the disc, and start a new folder.

[ScottDesantis]

Originally Posted by Rentham

I use Adobe Lightroom to catalog my images. I have Lightroom set up to convert to DNG ....

Considering that I'm relatively new at attempting to organize my photos digitally, do you suggest going this route, through Adobe Lightroom? Is it a fairly complicated process?

I've read some articles about Picasa and fotobounce and their ease of use. I'm really trying to just have my pictures organized, and since they both have face recognition software, it becomes that much eaisler to tag and organize. Would this be better route given my lack of experience?

[3bayjunkie]

this might sound bad, but i don't use anything to organize my photos.I just use windows folders and lable the folders what they are

[faeriegodess612]

Picasa. And it can read RAW files. I use it as my converter too.

[3bayjunkie]

oh yeah, backing your stuff up online is def a good idea! I usually just drag my folders onto my webserver via ftp. its pretty simple and hassle free. I lable my folders well enough so i can find anything im looking for within 3 clicks

[Rentham]

Originally Posted by ScottDesantis

Considering that I'm relatively new at attempting to organize my photos digitally, do you suggest going this route, through Adobe Lightroom? Is it a fairly complicated process?

I've read some articles about Picasa and fotobounce and their ease of use. I'm really trying to just have my pictures organized, and since they both have face recognition software, it becomes that much eaisler to tag and organize. Would this be better route given my lack of experience?

Lightroom, in and of itself, is simple to use. The interface is intuitive and pretty forgiving. The actual workflow I described is probably more than you need right now.

But consider this... if you start that workflow now you can painlessly grow in to it. If you do something basic now and outgrow it, it is a nightmare to retroactively manage a few thousand files and shoehorn them into a new workflow and archive structure. I know from experience, dude.

[Jim Bryant]

Get ASMP's digital photography best practices and workflow handbook or Peter Krogh's The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers.