Organizing Photos

[NaturalWoman]

Just out of curiosity, how do you keep your photos organized or your hard drive. I keep mine in folders or sets like you would see on Flickr.

I'm trying to decide do I keep one untouched original (raw/jpeg) of each photo and then the modified Lightroom photo. I don't want to have too many duplicates, but it's always nice to be able to go back to the original and create a different look with the same photo if I wanted to.

I was thinking too maybe just uploading all my untouched originals to Flickr and keeping them in a private folder. How do you manage?

Thanks.

[Jim Poor]

If you are using lightroom, you pretty much always have access to the original "master" photo to process it differently if you wish.

I organize in folders by event and have a separate catalog for each event as well as a master catalog containing all the photos just in case I can't remmeber which event one is under.

[ilookalot]

i dont, my whole system is a nightmare. yesterday i started to do some research on the dps forums and it heped me alot,it takes a bit of research to find a system that you like.What i am trying to acheive at the moment goes something like this .one copy of the original on the computer hard drive, one copy on the external hard drive ,one copy to disc. any edits that are worth saving from now on will get saved in a folder called edits then saved to the system described above.hopfully this will work,if anyody else has a simpler way of doing this HELP . regards kym

[NaturalWoman]

yes, jim, that is the way i have lightroom set up. to import a copy.i have gotten rid of a few originals though (wiped off my hard drive) and only kept the lightroom copy. probably a mistake, but the thought of having too many copies freak me out. i'm a neat and organizer freak.

once i'm done with image in lightroom, i also don't want to keep it in the library forever either, but i guess a library is for storing stuff and maybe i should just get used to the idea.

oh my. thanks. just wondering.

[NaturalWoman]

thanks ilookalot. i'm not sure what i want to do, i only know about what i'm doing. right now i have them in sets, but i do want to keep a clean untouched copy somewhere - of course i don't want to go crazy with having so many copies.

also when i upload to flickr, i don't always upload the largest file, so i have another copy of the photo on my hard drive in a smaller size, in addition to the original.

i know how to find all my photos w/o searching for them. the folder system works for me okay. i'm just thinking maybe i should have one untouched original somewhere. just wanted to know how other people organized their photos. maybe i could steal a tip.

[OsmosisStudios]

Mine are set up by category, then by event.

So, if I have a set of photos taken for PERSONAL use, during a walk around town, on a given date, they'll be in a folder called "LOCATION, DATE", in a folder called "WALKABOUT", in a folder called "PERSONAL".

If I have photos taken for COMMERCIAL use during a nightclub event on a given date they'll be in a folder called "NIGHTCLUB NAME, DATE", in a folder called "COMMERCIAL"

[Quo Fan]

I organize mine by category or event, then by date. That way, if I want all of my "nature" shots, I just open the nature folder in Lightroom. All photos that are "finished" go into a folder called "printing" on my server, and then into sub-folders. When I'm done with those, then I delete them from the server.