Storing / Organising your photos...???

[compleks]

Sorry if this has been done to death.
I did a quick search, but it was very half assed to be honest.

I'm curious to hear how you all store and organise your digital photos?
I'm considering upgrading to a new laptop, so I want to get myself organised properly before dumping all my images in an unorganised fashion.

I like the idea of storing the majority of my photos externally on hard-drives.
Would this make the use of a program such as 'lightroom' obsolete?

I like having things in order, but I'm not sure what would be best for photo storage. So tell me how you do it!
Do you store everything on the one computer?
Do you use external hard drives?
Do you keep everything, or only the best?
Do you use a program? Which one? (do you tag your images for categorising?)
How do you organise your folders? Dates/Names/Categories????
How do you separate your batch photos from the selected favourites?
(Where do you save your photos once you have finished post processing?)

etc...

Just curious for the details on how you store and organise so many images.

Cheers all.

[Bluenoser]

1. All pictures are on one computer
2. Yes, external HD
3. I keep almost all my photos unless they are just "bad" period. I'm a hobbyist though, not looking to get the best of the best for sale or anything like that
4. I use Lightroom. Haven't tagged my images (I should)
5. My photos are organized in the folders they're uploaded into, by date. I like them that way
6. Not sure what you mean "batch" seperated from favourites


I don't think LR will ever be obsolete for me. I shoot exclusively in Raw, so if I want to do PP or convert to Jpeg I still need software for that.

[CaptainNH]

Do you store everything on the one computer?
Yes, but no. My portfolio spans two drives, internal & external.

Do you use external hard drives?
Yes, my non-current images are stored in a folder on an 1TB external drive, spanned from the main drive, so it looks seamless to my software. I have a 2nd 1TB drive that runs as a continuous backup.

Do you keep everything, or only the best?
I dump anything that's wildly oof or badly exposed, and all those test shots I do for ambient light at weddings. Everything else gets kept then archived to DVD after 6 months.

Do you use a program? Which one? (do you tag your images for categorising?)
Aperture for image management and little tweaks.
Photoshop CS3 does everything else for PP.
I'd be lost without Noise Ninja (why to so many brides think candles are an appropriate way to light a reception? )
I now tag as I go along, but I still have nearly 11,000 images that I ought to go through and tag at some point.

How do you organise your folders? Dates/Names/Categories????
I separate personal from paid.
Then by type of shoot (wedding, portrait, landscape)
Then by client
Then by date

How do you separate your batch photos from the selected favourites?
By filtering a 5* system in Aperture.

[compleks]

Thanks guys.

If I were to store images on an external hard drive, how would something like lightroom work if the drive were constantly being disconnected?

[nathanbarlow]

Do you store everything on the one computer?
Yes - everything is on laptop harddrive

Do you use external hard drives?
Yes, I copy the "photography" folder to a 500GB harddrive, which serves as my backup and as archive. But so far, I still have everything on my hdd, so not really an archive yet.

Do you keep everything, or only the best?
I keep everything. So RAW files (and associated files) and then a fullsize TIF of the changes which were done, then a websize jpg of the TIF (for flickr). Sometimes i keep the psd files if it was really weird like say a pano or a composite.

Do you use a program? Which one? (do you tag your images for categorising?)

Photoshop CS2 does everything else for PP.
NoiseNinja and a ton of actions (from the net and my own)
I tag on Flickr, but not on harddrive.

How do you organise your folders? Dates/Names/Categories????
folder called "year_month_date(if neccessary)_title" within a master "Photography" folder. This way when I sort by name, it will be in chronological order, or reverse chronological order.

How do you separate your batch photos from the selected favourites?
Manually in RAW converter in CS2, i give 5 stars to any that need minimal tweaks and no stars to ones I dont like, then crtl-click any i want to open, and open them n PS.

[compleks]

Do you think it's best to use one big external hard drive, or a few smaller ones?
What are the chances of a hard drive corrupting and losing your files?

[daft_biker]

Originally Posted by compleks

Do you think it's best to use one big external hard drive, or a few smaller ones?
What are the chances of a hard drive corrupting and losing your files?

Keep multiple backups in multiple locations if there's stuff you can't afford to lose.....or just if you like to be safe.

It's not unheard of for disks to fail and data to be lost. I dropped a laptop once.....

[mordster]

What is a really good/reliable external hard drive as there are so many different brands ?
Also, are the major differences between Aperture and Lightroom?