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Gear / Technical Help => Photo / Video Recording => Topic started by: Chuck on October 08, 2014, 10:43:28 AM

Title: Wondering how you guys archive your photos?
Post by: Chuck on October 08, 2014, 10:43:28 AM
I'm going to have some down time this weekend and I figured I'd finally organize all my photos. I want to put all photos on one hard drive, then back that drive up.

I figure the best way to organize the folder and files would be to start breaking it down by year first. But, after that, I'm lost. Categories within each year would have to include bands, personal photos etc... I also save the RAW files, and I'd like to separate those from the final edited photos. I'm usually good at figuring this stuff out, but I'm really stumped as to how best to approach this.

I want to do this right the first time and I'd appreciate any suggestions from those who have done this before.
Title: Re: Wondering how you guys archive your photos?
Post by: nassau73 on October 08, 2014, 11:20:00 AM
I don't do alot of photo editing so Photoshop Elements works well for me.

Hard Drive folder tree is Year / Month (this is a holdover from when I scanned in hundreds of slides and photos years ago).

If you use a program like Elements, you can probably just keep it by year.

In Elements I've tagged each photo with people/pets names, etc. Events. Locations. Date. Added captions to a number of photos - Then be sure to have the program write the metadata to the files. Depending on the camera, much of the metadata will already be there. But the tags and captions are added by the program.

Everyone will have their own preferences but this works for me because once it's done, I can quickly find photos by checking boxes to find something like, "pictures with Mary and Joanne skiing in the Washington Cascades".
Title: Re: Wondering how you guys archive your photos?
Post by: Chuck on October 08, 2014, 12:49:12 PM
Wow, OK thanks. I didn't even realize there was software to help do this. I need to do some research then.

Do you know of something that'll work like Elements that I can get for free?



edit to add...

Looks like a lot of folks use Picasa. I guess I'll try that one first.
Title: Re: Wondering how you guys archive your photos?
Post by: robeti on October 18, 2014, 12:02:11 PM
For each concert / event I make a folder with subfolders.
It looks like this:

main folder                     : Waters, Roger 2013.09.08 Amsterdam

subfolders with subfolders: - 01 - audio
                                                 01  - sdhc card master
                                                 02  - edited master flacs
                                         -02 - video
                                                 01  - sdhc card master
                                                 02  - youtube / other sources
                                                 03  - mkv
                                         -03 - photo
                                                 01 - sdhc card master
                                                 02 - edited files
                                          -04- software templates

In the last subfolder (04- software templates) I save all projects I've done. So all photoshop / sony vegas / audacity / track splits and so on. All those  work templates / project files will be saved in there. The master material is in one ore more subfolders above. Audio/video/photo. Within each folder I use .txt files in which I list info like setlist, tracks recorded and lineage.

So in the end I have one big folder with 4 main subfolders wich have various subfolders as well. Most of my projects are 40+ GB since I do both audio and video and sometimes multicams. It's a lot of archiving but once you select a method that works for you and is logical to you it's a routine really.

Each folder is on my pc, and an external hard drive at home. And one external hard drive somewere else. I also make bluray backups occasionally. So I have at least 3 copies at 2 or 3 locations.

Hope this helps!
Title: Re: Wondering how you guys archive your photos?
Post by: magmazing on October 29, 2014, 02:52:28 AM
On my external hard drives I have a video folder and an audio folder. I put my photos on a completely separate external drive.

Within the video/audio folders and photo hard drive I have  folders that are are named YY-MM-DD- (performers names and venue)

So 2014-10-28 Band X and Band Y at Venue Z

This way all the folders show in order of when the photos/videos/audio were shot/recorded.

For photos I also have a separate "Edited" folder where I have watermarked and non-watermarked folders both with subfolders using the YY-MM-DD naming.
Title: Re: Wondering how you guys archive your photos?
Post by: robeti on October 29, 2014, 10:34:50 AM
On my external hard drives I have a video folder and an audio folder. I put my photos on a completely separate external drive.

Within the video/audio folders and photo hard drive I have  folders that are are named YY-MM-DD- (performers names and venue)

So 2014-10-28 Band X and Band Y at Venue Z

This way all the folders show in order of when the photos/videos/audio were shot/recorded.

For photos I also have a separate "Edited" folder where I have watermarked and non-watermarked folders both with subfolders using the YY-MM-DD naming.

That's a nice way of archiving as well. I guess it all comes down to what works for you personally.
So many ways of archiving. Just find a way that works!
Title: Re: Wondering how you guys archive your photos?
Post by: datmike on November 26, 2014, 08:55:29 PM
Adobe Lightroom.  It lets you name, rename, move folders and organize how you want...and so much more!

(http://mtbzone.com/music/dmb-2.jpg)
Title: Re: Wondering how you guys archive your photos?
Post by: brad.bartels on January 30, 2015, 04:48:31 PM
On my external hard drives I have a video folder and an audio folder. I put my photos on a completely separate external drive.

Within the video/audio folders and photo hard drive I have  folders that are are named YY-MM-DD- (performers names and venue)

So 2014-10-28 Band X and Band Y at Venue Z

This way all the folders show in order of when the photos/videos/audio were shot/recorded.

For photos I also have a separate "Edited" folder where I have watermarked and non-watermarked folders both with subfolders using the YY-MM-DD naming.


I do it similar to this, I have a separate directory for photos and under that, folders for each year. Then under each year, I'll have a folder for each event that starts with the date (that way they stay chronological), it might look something like:

2014:
     20140130 Band X Venue Y City State
     20140202 Aunt Susan's birthday party or whatever
     20140204 Band Z Venue W City State

That way you can search by date, band, venue, city, etc. if you're not sure of the date.

Not sure if that's the best way to do it or not without some photo tagging / storing SW but has worked decently for me so far. You really wouldn't even have to do separate folders for years if you start your folders with the year part of the date, but I find it makes it a little easier to manage.

PS - nice picture of Dave datmike!
Title: Re: Wondering how you guys archive your photos?
Post by: 2manyrocks on February 01, 2015, 10:36:39 AM
Only recently got Elements when B&H had a good deal on it.  before then I had to scan and sort family photos.  Anytime I could find a date, I scanned them in a folder with the specific date.  Others I estimated as best I could.  I added initials to file names to further sort locations and people.  Had I known about Elements tagging features probably should have started with it.
Title: Re: Wondering how you guys archive your photos?
Post by: Fatah Ruark (aka MIKE B) on February 01, 2015, 02:42:23 PM
I use Lightroom. So much better than Photoshop for organizing and editing. If you're just editing straight photos I prefer it over Photoshop. Photoshop is handy for doing more heavy editing (like replacing items in a photo for example). I rarely use Photoshop unless I want to use the Content Aware feature.

As for backing up, same as shows (2 local copies/1 offsite copy)...but I've also started using Flickr to backup the final product. 1TB of FREE storage. Doubtful anyone but pro photographers would fill more than 1TB. They only accept JPEG photos, so you won't be able to back up your RAW photos.
Title: Re: Wondering how you guys archive your photos?
Post by: rastasean on February 02, 2015, 03:57:37 PM
In addition to organizing your file, make sure it's on a file system with good data integrity. zfs is what I would want my data on!

It's worth considering something like this: http://www.ixsystems.com/storage/freenas/

Of course you can build your own system for a couple hundred less.
Title: Re: Wondering how you guys archive your photos?
Post by: Raw data on March 08, 2015, 06:55:29 AM
Free DAM cataloging software that I find to be working reasonably well for me (and is continuously actively developed/improved): Daminion.