Photo Organization Help:

[Packhorse-4]

I have been reading through several of the posts on Folder Organization and Directory Structure to help users find photos by things like Date, Location, Subject, Event, etc. I agree that there is a need to have the ability to find my photos quickly, but I have a question about using one or two folders instead of a huge directory tree with folders and sub-folders and so on.

I have ordered Lightroom 1.0 and I just downloaded the 30 day trial to start playing with the new features. I also have Elements 4.0. Both of these programs will allow me to add keywords or tags as well as other photo organizing tools to quickly find my photos. Would it be a bad idea to simply move all of my RAW images into a single folder, say “Original RAW Photos”, and then move all of my JPEGs into a different folder like “JPEG Photos”?

If I want to browse my photos I can just open Lighroom or Elements and apply the appropriate keyword/tag to get to the photos I want to see. I think this would work for me, but I just wanted to know if there was a reason NOT to do this.

[PhotosGuy]

simply move all of my RAW images into a single folder, That sounds like a future nightmare in the making to me. If you're going to keyword/tag everything anyway, I think you'll be happier a few years from now if the shots are in specific event folders, like "Chicago_2-22-07"

[Gerdav43]

This is always a complicated issue and there is no easy way once you have thousands of photos. Probably the worst thing you could do, in my opinion, is put all eggs in one basket......oops, I mean all your pics in one folder. What happens if you change programs down the line, or something better comes out.

I do the following when I import and I too just started with Lightroom and have ordered my serial number:

Import:
Pictures/2007/2007-2-22 description of event

So each individual folder will look like this inside it's given year folder:

2007-2-22 Danielle's Bday

I use Eos Utility to import then import into lightroom. In lightroom I use the folder tree view.

Once in lightroom I then sort my pics for each folder using the various tools. I start with Pick or Reject flags then rate the pics that I picked. It really is a quick process once you start weeding out your photos. What is important here is that you can still view all your pictures using the sorting/flagging, keyword, color picker, metadata options. So to me there is no benefit to putting them all in one folder.

[blinktwice]

i use the EOS utility program with Lightroom. First Eos utility does its thing by putting photos in folder according to dates, in Lightroom i assign keyword by event.

[Packhorse-4]

I’m getting the sense that you may not like this “Giant Folder” concept. Is it because you have always sorted your pictures into folders to find them, or is there some Operating System, “Windows”, Hard Drive or other technical issue I should be considering? Would it slow down Photoshop or Lightroom if all of the files were in one folder?

When I started looking into my current folders I realized I had RAW photos mixed with JPEG and PSD files from Photoshop Elements. This would also cause Elements to create a thumbnail of the RAW image, which I did not want. I want to view my RAW images in Lightroom only. This gave me the idea to put the RAW files in a separate set of folders just for Lightroom. Since I was moving files around anyway, I started to consider the Giant Folder option.

I sort my files for Word, Excel and other programs into folders all the time, but that’s because it makes it easy to find the files when I need them. With my pictures, it’s much easier to find my pictures in Lightroom and Elements, so I really don’t see an “organizational” reason to place my pictures into countless folders and sub folders since I’m not using Windows Explorer to find my pictures.

[Gerdav43]

Again, not all programs may be as intuitive as Lightroom. What should happen should you need to use another program. Are you going to go through the whole sorting and keyword thing again..............or do you want to look at a folder date and name and know when it was taken and what it's about.

I don't see a big addition to workflow by re-naming a folder to include a description. However, in the long run that few seconds added to an import may save you days down the line.

[Packhorse-4]

Ok Gerdav, you make a good point there. I still need to move my RAW files into new folders, but I will break them out into folders by date. New pictures can be imported into sub-folders with the date and possibly the location or subject in the folder name as well. Thanks for your help.