Archiving question...

[imagious]

Hello, I'm a newbie to these boards. I've been to other boards but hadnt had much of a "friendly" experience, so I've been on the look out for somewhere I could share my interest of photography. In doing so I came across here.

BUT since this is not a into thread (I'll look for that thread after), here is my question.

I am terrible at archiving. Well not really. I archive by year, sometimes NAME_OF_EVENT_YEAR, but sometimes I feel like having it by subject. For example if its shots of nephew A, toss them all in a folder named Nephew A. Or Nephew B, etc.

What does everyone prefer? And I like to shoot in Raw. How does everyone handle archiving RAW's? Do you prefer to make a JPG folder for every Raw folder? Or just convert those you want to convert?

Software recommendation's to help better archive photos?

Thank you, looking forward to the replies.

_______
Jess

[Greg_C]

Hi Jess, Welcome to POTN. Sounds like you need some Digital Asset Management (DAM) software. With good DAM software you add tags to your images and the software sorts the images by the tags or by date or by what ever you like. I store my photos by date and then add the tag or category data. All DAM software has no trouble with RAW, TIFF, JPG or whatever.

Personally I use IMatch (http://www.photools.com/) but other options are Lightroom or ACDSee.

Here's a post where I wrote a little bit more on it.
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showpost.php?p=2485076&postcount=10

[imagious]

Thank you Greg_C. That would solve my problems. I never thought of using keywords and what not. That might make me just go through the last 6 or so years (about the time I first got a digital camera... even before I got a computer lol). Sort them by year and month, then add tags. Its not until last year I got a DSLR (which I've no way managed to control yet), but would eventually want something to handle Raw as well. I will look into the IMatch, as I've seen lightroom before but did not like it. Thank you. Now if only my XP would show thumbnails of my Raw's it make this easier too.

Thanks again!

[Greg_C]

Jess most of the DAM software will create thumbnails and display these rather than the full image.

Also you can download a RAW plugin from Microsoft that will show the thumbnails.
http://www.microsoft.com/prophoto/downloads/default.aspx

[Jim G]

Thank you Greg_C. That would solve my problems. I never thought of using keywords and what not. That might make me just go through the last 6 or so years (about the time I first got a digital camera... even before I got a computer lol). Sort them by year and month, then add tags. Its not until last year I got a DSLR (which I've no way managed to control yet), but would eventually want something to handle Raw as well. I will look into the IMatch, as I've seen lightroom before but did not like it. Thank you. Now if only my XP would show thumbnails of my Raw's it make this easier too.

Thanks again!

Greg got me onto Imatch and I find it to be invaluable. Great program.

[Doug Pardee]

What does everyone prefer? And I like to shoot in Raw. How does everyone handle archiving RAW's? Do you prefer to make a JPG folder for every Raw folder? Or just convert those you want to convert?

I highly recommend that you read Peter Krogh's The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers. Although the specific software solutions in that book are becoming outdated, there is still a lot of good discussion about the general considerations: what is good or bad about various techniques.

Software recommendation's to help better archive photos?You'll find that Krogh doesn't have much use for using file names and folders for a filing system. The problem is that it's way too limiting.

Using DAM software is a more powerful solution. You should be adding some IPTC/XMP information to every photo anyway.

The top-tier of DAM software for individual photographers are quite powerful but take some time to understand. This tier consists mainly of idImager (Windows only), iMatch, and Microsoft Expression Media (formerly iView Media Pro).

The second tier is slightly less powerful but easier to get started with, and is integrated with Raw conversion. Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture are the big players in this group.

The third tier is generally aimed at the casual photographer who needs simplicity rather than power. I would put ACDSee and ThumbsPlus in this tier.

[fubarhouse]

I honestly don't see why people go past traditional folder names for archiving, least hassle, works for hundreds of thousands in any file size, and it is the most efficient.

For example:
J:\Media\2008\Summernats\Miss Summernats\Finals\*.*
J:\Media\2008\Powercruise 12\Burnouts\Saturday\*.*
J:\Media\2008\Compak Attak\Drags\Bikes\*.*

It causes zero stuffing around, easy access ect. Takes five minutes to sort out into the folders however, but apart from that it's awesome. I don't know why people don't use such a simple method, software isn't needed to archive event photography, that's just time-wasting and useless if you want to change software ect.

Anyways that's how I feel, people seem to ignore such an efficient method, just my $0.02.

[DStanic]

I also archieve by folder. I use Lightroom and use keywords and all that jazz but I don't plan to use it forever as something else may come along. Simple folders will never change.

I have the folders by year, then subfolders by month. If it's a wedding or something special I'll have (example) C:\year\so-and-so's wedding June 2008

[Amamba]

2nd by folder. For quick preview / tagging, Google's Picasa works wonders (it tags by reating virtual "albums".) Lightroom is too heavy to use just as an archive browser, IMHO.

[Wilt]

I honestly don't see why people go past traditional folder names for archiving, least hassle, works for hundreds of thousands in any file size, and it is the most efficient.

For example:
J:\Media\2008\Summernats\Miss Summernats\Finals\*.*
J:\Media\2008\Powercruise 12\Burnouts\Saturday\*.*
J:\Media\2008\Compak Attak\Drags\Bikes\*.*

It causes zero stuffing around, easy access ect. Takes five minutes to sort out into the folders however, but apart from that it's awesome. I don't know why people don't use such a simple method, software isn't needed to archive event photography, that's just time-wasting and useless if you want to change software ect.

Anyways that's how I feel, people seem to ignore such an efficient method, just my $0.02.

The simple method is great, until you discover alternate ways to sort thru photos. Simple example: vacation shots taken over a period of ten years, all over the world. You have major art museum visits in some of them, and some of those are photos by the Realist painters and others have Romanticists, and others have both. And you sister in law comes for a visit and a conversation leads to her wanting to see all of the Realists. How do you do that, with simple folders?!

[tim]

The simple method is great, until you discover alternate ways to sort thru photos. Simple example: vacation shots taken over a period of ten years, all over the world. You have major art museum visits in some of them, and some of those are photos by the Realist painters and others have Romanticists, and others have both. And you sister in law comes for a visit and a conversation leads to her wanting to see all of the Realists. How do you do that, with simple folders?!

You tell the sister not to be such a pain in the butt, she can look at all the photos or none of them :p

Seriously though, how long do you want to spend labelling your photos? You'd be putting in country, city, gps coordinates, building names, painter names, style, period they worked in, date of birth, date of death, etc. It'd take an infeasible amount of time. Even then you'd think of some other way you want to look for your photos.

[Wilt]

You tell the sister not to be such a pain in the butt, she can look at all the photos or none of them :p

Seriously though, how long do you want to spend labelling your photos? You'd be putting in country, city, gps coordinates, building names, painter names, style, period they worked in, date of birth, date of death, etc. It'd take an infeasible amount of time. Even then you'd think of some other way you want to look for your photos.


Yes, labelling can be very laborious.

On the positive side, stock photographers used to have to do this all a whole lot more problematically...at least now we have electronic files managed with database search programs, rather than physical slides labelled and managed with database programs! Programs like Lightroom can ease the burden by remembering key words and letting you click the right ones rather than typing them all.

[Greg_C]

Here's how I would do the Paintings.

Location.Europe.France.Paris
Holidays.2008.Paris
Paintings.Realist or Paintings.Romanticists
Artist.Da Vinci

These would take me about 2min to set up initially and then only a few minutes more to tag the images. If it's not quick and simple to do you won't do it.

I have a lots of predefined categories that I can apply at the press of a button. It really revolves around what you think you might want to find at a later date. You'll never get it perfect, like you say it would take too much time to do that but it's possible to get a enough tags onto the images quickly that will narrow things down a bit more, memory takes over then.

I shoot a lot of macro, I can tell you which Macro lite or flash was used on every shot. I can tell which of the Kenko tubes were used on a shot and with what lens.

Here's a screen cap for an example. The buttons on the left are the ones used to quickly apply the tag or tags I want to the images. Also, the first thing I do after downloading is run script that adds Camera, Lens, Photographer, and version to the imported images. So every image always has these. The Thumbnails in the screen cap are filtered on edited images only (green bar), while the red or orange bar tags it as a particular year.
http://www.steadyhands.net/share/tags.jpg

This sort of thing is not for everybody but works very well for me. I've been doing it for years now so it's second nature, I won't start editing until some basic tags are added. I started when I had 300 images so going back and adding the data to those was simple. It's better to start early than late, but it's never too late to start.

[Doug Pardee]

Seriously though, how long do you want to spend labelling your photos?

If you do it right, it doesn't take long at all. It takes me a few minutes per shoot.

Many of the labels can be "batch" added for an entire shoot, in a single step. Other labels can easily be added to multiple pictures in a single step if you have decent software.

That's all that you need to do with most of your photos. For the best photos you can spend a bit more time adding any appropriate individual keywords.

As Peter Krogh notes, "a terrible photograph that is well cataloged has little market value… identify the images with the highest intrinsic value, and augment them with the highest metadata value that is practical." (The DAM Book, page 32.)

[tim]

If you do it right, it doesn't take long at all. It takes me a few minutes per shoot.


It'll take Wilt more time than that, given how much information he enters about the paintings in his photos!

[Wilt]

It'll take Wilt more time than that, given how much information he enters about the paintings in his photos!

Waitasec...

Keywords: Country, City, Museum, artistic period

...would be the only thing it takes, and country and date could readily be handled automatically in using folders and subfolders. So two more bits of info is not horrendous. If you wanted to be really fancy, you could add 'artist'.

Not all that much different than:
Apr2006 (folder), New Zealand (subfolder), South Island (subfolder), glaciers (keyword), Franz Josef (or Fox or Tasman) (keyword),