So frustrated... I need to figure out a folder structure!

[kaitlyn2004]

So I think I'm making this a much bigger deal than it needs to be, but still!

I need to find a folder structure that I can use across Lightroom, Picasa and Windows Explorer!

I currently put my pictures in:
<path to>\Pictures\Dated\yy.mm.dd - Event name

This works fine, but it doesn't work when I take "random" photos... like of my dogs or "one off shots" of something I might see that is interesting. Also not sure how to handle multi-day events (like a weekend)

I am NOT a professional photo who goes out on paid projects or anything. It's all personal photos and such.

I would appreciate someone helping me out and helping me figure out a folder structure that will work once and for all!

Thanks!

[ssim]

The structure that I have for my personal shots is year and then a subfolder for each month of the year. I always assign keywords before I do anything else so if I want to find those photos of my cat the keywords work fine to facilitate this. Everything that I shoot just gets put into the one folder for the month. I don't use Picasa or Windows Explorer to find images but I see no reason that a structure such as this would not work for them. This limits the number of folders you are going to end up with at the end of a year.

[Victoria Bampton]

I use a similar idea to Sheldon: YYYY/MM keyworded, but then within the MM I may put a subfolder for a special event with lots of photos i.e. a wedding, in case I want to find it in other software (i.e. Bridge, Finder/Explorer), and everything else is just within the MM folder. I'd take Picasa out of the equation personally.

[Lowner]

I'd stick with a file named "Rover" and put all of Rovers pictures into it, I'd not complicate things with dates unless really needed.

Typical files from my own system: Venice 2008, Sailing, Valencia F1, Donington 2008 etc, etc.

I can remember where a certain image is and can go straight to it using the simple structure above. The individual images keep the RAW file name Canon gave them and I search the file using thumbnails.

Unless you are shooting professionally, and need to find say Mr and Mrs J Bloggs wedding from 8 years ago for a lucrative reprint order ASAP, why complicate life?

[Victoria Bampton]

But what if Rover and Freddie are both in the same photo - would you put it in Rover's folder or Freddie's?

[hollis_f]

Originally Posted by Victoria Bampton

But what if Rover and Freddie are both in the same photo - would you put it in Rover's folder or Freddie's?

Which is, of course, why Lightroom's keywording and collections is so much more important than where the files live on your hard drive. There's no reason, really, why you couldn't have everything in one big folder (although I wouldn't recommend it). As long as you'd keyworded the images it'd be simple to find all the images with Rover (or Freddie, or Freddie and Rover together).

If you had enough goggie images you could create a collection set - 'Dogs' and have collections for Rover and Freddie. The images with both of them could live in both collections - but you still only have one copy of the image somewhere on your hard drive (and if you need to find it you just right-click on the image in a collection).

Once people get used to Win7 and its Libraries I think we might start moving away from this obsession about where files actually live in our storage.

[adblink]

For me I put Month with Year/Event/pictures.cs2

[Lowner]

But what if Rover and Freddie are both in the same photo - would you put it in Rover's folder or Freddie's?

Simple -both.

[Victoria Bampton]

Originally Posted by Lowner

But what if Rover and Freddie are both in the same photo - would you put it in Rover's folder or Freddie's?

Simple -both.

In that case I'd hate to see how many copies you have of a large family group shot!!!

See that'd confuse me - if I edited one, I'd then have to go back and find all of the others to do them too.

[Lowner]

Victoria,

Thats easy too. I've got a file labeled Family. And they only get filed once I've post processed. If I need to reprocess I go back to the RAW files.

[scubasushi]

on my file system i use create 1 directory per year then each month i may have 1 or 2 sub sirectories depending on the type of photos i take, e.g. under 2009, for October, i have 2 sub direcotries 10-Sanibel and 10-Bahamas (and in 10-Sanibel is all the photos from 4 separate visits)
e.g. ~/Pictures/Photos2009/10-Sanibel and Photos2009/10-Bahamas

Inside Lightroom i don't tag with the month, more just the location and other info, and sometimes then create collections also.

i find having it split out by year makes it easy to backup. I take probably 10-12k photos per year, so this is manageable. If you take a lot less you may want to ignore the year directory and add the year to the sub-sir like ~/Pictures/2009-10 Dir1 and 2009-10 Dir2

or if you have Family or Pets where you take just a few photos (but take them throughout the year) you could drop the "month" idea and for those just create a folder you drop in those photos for the whole year or put the in the folder for the month but tag them with a key word or add to a LR collection. From LR you can then export your best to an export folder you can create per collection to upload in Picassa

[hollis_f]

Originally Posted by scubasushi

Inside Lightroom i don't tag with the month

No need, because you can filter by date.

[EloquentPixels]

Year_month_date_CoupleOfKeyWords all under one folder. Pretty easy to find anything, but I also have a pretty good memory with things like this.

I tried the cataloging thing, but I wasn't consistent enough with adding everything to it. The backlog became insurmountable, so I dropped it. I'm looking at giving that another shot once the weather turns crappy here.

[Eagle]

Originally Posted by kaitlyn2004

I currently put my pictures in:
<path to>\Pictures\Dated\yy.mm.dd - Event name

This works fine, but it doesn't work when I take "random" photos... like of my dogs or "one off shots" of something I might see that is interesting. Also not sure how to handle multi-day events (like a weekend)
Thanks!

Not sure what the problem is, just use the same system, \Pictures\Dated\yy.mm.dd\dogs. Multi day events would have a folder for each day. If it's one shot just put it in a folder for the day, \Pictures\Dated\yy.mm.dd, don't use a subfolder.

[Marius B]

I guess it depends on how much you shoot, but for me this works great so far, to me it is easy to find pictures. At first I had a folder for each month inside every year, but then I would need to search several folders before I found the pictures:

Pictures/2009/2009 10 Dogs in the park
--2007
--2008
--2009
------2009 10 Dogs in the park

If I shoot Dogs in the park more than one time pr month, I put it in the same folder, Unless it is something special, then I make a new folder with a new name like 2009 10 Dog in Hyde Park