how do you sort/categorize your pics?

hey guys
was just curious how fellow hobbyists organize their photos.

in my days with shooting with a PnS, where i only took it on vacation/going out/bdays, i would just upload all the pics, delete the bad ones, and throw the JPEGs into a folder with the event name under my Pictures folder.

now that i have a DSLR, and am more inclined to just randomly walk around and go to a park, i am not sure how to best categorize them. for events, i stick to my previous schema.

however, for something like going to Central Park and taking pics of random objects/people, i wouldnt really consider it an "event", so i wouldnt have Pictures > "Walk in park, mm/dd/yy" or something along those lines.

how do others organize?

Lightroom and keyword tagging. Date/Time is already in the file so I can sort by that as well in LR.

Do you tag every photo, or only ones you might look specifically for later?

I organize my regular photos by date -- I make a new folder each month. For my photography stuff, I organize by theme: Portraits, Botanical, Still Life, etc.

I just organize everything by file type and date. I have separate folders for RAW and JPEG, then dates within each of those folders by year, month, day (for example, 20110512).

I basically do it like you do. I usually take pictures of people or places.
I put the person/place name on the folder and the date.

I keyword tag 'generic' keywords at import that apply to all the images I am importing. Then later, if needed, I go back and tag specifics on smaller groups or individual shots.

equach206 wrote in post #12396908
I just organize everything by file type and date. I have separate folders for RAW and JPEG, then dates within each of those folders by year, month, day (for example, 20110512).

If you have a program, like Lightroom, there is no need to ever keyword tag or create folders with the month, day, or year of any combination. One of the things these programs do is allow you to filter search based on the meta data built into the file which includes your date, time, etc. I have over 140,000 images in my catalog (LR) and often times have to find a specific image like when a client calls a year later and wants a copy. It's never taken me more than 30 seconds to find any image. All it takes is at import to make sure it is keyword tagged properly, like client name, location, specific info like car, building, lake, etc. And in LR it is as easy as it gets to be able to do this.

^ but are all of your pics "internalized" into one giant LR library file? meaning, if you shoot an event, can you access that particular set of pics by simply browsing your HD, or do you HAVE to go thru LR?

i realize that indexing is one of the features of LR and other programs, but for some reason, i prefer to have these pics as separate files, broken down by event.

ekinnyc wrote in post #12397398
^ but are all of your pics "internalized" into one giant LR library file? meaning, if you shoot an event, can you access that particular set of pics by simply browsing your HD, or do you HAVE to go thru LR?

i realize that indexing is one of the features of LR and other programs, but for some reason, i prefer to have these pics as separate files, broken down by event.

My routine... when I get home from shooting an event top priority is to upload to my computer. On my 'active' hard drive I use for data I have a folder called Images. Under this folder I create a folder with a name specific to the event I just shot and upload the images to that folder. So, yes, I do have a separate folder for each significant event. From that folder I import to LR with keywords. So, yes, I can navigate to them outside of LR... but I find that I never need to. Since I dedicate specific hard rives to 100% photos I find it much easier to use LR to 100% manage these files. But my LR catalog encompasses ALL of my images. So when I tell it to search the whole catalog, it will look through every image. By the way, you can also navigate folders within LR and I also use LR to move folders/images around on my hard drive or between hard drives. This way LR always knows where they are, otherwise you would have to let LR know where you moved them so it can find them.

I do realize this can be a very different way of thinking for most. And when I first started I used to organize by radical hierarchies of folders i.e. Images>people>clients>seniors>girls>etc.... And even when I started using LR it took a while to realize who ridiculous this was if I would just learn to use the tools and filters within LR. Now I couldn't do what I do as efficiently as I do it without it. I am sure other programs like Aperture, etc. do just as well. LR is just what was out that I chose at the time. And I have been on it since the first day of the first version.

ok, i see. so you dont import directly from camera to LR. seems that you use a sorting scheme similar to me (breakdown by event, etc), but add LR.

now that i think about it, i remember doing the same with iPhoto (which is nothing more than an organizer with a few basic touchup tools).... so i would have XXGB of pics, and also an iphoto library XXGB in size, since it internalized the pics. so you are basically doubling the footprint of your images. for me, working on a laptop with a single drive, its difficult to run the kind of organization/redundanc​y you have.

i cant remember if DPP offers the same indexing solution... for now thats what i use for my post, as i dont consider my photography acumen to be where i feel i should plunk down the $$ for LR.

now, what about when you do photography for yourself, not for clients? say, you go just roaming around, taking random shots of people, trees, etc... how would you sort/categorize these pics?

Dermit wrote in post #12397371
If you have a program, like Lightroom, there is no need to ever keyword tag or create folders with the month, day, or year of any combination. One of the things these programs do is allow you to filter search based on the meta data built into the file which includes your date, time, etc. I have over 140,000 images in my catalog (LR) and often times have to find a specific image like when a client calls a year later and wants a copy. It's never taken me more than 30 seconds to find any image. All it takes is at import to make sure it is keyword tagged properly, like client name, location, specific info like car, building, lake, etc. And in LR it is as easy as it gets to be able to do this.

I use Adobe Bridge to upload my pics, I just plug in my memory card and it automatically sorts them by date.

ekinnyc wrote in post #12397562
ok, i see. so you dont import directly from camera to LR. seems that you use a sorting scheme similar to me (breakdown by event, etc), but add LR.

now that i think about it, i remember doing the same with iPhoto (which is nothing more than an organizer with a few basic touchup tools).... so i would have XXGB of pics, and also an iphoto library XXGB in size, since it internalized the pics. so you are basically doubling the footprint of your images. for me, working on a laptop with a single drive, its difficult to run the kind of organization/redundanc​y you have.

i cant remember if DPP offers the same indexing solution... for now thats what i use for my post, as i dont consider my photography acumen to be where i feel i should plunk down the $$ for LR.

now, what about when you do photography for yourself, not for clients? say, you go just roaming around, taking random shots of people, trees, etc... how would you sort/categorize these pics?

Right, memory card to computer HD, then import to LR.

Well remember that the LR catalog is not a copy of all the images. It is just a catalog, instructions in the background if you will to keep track of keywords associated with the actual image files, etc. So the catalog itself is not that big file-size-wise. The catalog is just a file that keeps track of it all.

Photography for myself or when I upload images of different subjects I will usually upload all the images to one folder off the card, then move the differing image/subjects to their own specific folders after. (I find it easier to deal with image files once they are all on the computer rather than browsing them on the card.) Then import from those folders to LR.

Now the only thing I have yet to do, and wish I had done it from the start, is to create a separate LR catalog for clients vs personal. This would help keep the catalog sizes more manageable and easier for LR to handle. Although at 140,000 images in the catalog right now LR handles it VERY well.

just to bring this thread back....

so i downloaded the LR3 trial. question.... does the LR catalog file contain anything beyond the indexing information (ie. metadata)? i was curious where the metadata lives, so i edited an image in LR, and when i opened the same CR2 file in DPP, the image was as shot. so, does the metadata live in LR, or is it part of the file (and if so, how come DPP cant read it)?

I keyword each import with something specific for later use. Some specific photos get tagged as I go. Otherwise, it's simple rating system and reject flags to kill most of the useless ones.