what kind of file structure do you guys use?

right now my file structure is driving me crazy... in my photo folder I have subfolders with each different type of picture (IE landscape, action, portrait, etc). now, when I go somewhere and take multiple pictures, the pictures from that one trip end up spread up in different folders unless I keep them together. I desperately want to change this to something more efficient. I've seen that a lot of people just sort year/month/event/, but again, the chance of overlap is possible, and that's what I want to eliminate. how do you guys store your pictures on your hard drive? I realize that my using something like LR or iView Media Pro you can sort however you want with metadata, but right now I'm looking for ways to physically store my pictures on my hard drive...

thanks in advance for any tips.

Unlike most people I store mine on my hard disk by location shot, and nothing to do with date. Then I keyword in Lightroom.

I guess I do a bit of over kill. I make a main folder for what ever year (ex: Photos_2007)
Then I do a sub folder for the shoot (ex: davis_trent_wedding04-02-07)
Then inside that folder I have a RAW folder, Tiff folder, Jpg folder, and finally a Finalized print folder. I store for one year on an external HD, and I burn a DVD of the finalized images to file.

Anke wrote in post #3578361
Unlike most people I store mine on my hard disk by location shot, and nothing to do with date. Then I keyword in Lightroom.

so you basically have a ton of folders in one directory? one for every shoot you've done? that's kind of another thing I'm trying to avoid, having so many folders that it becomes impossible to find anything. if I did that I'd at least name it with the date so there'd be some kind of orginization to it...

goforphoto wrote in post #3578410
I guess I do a bit of over kill. I make a main folder for what ever year (ex: Photos_2007)
Then I do a sub folder for the shoot (ex: davis_trent_wedding04-02-07)
Then inside that folder I have a RAW folder, Tiff folder, Jpg folder, and finally a Finalized print folder. I store for one year on an external HD, and I burn a DVD of the finalized images to file.

I have the same structure as you do inside of each shoot... I have RAW, PSD, and Final for every shoot I've done. I have considered organizing the way you do though for the folders above that...

jnev wrote in post #3578413
so you basically have a ton of folders in one directory? one for every shoot you've done? that's kind of another thing I'm trying to avoid, having so many folders that it becomes impossible to find anything. if I did that I'd at least name it with the date so there'd be some kind of orginization to it...

No, I have a different folder for everywhere I have been and just top up the photos in that folder if I go to that place again.

Plus, with LightRoom, I can just navigate easily by keywords if I want to find something, no trawling folders.

Anke wrote in post #3578421
No, I have a different folder for everywhere I have been and just top up the photos in that folder if I go to that place again.

Plus, with LightRoom, I can just navigate easily by keywords if I want to find something, no trawling folders.

wow this is becoming a chatroom, lol.

I see what you're saying though, I haven't thought about doing that. I think though that I've been to too many places and many of them would stay mostly empty and just have one shoot in there. I also use keywording in LR, I just want another way of organization outside of metadata.

jnev wrote in post #3578426
I see what you're saying though, I haven't thought about doing that. I think though that I've been to too many places and many of them would stay mostly empty and just have one shoot in there. I also use keywording in LR, I just want another way of organization outside of metadata.

If you're solely going to rely keywording then just file by date shot, probably the easiest as that's how they will come off your card.

jnev wrote in post #3578426
wow this is becoming a chatroom, lol.

Welcome to POTN, you're never more than two minutes from an answer to a question. That's why we all love it so much!!

Anke wrote in post #3578432
If you're solely going to rely keywording then just file by date shot, probably the easiest as that's how they will come off your card.

you do have a point there, I'll think about it...

Anke wrote in post #3578432
Welcome to POTN, you're never more than two minutes from an answer to a question. That's why we all love it so much!!

lol yah, I found this site a few months ago, and I don't even want to know how much time I've spent reading up on it now

The main reason I organize by date is, after I burn off the finalized images and a year is up I just click on one folder and delete a whole year at one click.

goforphoto wrote in post #3578452
The main reason I organize by date is, after I burn off the finalized images and a year is up I just click on one folder and delete a whole year at one click.

Makes sense.

I'm a wedding photographer, I have a folder for each year, and a folder inside that for each customer. For my personal work there's a folder for each year, a folder for each month, then a folder for each day - though occasionally I combine big trips into one folder.

I have about 30,000 images online and another 30,000 offline, the system seems to work quite well.

Hello jnev;

I don't think there's a "one size fits all" solution; at least I haven't found one...

Apart from any other back-up routines etc; on my hard drive, I set up folders for;
- Year
-- Event
--- CF JPEG images
--- CF RAW images
--- CF any images etc... (as many as needed)
--- Final PP'd keepers / collection

Then: I catalogue the "final keepers" folder withing Adobe PSE.

That way, you can keep all shots within the main folder, but allocate as many "groups" "keywords" or "other tags" as you need or want.

So one image will get displayed if you sort by "Weddings" or "Bert & Doris" or "Events" or "California" or "Churches" etc. etc.

Hope that helps;

Cheers;

Lee

I have a somewhat different convention. So far it seems to work for me. I store to spinning disk in two different places.

Locally I store by date. On a file server on my network I store by category. I have two copies of everything and depending on the shoot, I can find it by date or by category. I may also name my date folders to include the event title.

This helps in finding photos and I have redundancy since Hard drives fail. So far I have not lost anything since starting up this scenario in 04. I do have some old shots burned to dvd but I don't totally trust that form of archive. I am in the process of purchasing an external drive as a third backup. When that drive is full, I'll store it and purchase another.

That was more info than you were asking for, I know. My "real" job pertains to archiving of medical images so my naming/storing convention encompasses archiving as well.

I manage them by having main folders in which desribe the general nature of the photo

then

yymmdd event keyword

It allows me to search by event daye, specific event or a possible main keyword.

I use two external harddrives and sync them via sync toy