Organising and storing 200000 photographs.

sfaust wrote in post #11575139
All the information you need is in the (DAM) Digital Asset Management book. Cataloging, software, backup methodology, storage solutions, metadata, hardware, derivative management, file migration, software compatibility and data sharing, etc. Its a very deep subject, and the more you images you have, the more questions that will crop up.

This the best advice so far. I have read this book and it would be judicious to review this and other investigation before running out and settling on one application. I would think it would be good to get a few of your co-workers together and get their opinions, particularly if they will be involved in the maintenance of the database.

This site has an excellent comparison and overview of features of cataloging applications. The people at Impulse Adventure have done a good job of putting this together and imo, it is totally unbiased. Adobe has done an excellent job of planting the seed that Lightroom is the premier application for this. It is a personal choice but if all you are after is a database system you get alot that you won't use. I have 8GB of RAM and I found that my Lightroom catalogs were getting too slow once I had over 100,000 images in it. I have since made the switch away from Lightroom and use Expression Media 2.

If you take the time to properly key word images and protect the originals so that original dates are intact you can find an image in a snap with a good cataloging system. This negates the need to rename the images and maintain a specific folder structure though both wouldn't hurt.