Lightroom organization questions

Unfortunately, I don't... but want to, also... so I'm no help... I'm waiting to upgrade to LR4 and then I'll start organizing... but will be watching this in case anyone chimes in

 

I use Lightroom to organize my photos (and scrap supplies and layouts). Sorry, I didn't have time to post a reply earlier - it's been a crazy day and now it's (way past) bedtime. I'll write up something in the morning. In the meantime, I got my start from Kayla Lamareaux's Lightroom for Memory Keepers free class. Her site is here: http://www.kaylalamoreaux.com and there's a lot of great information there!

 

I use LR for all my photos, but I am really bad at keywording. =(

I keep my stuff chronologically, so i have series of nested folders.



2012 | 2012 | 2013
...Jan | Feb| March| etc.
...Raw | JPEG

So my 2012 folder has 12 subfolders for each month, and then each Month folder has two subfolders, one for my raw files and one for my finished jpegs.

For the flagging and colors, etc., you'll just have to experiment to see what works for you. When I am working on my raw files, I can often end up with a raw version and a psd version if I've done an extensive edit, or sometimes I have variations on the same pose, etc. I flag all the base raw files I want to keep with a Pick Flag, then once my edit is done (regardless of whether it is raw or psd) I mark it Yellow, then I can sort by all the yellows to export to jpg.

I keep my scrap supplies in Bridge because I don't want it in the main LR catalog, and I work with photos and the scrap supplies at the same time. I don't want to switch in and out of LR catalogs. In Bridge for my scrap stuff, I sort by Designer, and now I've started keywording BYOC Mo Year so that I can sort all the stuff that coordinates.

At one point I had all my scrap stuff keyworded by frame, flower, splatter, etc., but in the past few months I've bought stuff and used it right away and never keyworded it, so I just work out of specific designers now.....

I do need a better system, but I have a lot of scrap stuff gathered over the years that i will likely never use, and I don't know if I should move it to a separate folder or what.....

 

@KateD - where in Northern Virginia are you? I am in Vienna.

 

Okay, awake and caffeinated! Are you ready??

I use Lightroom to organize my photos, scrap supplies, and completed layouts. I prefer to have everything in one place, so they're all in one catalog.

Photos - overview of process

I import photos from several sources - DSLR, cell phone camera, screenshots, scans and downloaded pictures. I import them using the 'move' option except for the RAW photos which I convert to DNG during the import. All the images end up in folders on the hard drive based on when they were taken. I have one main 'photos' folder and sub-folders for each quarter - so current photos go into a folder named "2013_01 (Jan-Mar)". I don't worry about mixing up the photos, because I can filter them in LR based on which camera they were taken with. As soon as the photos are imported into LR, I tag them with the year & month. I always do that. Then, I'm supposed to rate & purge and keyword the photos - although that doesn't always happen. I have a huge backlog of photos that need to be rated & keyworded.

I took Stacy Julian's 'Finding Photo Freedom' class and my ratings, keywords and smart collections are structured according to that system.

Photos - rating
I use a four-star system of rating my photos:
- 4 star - photos that I love and evoke an emotional response, but aren't necessarily part of a story that I want to make a layout about
- 3 star - photos that are the focal point of a story. These aren't necessarily technically great photos, but I know I want to make a layout with them.
- 2 star - photos that either support the 3 star photos or photos that I might want to tell the story about on a layout
- 1 star - photos I like, but aren't part of a story - random good photos

Photos - keywording
I keyword all photos based on the date as well as who is in the photo and possibly where we were & what we were doing. Pretty much anything that I have wanted to find photos about I make a keyword for, so my keyword list is pretty long. I use main & sub keywords, so I can collapse the categories I'm not using.

The final keyword I put on a photo is 'scrapped' once I've used the photo on a layout.

Photos - smart collections
I have just recently started using smart collections and I've discovered this is a powerful feature of Lightroom. I have two sets of smart collections for my photos - 'LOM Storage Binders' and 'LOM Category Drawers'. (LOM is Library of Memories, the system that Stacey Julian teaches in Finding Photo Freedom) The storage binders are where I collect all of the 2 and 3 star photos - the photos I know I have stories for - that I haven't scrapped yet. I have one storage binder (smart collection) for each year. The category drawers are where I pull together the photos that have things in common. These are the things that I find I go looking for when I'm making a page - photos of my husband and I together, photos of my kids with the dog, that sort of thing. These smart collections include 1 through 3 star photos, both scrapped and unscrapped.

So far in the 'Us' set of smart collections, I have smart collections for 'me & hubby', 'all 4 of us', 'kids & pets', 'R&S' (our 2 kids together), 'Robert' and 'Steven'. I don't have a lot right now because I just started using the smart collections and I'm adding them as I need to find photos.

Smart collections only work if the photos are rated and keyworded, so they're providing a lot of incentive to get the that done!

Photos - caption
As I go through my photos, if I have something I want to remember about a particular photo, I'll make a note of it in the photo caption. That way, the story is always with the photo.

 

I'm in Manassas - not too far

Since you're using Lightroom for photos, you probably want to start with Kayla's Finding Photo Flow class which is the link on the left. The one I mentioned is about using Lightroom to organize scrap supplies.

 

I print my layouts individually and put in D-ring albums - I don't really care which album it's going into. all my layouts go into the same folder. I have a main "completed layouts" folder with two sub-folders, "tag with supplies" where the layouts go first, and then I move them into "tagged" when I finish keywording them with the supplies I used. If I have a particular theme album, I'd make a keyword for it and collect them that way.

I keep track of what layouts I've printed with keywords, too. I also keyword the layouts with the month/year so they show up when I browse through all the photos for the month. They're rated 5 stars, so they don't show up in the smart collections with the photos. Recently, I also started keywording the layouts with the same keywords I use for the photos. I thought it would be interesting and useful to see how many birthday layouts I'd made or how many layouts I've made that each of my children are in. Probably more information than anyone besides me would want

 

I love LR and use it to organize all my photos. I have collections for blogging, scrapping, and PL. I love this thread!

 

Thanks Kate! Interesting ideas and tips on keywording photos. I'm currently in the Finding Photo Freedom class and still am trying to keyword away on my photos.