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Photo Organization | Pad Patter 3/22

littlekiwi

littlekiwi

I charge by the hour for anything before noon
Joined
Jan 21, 2012
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As I was looking for a photo I had seen in the last few days (where it actually is I am unsure as I thought it might have been from family social media), I thought I wonder how other people organize their photos. So my questions to you are:

Do you organize your photos?
Do you use a program for organizing? eg: Bridge, Picasa....I'm sure there are others out there too
 
Up until about a week or two ago, my photos were mostly a hot mess! Now as I am probably half way through sorting out that hot mess, its a bit better but still not ideal.
I just use folders as I haven't seen a need to be anymore complex given where I started.
 
I don't do anything special. I don't tag anything
Photo Folder
-> Years (ie 2023, 2022, 2021, and so on)
-> folder for each date I downloaded photos (ie 2023-03-02(my birthday), 2023-01-01(nyd) etc....)
 
All my camera downloads go into a Canon Downloads folder by date i.e. 2023_03_21. That is how I set up my first Canon camera to download and I've stayed with that system for 18 years. However I only keep 2 years in that folder (current year and previous year). I move them to a folder called "Images 3" where I have a folder for each year. Within the yearly folder I have a sub-folder for each month which then has a sub-folder for the date. In other words I create a year folder with a month sub-folder (i.e. 202001Jan so it sorts chronologically). Then I move the date folder from the Downloads folder to the correct month, no renaming of those folders.

I also have an Images 1 and Images 2 folders. Images 1 has photos that are miscellaneous stuff, some very specific folders, others more generic catch-all type folders for one thing.

Images 2 is where all the scanned images have a home. This has been refined quite often over the years. Folders are named by year/event ie 1969 Confirmation. That folder has all photos from my church confirmation in 1969. There are also some folders that don't have years, just names. Like the one called "Rene" with a lot of miscellaneous photos of me throughout the years.

I basically use Picasa to look at my photos but have imported some of the 2023 and 2022 images into Lightroom. I like Cheryl's method of marking the photos in LR when they have been scrapped and have tried it with a few. I just haven't taken the time to import my whole catalog of photos.

Printed photos... that's a whole other story! Spent 2 months organizing those back in 2018 since I had found some I didn't know were even in the house during the house purge. Now all printed photos are in one area in several containers.
 
I use the Photos app on my computer, which syncs with my phone. I have albums for each month, inside of folders for the year. Special events get their own photo. Everything is labeled YYYY-MM, then - Event if needed (i.e. 2023-01 Disneyland).

I try to tag my photos. Try being the operative word. I am never caught up on it - I'd rather scrap lol
 
littlekiwi said:
Exactly, there are far more fun things to do in this world!
Click to expand...

I do like it though when family is talking about a specific photo and I can just bring it up on my phone because I've tagged it with a keyword. I'm the family memory keeper, so everyone constantly asks me for 'this picture' or that ... I love being able to have them at my fingertips
 
I import all photos to Lightroom and the original versions are saved to my pictures folder by date of import. Then I edit them in Lightroom and save a copy of the edited version to a separate photos folder by year and month. That is what I scrap from. Not sure if the “rule” has changed with LR edits that you can reverse but when I started out as a photographer, I was taught to always keep the original in case you need to go back to it.
 
Yes! I organize by date primarily. I also use Lightroom for tagging (ie, locations, people, activities, holidays).
 
My husband is in charge of the photos. He organises them by year/month/event. Miscellaneous photos go in the month photo, unless there are a lot of them on a similar theme/subject - then they go in a subfolder appropriately labelled.
e.g.
Screenshot 2023-03-22 104312.jpg
 
Year>Month>Event (if needed)

That said my photos are still a hot mess due to trying to have back-ups. Getting them organized is one of my planned retirement jobs.
 
I use Smugmug. It sorts by year then month. I just scroll. If there is an event, I will make a separate folder but not usually.
 
I use Google photos and I have a folder system of my own by year then month.
 
My folder structure for photos is a main folder called PHOTOS, with photos by year.

photo-layouttracking_1-jpg.346003


And then I have them separated by date within the year.

photo-layouttracking_2-jpg.346004


I use Lightroom for further photo organization (keywording/tagging) as well as editing. So the basic catalog you'll see is the same as my Windows folder structure. Keywords are over on the right. So for this photo, I've keyworded/tagged my son, eating out, and LEGO. I can click on anyone of those keywords in my list to see all photos that I've tagged with that keyword. Makes it easier when I'm looking for a particular photo or event. Also, I can color code my photos. When I've scrapped a photo, I code it with purple. That way I know at a glance looking in a folder what photos I've already put on a layout.

photo-layouttracking_3-jpg.346005
 
I used to organize by year, sometimes by location or even (e.g. San Antonio Botanical Garden, 4th of July). But, I don't organize anymore. With nearly 100% of photos taken with my phone these days, "Photos" automatically places a time stamp and location stamp. I can even search for "flower," "cactus," "Donald," etc.
 
I organise my photographs on my EHD and they are stored via year, then within each year I have a folder called 'random' photo's which are all the odd photo's I take that year. Then if we have a special occasion or holiday they are put in a folder with that name.
 
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