How Best to Organize Photos?

JI
Posted By
John in San Diego
Aug 2, 2003
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332
Replies
4
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Closed
As someone who loves to be organized, I’ve been unable to come up with a system to organize all my photos (over 1,000).

First, should I just continue using Window’s My Pictures folder? Or something like Photoshop Album? I have the latter, but so far have been unable to be convinced that this makes my organizing any easier than using the My Pictures folder…

Then, I have categories such as Friends, Work, Family (with subcategories for each sibling). I’d like to have these further categorized by year. What’s the easiest and most logical way to do this?

Suggestions, anybody?

TIA!

John
San Diego
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Mike Russell
Aug 2, 2003
John in San Diego wrote:
As someone who loves to be organized, I’ve been unable to come up with a system to organize all my photos (over 1,000).

First, should I just continue using Window’s My Pictures folder? Or something like Photoshop Album? I have the latter, but so far have been unable to be convinced that this makes my organizing any easier than using the My Pictures folder…

Then, I have categories such as Friends, Work, Family (with subcategories for each sibling). I’d like to have these further categorized by year. What’s the easiest and most logical way to do this?

Suggestions, anybody?

Here’s some ideas.

Name your images with either a sequence or an embedded date and time. This allows you, given a particular image, to find images that were taken at about the same time.

I create a new folder for every few days worth of images, with the folder name YYMMDD-<subject> so the folder names sort out in Explorer, and appending the particular subject matter as a hint. For example: 030713-Birthday.

When I get too many folders, they go to a CD in a big binder and I either delete the folders right away or create a new placeholder folder with an appropriate dated name with suffix "-toCD" so that I know I may safely delete preceding folders and still have a backup.

When I want a particular image, I’ll have a rough idea of when it was created and can start looking through the folder names, and then the thumbnails on that basis.

I also keep subject related folders for the smaller numbers of important images, ongoing projects, or other images that I have put a lot of work into.

—

Mike Russell
http://www.curvemeister.com
http://www.zocalo.net/~mgr
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JI
John in San Diego
Aug 3, 2003
Mike-

Your system is brilliant. That’s exactly the kind of organizing trick I was looking for!

I’m glad I can stick to Windows’ folders without having to use ACDSee or Photoshop Album.

Thanks so much.

John S.
San Diego
MS
Michel Schaub
Aug 3, 2003
I use FotoAlbum:

http://www.fototime.com/

1. It is free.
2. You can put the same picture in differents albums, retrieve by date with a click of a mouse.
3. Create "autorun" picture CD’s(or not autorun).
4. Select and reduce pictures to send by e-mail.
5. Link with any editing tool.
6. Slide show
7. You can download a module(also free) to see RAW images from Canon,Nikon and other proprietary protocols.

If you find something better…. I am always interested.
S
Stephan
Aug 3, 2003
"Kevin" wrote in message
in article , John in San Diego at
wrote on 8/2/03 2:05 PM:

As someone who loves to be organized, I’ve been unable to come up with a system to organize all my photos (over 1,000).

Hire someone to do it for you.

So you are Kevin now? Bored of being killfiled by most?
How pathetic
You are, as usual, stupid

Stephan

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