How Do You Catalogue Your Pictures?

[dougdc8]

I name each file like this.... Airline - Aircraft - Registration - Date - Airport

So an example would
Air Canada - ERJ190 - C-FHKE - 2008-05-15 - KSEA

[LX-A343]

Another question regarding photo storage. Do you save RAW, or JPG or both or something different? I often ask myself, if there will be a programm in 50 years from now ..... OK, let's make it 30 ... which will be able to open JPG, let alone old Canon EOS D60 RAW files. And the I think, wouldn't it be better to convert them into TIFF and archive them as TIFF only?

[alwaysconcorde]

I have a folder for each year, the first being "Planes Alejo 2005" up to 2009. In each one of these I have a general folder called "Flights 200X" of pictures that I take when I fly (nationally) and spotting and I create special folders in case of events such as F-Air (airshows) or international flights.

Inside each subfolder I have 4 more folders, 2 for the originals of which one is the pictures that I haven't edited and the other of the ones already edited so I don't repeat by accident. When a photo is edited I move it from one to the other.

The other 2 folders are "photos to upload" , this is the folder I save to from PS, and "uploaded photos", to which the I move the photo after uploading, and inside of each are 3 subfolders for jp, anet and myav, the three sites I upload to. I created one recently of accepted photos, the photos with the black bar with the logo and my name at the bottom (bragging rights!).

I know this means more storage space because pics are repeated but it has worked for me so far. I keep them in a 250GB portable drive (need a new one for backup).

And on top of that I have an Excel file where I record upload date, queue id's and rejection reasons in case I re-edit photos in the future as I learn to better use PS and I decide to re-edit a difficult photo I didn't have the PS expertise before or if I'm falling repetedly in oversharpening or contrast rejections, for example, so I can be more careful about them.

[YYZPICS]

just by dates 03_05_2009

[cf73]

I file them: Aviation>Year>Month

But I only manage to get to the airport once every six weeks or so, so it makes it quite easy. If I was going every weekend I would have to do it differently

[Juulke]

In folders named as: MST 09-09-08 and the pictures in this folder with the regi of the plane. You can find the pictures very fast. like that.

[oe-vap]

For the photofiles themselves. 2 1 TB external harddrives. One in Vienna and one @ my girlfriends home in france. Organized in folders per year and then per them and then per day and airport.
So Samedan on the 10th of January would be stored in the directory
2009\aircraft\20090110_LSZS.
There i have two subfolders, one for the original raws (named : nef) and one for the ready edited files (named: jpg).
The pics themselve have the naming convention: xxx_operator_acft_reg.yyy
xxx ist the number of the photo on the day, operator, aircraft and re are self explaining and yyy is either nef or jpg.

In addition i keep records of what i have shot in a EXCEL File for each year. I have attached it below. http://forums.jetphotos.net/attachme...1&d=1233900343

Makes finding a specific pic with a particular view of an acft realy easy.

[Justin_AUS_Spotter]

I keep every photo I take no matter what as long as it has some purpose, if it's an accidental shot of the inside of my lens cap or a blurred photo taken by accident of the wall in my living room I generally delete those. Other than silly oops shots I keep them and I use the Canon EOS Utility to put my photos onto the computer, it organizes all my photos in different folders by year month and day. It helps out a lot helping me keep track of what dates I went to certain places etc. The only beef I have about it is 90% of the time EOS Utility does not work right and I spend a million times reconnecting my camera to the computer and turning it on and off before it will finally detect and let me transfer images. And sometimes in the middle of transfer it will freeze on me. I have a very powerful PC but I think it goes ADD on me or something...

An Example of how the sub folders are set up:

2008
-03
-2008_03_11
*All photos from March 11, 2008 are in this folder...

[chris78cpr]

I currently keep mine in a string of folders that are organized by Year/Month and Date. I also keep seperate directories as i use a large variety of cameras. My processing changes for diff cameras so keeping them seperate is important for me.

I always put the original files into a folder tree set out as listed aboive and have a seperate folder tree for "editing". I always choose the files i will edit and copy them into the editing directory. Each day's shoot is divided into three folders "originals", "editing" and "final images". This means i can store the original negative file, then a converted tiff int he editing at full size so i can then resize for different outputs eg web/print/email/upload and then i store the finalised files for upload or print in the final images folder.

I use external drives for storing all my photos and they get backed up about once a month. I have 2 500GB's which are full and stored in two seperate places, currently my two current 500GB working drives are sat on my desk as i've been to lazy to put them back where they belong as i need to do an update. I will buy two 1TB drives soon as my current working drives are nearly full.

I know it sounds complicated but it works really well for me and with OS X's amazing spotlight feature i can always find a file within a few minutes.

I am soon getting lightroom and will begin to use this as part of my DAM i think.

Chris

[QuebecAir]

Backup

I keep my files on two external drives. One is a 1TB and the other is a smaller 320G. When I upload or change a file on the 320HD its automatically backup the picture on the 1TB.

The pictures are filed by make of airplane Airbus, then A320, A319, A340 and so on, same for Boeing and the pictures are numbered KFLL jan29 2009 and a number.

[wrxflyer]

I myself use very much the same way of saving as Hinkelbein.

First of all, I delete every picture which is not good in quality, by my own standards.Then, from every a/c I save only 1 or 2 foto's taken at the same day, just to save space on my harddisk(s).Out of 500 pics of 1 day spotting there are only 100 left, for example.
I just save the edited JPEG's and just a very few of the RAW's.
(I have to admit I almost never shoot RAW; because of saving memoryspace, but that's gonna change with my new 40D, that will arrive soon)
Those JPEG'sare saved on my harddisk of my laptop and on my stand-alone pc.,dated by airport and date.

And, very important (for me), every good picture will be printed as well, just to complete my 3000+ photo-album from the last 20 years of spotting.......

Freek

[Hinkelbein]

First, I keep almost all pictures.
I have folders like 2008_09_27 Schiphol, or 2009_01_16 Düsseldorf.
I have these folders on my C:-disk, on G:-disk (2nd hard disk) and on the extrnal hard drive.
All pictures that made it into the dbase are on one of my laptops, where I save them like: PH-KCI 06 jan 2007.jpg
These I will have printed so I can put them in an album the oldfasioned way. I will not do this myself but have them printed in a shop or something.

[kukkudrill]

I sort photos in folders by aircraft type, variant then operator e.g. Boeing 747 as top-level folder, 747-400 as sub-folder, then British Airways as lower-level subfolder. I keep edited TIFFs and JPEGs separate, though I would probably not do this if I were starting again.

I keep photos on 2 external hard disk drives - one as primary storage, the other as backup.

[arjenp]

About the same as Seahawk and Brain. What I do is rename the files that I want to upload with. net (IMG_0000.net) so I can see them faster in a folder with 400 photos.

[seahawk]

The eidts for here go into "accepted", "rejected" and "not tried" folders. I brun these to CD once they reach a combined size of around 650MB and also keep a back-uü on the external as well as the internal HD.