Organizing photos

[ketko]

HI EVERYBODY!
How do you organize your photos (personal collection)?

So, Ill start...
I have excel sheet with ID, date, airport, reg, airline, ac type and remark fields... And I have folders, each for 100 photos... For ex. 000000-000100, 000101-000200,...

Thanks for replies

[brianw999]

In My Documents...my pictures I have a master folder entitled "Aircraft". All the following are subfolders of that.

I download the days RAW pictures at a particular airport/location into a folder and name it something like Heathrow 10.11.2006. I keep the camera allocated pic ID number unchanged.

I copy the pictures that I want to use/are useable into another folder called Heathrow 10.11.2006_finished.

As I work on each picture I save it as .jpg and add the aircraft registration to identify it. I may sometimes include an aircraft type. The RAW files that I keep but don't bother processing for upload also get a reg. and/or type added to the filename for later tracking. A typical RAW filename might be DSC0022.RAW. The saved filename would become something like DSC0022_G-ABCD.jpg. Because I may have more than one shot of a particular aircraft the camera allocated file number helps to pin down which one I want to go back to.
Once I am sure that there are no further useable pics in the original Heathrow 10.11.2006. folder then I delete it. Being RAW files these might take up as much as 800mb - 1Gb or more of disc space. It is unusual for me to keep more than one fifth of a days shooting. I now have a store of the RAW original and the .jpg finished picture.

The folder...Heathrow 10.11.2006_finished. gets saved to a high volume rewriteable disc. I will normally keep the "finished" folder on my hard drive until all pics have been uploaded or otherwise used. I don't have a vast store of "finished" folders on the hard drive at the moment but I assume that I will need to delete some in the future to free up drive space. No problem if that happens, or I get a drive failure, they're backed up to disc.

The beauty of EXIF data saved with a pic together with the date / location information on the web saved location means that if I, or someone else wants a particular pic, then I can go to whichever website (mostly on JPnet)has that pic, search for it and immediately know when and where it was taken. From this I know which folder or CD to go to.

This system suits me for now given the relatively few pictures that I have in personal storage ( probably 1500 - 2000 'ish.). I may need to change the method in later years but what I do now should be easily transferrable.

My real favourite pics get printed and kept in plastic leafed folders for easy access.

[pilotgolfer]

I have a folder on my desktop for all my pics then inside that folder I subdivide into a folder for each month. Then inside those folder I have all the pics I've taken that month and a folder for the pics I've edited and sometimes I'll have events that will be put in a folder alongside the edited one. If the event has a fairly large amount of pictures from it, such as trips I've taken, airshows, etc., I'll just make a completely different folder on the desktop for it.
But that's just the way I do it.

[Sam at MAN]

I just have an 'aircraft' folder then dates. Then inside each file is named 'picture 026' etc

[Electric-Jet]

I make files for each airport I vist. I will name them KEWR, KJFK, KBLM and so on. I can get to the files by going to My Pictues after hitting start. Then in each file the photos will start as KEWR001(if in the KEWR file). Then I will also know how many photos are in the file, then after I think there is too many photos in it I will delete some of the photos that aren't needed.

[v1images]

What is file organisation?

I do have one at the moment but after Christmas when I get a few new bits of equipment I am set on making a much more organised storage system for unedited/edited shots.

[LX-A343]

I make foolder of roughly 700MB to burn them on CD. The folders have following subfolders

• uploaded
  • queue
  • done
• not uploaded

First I copy all photos into the subfolder "not uploaded". Then I batch rename all photos with breezebrowser. The format is:
ac_airlin_reg_date_photo-ID (example: a343_lx_hb-jmf_061201_4060.cr2)

Then I browse them and sort those out, which I won't edit at all. The others are moved to the uploaded subfolder. From then on, it's edit, copy to "queue", upload and so on. At the end, I have just two subfolders, uploaded and not uplaoded. Once I burn a CD, I make a catalogue with Thumbsplus (looking for something else at the moment). That way, I can easily browse my photo collection.

Complicated, yes, but I have complete overview of my photo collection.

Gerardo

[alzoturtz]

I have found a great way to organize my photos.

www.collectorz.com/photo

Its easy to add photos to the colelction, and inputting the data couldn't be easier.

[LX-A343]

doesn't seem to work with RAW files. Can you create a catalogue of your CD-collection?

Gerardo