Only vaguely related to climbing, but how do you guys organize your digital photos? For my actual printed photos, I've had them by subject, then by date (e.g., a shoebox of climbing photos, envelopes of oldest in back, going forward in time, a box of family photos, friends, vacations, etc.).

Not sure if this is the best way for digital files or not. Maybe by year, then subject within that year. Thoughts from the collective?

I sort by saving the folders like this:

20100622, XYZ Peak

It keeps them in date order when you sort by name. Just remember to add zeros as placeholders when there is only one number.

I always begin by labeling by date and trip what is on my memory cards. That way, I always have my original source to fall back on if I lose anything on the computer.

Different things work for different people. I save them in folders named with the date in the beginning too. Photo organizing programs like iPhoto automatically group photos by date and call those groupings "events" if I recall correctly, and they support labeling and ratings of photos. This way you can create additional groupings for photos that don't fit just one (like a pic of a friend climbing, add the friend's name and name of the mountain/route or whatever). Their face recognition features have matured really well too, making tagging individual people in all your pictures really easy.

Ed F wrote:I sort by saving the folders like this:

20100622, XYZ Peak

It keeps them in date order when you sort by name. Just remember to add zeros as placeholders when there is only one number.

+1 on what Ed says: I use the exact same naming convention as Ed to leverage Explorer's inherent desire to sort using the date.

sarah.simon wrote:

Ed F wrote:I sort by saving the folders like this:

20100622, XYZ Peak

It keeps them in date order when you sort by name. Just remember to add zeros as placeholders when there is only one number.

+1 on what Ed says: I use the exact same naming convention as Ed to leverage Explorer's inherent desire to sort using the date.

That sounds like it may work well. Any other methods?

+1 to Gary's system...

I put all my photos in the same directory. This way they are all immediately available, no searching through hierarchies of folders, various hard drives or disks, you just open the folder and everything is at your fingertips.

Similarly for printed photos. I marked off a corner of my garage, and place them all in the available space. In a big pile. If someone wants to see photos of my most recent vacation, they're probably near the top.

My pictues are sorted in subdirectories like:

2009
2009_5_MAY
2009_6_JUN
2009_6_5_Bob's birthday
2009_6_12_MtAdams.
2009_7_JUL
2010
...
...

It keeps them in order.. and gives quick ref to year, month, date and which event

At end of year, I move my hiking/climbing pictures to a separte disk under "Best Hiking Pictures"

Snowslogger wrote:

sarah.simon wrote:

Ed F wrote:I sort by saving the folders like this:

20100622, XYZ Peak

It keeps them in date order when you sort by name. Just remember to add zeros as placeholders when there is only one number.

+1 on what Ed says: I use the exact same naming convention as Ed to leverage Explorer's inherent desire to sort using the date.

That sounds like it may work well. Any other methods?

I further break them down by geographic area, like states. For places I live, like Utah, I break down into areas or ranges, then by date. I was in your boat a few years ago with thousands of photos and no way to find anything. It took me three or four nights of work, but once things were organized, it's so easy to find old stuff.

I use folders...

Under "My Pictures" is a folder called "Hiking" (and one called "Skiing" and one called "Rock Climbing")

Then under those are years (i.e. "2010")

Then under those are months (i.e. "06-June") - I put the number before the month so they will sort in order

Then date and peak (i.e. "20-Whale Peak") - again with the number first so they sort in order

Then the photos are numbered in order of when I took them with a description (i.e "001_View From Trailhead.jpg")

Most important to me is to sort by processing state.

I have a folder for raw photos. Every photo I take is copied here off the camera's memory card. Of course this is divided into subfolders by year and then by trip. In other words each "event" has its own "raw" folder; these folders are grouped by year under the "raw" banner.

First thing I do is select the photos that are worth sharing. I do this by moving the lousy photos into a subfolder within the event's raw folder.

Next (after backing up the raw folder onto separate media) I copy the decent photos to a totally separate "working" directory. Its structure mirrors the "raw" directory - year and event. In this working directory I do any edits I want to do. (In practice I may cheat by doing some editing while i'm still making selections within the "raw" folder, but in that case I'm super-careful to Save As a new copy and preserve the original. In the working directory I can relax.)

Finally I run some scripts to make copies in standard sizes with standard names, and to generate some HTML templates using those names. After filling in captions in the templates, I upload the results to my website. The website is independently backed up by the hosting provider.

Sometimes if I can't remember the date of something, I'll point Google at my website...

Two main folders for the two main types of Photos I take. Steam locos and walking.

Each main folder has sub folders:

Year

Month

Date

Backed up daily to one of two external hard drives.

One external hard drive always plugged into the PC, the other kept in a media rated fire safe. Swapped every week or two.

From time to time an up to date external hard drive is used to update a mirror image of my main PC files onto and old PC that is only used for saving files.

And, I now have a laptop, so that gets the files copied onto them as well from time to time!

Gary Schenk wrote:Organize?

I have a file folder for each country.

Then each country file folder has folders for regions/states

Then each region/state file folder has subfolders for peaks

Then each peak subfolder has a folder for dates

Each date has two folders - original images and edited images

For instance:

USA > CALIFORNIA > SIERRAS > PALISADES > MIDDLE PAL > O-MP-071477

I download the original images from the camera to a dated subfolder, such as O-HUXLEY-062510. O is for ORIGINALS.

Then I immediately copy the orginal subfolder to another folder, such as E-HUXLEY-062510. E is for EDITED.

I never touch the original subfolder again.

The EDITED subfolder is where I perform all color corrections, cropping, sharpening, etc. If I ever loose an image (or really screw it up), I can always go back to the ORIGINAL subfolder and copy it back over to the EDITED subfolder.

I never do any manipulations to the original photos.

I find it useful to use O and E as the starting letter, because I know I should never be saving a file to an O subfolder (as this would mean that I am over-writing the original image, which is a no-no).

In the EDITED subfolder, I also create WEB and PRINT subfolders. Once I have fully edited a photo and corrected the color, contrast, etc., then I copy it to the WEB and PRINT subfolders.

In the WEB subfolder I change the resolution to 72 dpi and change the dimentions to 1024 x 768 pixels (to match computer screen resolution). I save it as a maximum-quality JPEG. This way you have a copy of a photo that is suitable for websites. You can always re-save a copy as a lower-quality JPEG if you need a smaller file.

In the PRINT subfolder I change the resolution to 300 dpi, which is the minimum resolution suitable for making prints. The other dimentions of your photo (Length x Width) are determined by the megapixels of your source photo. There are calculations available online for this. This way you have a copy of the photo that is suitable for making a print.

I don't go through all of the WEB and PRINT manipulations with every single photo that I shoot, just the ones that I need converted to WEB and PRINT versions.

A final word about processing and through-put. Once you go through all of the trouble to edit an image, save it at appropriate steps in the process. For example, let's say that you make a WEB version of your original print without saving it except at the end (72 x 1024 x 768). Later, when you want to make a PRINT, you've got to start with the original version, and go through all of the time and trouble to crop and color-correct all over again.

You can buy a 200GB external hard drives for $100 that plug into a USB port. Very useful for full back-ups of your images.