File Organization for the Photographer
- Thread starter Ryan
- Start date
Ok, so I have a couple of things to add. First of all, I keep all my pictures on my computer. I have one folder and in that folder there is a series of folders marked by the year. Inside each yearly folder I have folders set up by event (wdw trip 2008, birthday float trip, etc). This helps me keep organized and helps me easily find something if I'm looking for it.
I do suggest the external hard drive, but not as a primary. I've had a very serious hard drive crash on my external where I lost it all. Ironically enough, when that was fixed and back to normal, my computer hard drive crashed. This is one reason that I have gotten to the point of keeping my shots in three places. On my computer (primary), on my external hard drive (secondary), and on dvd's (backup). If I hadn't done that last one I would have lost all of my pictures so I really want to stress that. So that's how I try to keep the chaos in check in my mac. Hope that helps a bit. ;
I do suggest the external hard drive, but not as a primary. I've had a very serious hard drive crash on my external where I lost it all. Ironically enough, when that was fixed and back to normal, my computer hard drive crashed. This is one reason that I have gotten to the point of keeping my shots in three places. On my computer (primary), on my external hard drive (secondary), and on dvd's (backup). If I hadn't done that last one I would have lost all of my pictures so I really want to stress that. So that's how I try to keep the chaos in check in my mac. Hope that helps a bit. ;
mSummers
Member
Having multiple externals is a really good idea. ; Especially if you keep one of them off site so that if something catastrophic happens and you loose your computer and primary backup, you still have the second backup that you can recover your images from. ; Right now, I store my images on my desktop and backup to a Drobo. ; In the next couple of months, I'm going to get a 2TB drive to put into a portable enclosure to create a ; portable backup that I can easily transport to my office. ;
I'm not sure solid state drives are a good backup option yet. ; From what I understand all flash memory (solid state drives, camera cards, and thumbdrives) will degrade over time with each read-write cycle which will eventually lead to data loss. ;
I'm not sure solid state drives are a good backup option yet. ; From what I understand all flash memory (solid state drives, camera cards, and thumbdrives) will degrade over time with each read-write cycle which will eventually lead to data loss. ;
gary
Member
important ; can't be replaced photos, esp family have as many as 4 backups, i have a phanfare site, and i can download full res jpegs, so that's my off site backup, dvd copies here at home, and once again irreplaceable stuff gets a copy offsite to my mothers fire safe. plus a copy here on dvd, plus on the external drive, the only difference i see between mine and others it that i keep none on the internal drive, my current macbook would end up too crowded too soon for that. plus with that many multiple copies i'm pretty comfortable with my recovery options
mSummers
Member
"dishippy" said:
I played around with that about a year ago. ; I was looking into Carbonite to backup my pictures, music and other important files. ; I actually signed up for the free trial and wasn't impressed. ; The problems that I discovered with that test were that those services seem to be geared to backing up smaller files (less than 1MB). ; I would expect the upload time to be proportionate to the size of the file, but it seemed like the larger files took a disproportionately longer time to upload. ; The other problem I found was that you need a really fast internet connection to make it work well. ; I have Verizon DSL at home and I was able to upload about 10GB in 5 days. ; With a photo collection rapidly approaching 1TB it was going to take forever to upload it all. ; Plus, if the online service ever went out of business, you could loose your files, but if you have another external stored offsite, you don't have to worry about that.
I will say that Carbonite is great for backing up word files and small amounts of pictures. ; My sister has it on her laptop and it works great for her.
The method I've been using of storing photos seemed ideal when I implemented it, but now has become such a pain that it has led to my not even wanting to dump the photos off my cards.
Currently, I'll create a folder under My Pictures for what it is, then using Nikon Transfer tell it a naming convention. ; For example, for a trip to WDW I might have My Pictures\WDW\2009_09\Day 1\WDW_YYYYMMDD_Day1_XXX where YYYYMMDD is the datestamp from the EXIF and XXX is a 3 digit autoincrementing number.
That has proven to be a lot of work, especially if it's a small set of pictures that can be categorized or I cannot think of a category to apply it to (for example all the pictures of the kids).
I'm am thinking I may need to take WillCAD's approach where I have parent folders for years, then months, and then name the files based on YYYY_MM_DD_XXX
But as far as storage, I've been using Seagate drives but I am really thinking I'm at the place to buy a Drobo now that they have released the Drobo FS which is a NAS drive with RAID and can accept up to 5 2TB drives and hangs on your network using a gigabit connection and is compatible with Mac OS, Windows, and Unix/Linux.
http://www.drobo.com/products/drobo-fs.php
Currently, I'll create a folder under My Pictures for what it is, then using Nikon Transfer tell it a naming convention. ; For example, for a trip to WDW I might have My Pictures\WDW\2009_09\Day 1\WDW_YYYYMMDD_Day1_XXX where YYYYMMDD is the datestamp from the EXIF and XXX is a 3 digit autoincrementing number.
That has proven to be a lot of work, especially if it's a small set of pictures that can be categorized or I cannot think of a category to apply it to (for example all the pictures of the kids).
I'm am thinking I may need to take WillCAD's approach where I have parent folders for years, then months, and then name the files based on YYYY_MM_DD_XXX
But as far as storage, I've been using Seagate drives but I am really thinking I'm at the place to buy a Drobo now that they have released the Drobo FS which is a NAS drive with RAID and can accept up to 5 2TB drives and hangs on your network using a gigabit connection and is compatible with Mac OS, Windows, and Unix/Linux.
http://www.drobo.com/products/drobo-fs.php
I thought about a NAS, but nixed the idea because I back up three PCs over my network, and was afraid that traffic from the remote PC and to the NAS would slow down the process. ; Then I noticed that I had a spare GB NIC on the shelf, which means I could dedicate it to the NAS. ; I guess I'll have to start saving for a Drobo FS (and probably a second GB switch to connect it to the PC).
My photo storage system is very similar to what others use:
H:\pix is the root directory.
The second level is the year: ; H:\pix\2009
The third level is the month number (01-12) followed by either the name of some significant event or "misc" for a catch-all. ; For example, in July 2009 I had shots from the US Senior Open golf tournament, Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photowalk and some other miscellaneous shots:
H:\pix\2009\07_misc
H:\pix\2009\07_photowalk
H:\pix\2009\07_Senior_Open
For a multi-day event, such as a trip to Disney World, I'll create another directory level with the date (although I guess putting the year and month in the date is redundant):
H:\pix\2009\12_WDW\20091202
H:\pix\2009\12_WDW\20091203
Finally, the lowest level has three subdirectories: ; raw (for the original raw images), jpg (for jpg copies of the originals, resized so the longer side is 1200 pixels), and flickr, for anything that I put on my flickr page or otherwise processed.
H:\pix\2009\07_misc\flickr
H:\pix\2009\07_misc\jpg
H:\pix\2009\07_misc\raw
H:\pix\2009\12_WDW\20091203\flickr
H:\pix\2009\12_WDW\20091203\jpg
H:\pix\2009\12_WDW\20091203\raw
I leave the file names untouched, although now that I have three cameras that may become a problem. ; For now, each camera uses its own file name format: ; the D70s uses DSC_9999, I set the D300 to use DS3_9999, and the G11 uses IMG_9999.
My photo storage system is very similar to what others use:
H:\pix is the root directory.
The second level is the year: ; H:\pix\2009
The third level is the month number (01-12) followed by either the name of some significant event or "misc" for a catch-all. ; For example, in July 2009 I had shots from the US Senior Open golf tournament, Scott Kelby's Worldwide Photowalk and some other miscellaneous shots:
H:\pix\2009\07_misc
H:\pix\2009\07_photowalk
H:\pix\2009\07_Senior_Open
For a multi-day event, such as a trip to Disney World, I'll create another directory level with the date (although I guess putting the year and month in the date is redundant):
H:\pix\2009\12_WDW\20091202
H:\pix\2009\12_WDW\20091203
Finally, the lowest level has three subdirectories: ; raw (for the original raw images), jpg (for jpg copies of the originals, resized so the longer side is 1200 pixels), and flickr, for anything that I put on my flickr page or otherwise processed.
H:\pix\2009\07_misc\flickr
H:\pix\2009\07_misc\jpg
H:\pix\2009\07_misc\raw
H:\pix\2009\12_WDW\20091203\flickr
H:\pix\2009\12_WDW\20091203\jpg
H:\pix\2009\12_WDW\20091203\raw
I leave the file names untouched, although now that I have three cameras that may become a problem. ; For now, each camera uses its own file name format: ; the D70s uses DSC_9999, I set the D300 to use DS3_9999, and the G11 uses IMG_9999.