Once you’ve decided where to store the photos on the hard drive, you then need to decide how to organize them. There’s no right or wrong way of organizing photos on your hard drive, but there are some basic principles that can help you avoid problems. It’s worth spending the time to set up a logical folder structure before you start importing photos into Lightroom.
As far as Lightroom’s concerned, your choice of folder structure doesn’t make a lot of difference. Folders are just a place to store the photos, and you can use metadata and keywords to organize them. You could just dump them all into a single folder, but that would become unwieldy in time, so some kind of organization helps. You may also want to find the photos outside of Lightroom, which may influence your choice of folder structure.
Basic Principles
We’ll come back to some sample folder structures in a moment, but first, let’s consider the basic principles behind the widely accepted best practices of digital asset management.
- Scalable—You may only have a few thousand photos when you get started, but your filing system needs to be capable of growing with you, without having to go back and change it. This is particularly important when you start spilling over into multiple hard drives, some of which may be offline most of the time.
- For example, if you organize your photos by topic, and your “Animals” folder is on a disconnected drive, you must reconnect the drive every time you photograph some animals. Multiply that by multiple drives and you have a headache!
- In contrast, if you add photos to a date/time-based folder structure of some description, then only one small area of your photo archive is updated when you import new photos.
- Easy Backup & Restore—Your folder structure needs to be easy to back up, otherwise you may miss some photos, and it needs to be easy to restore if you ever have a disaster. This is particularly important as your library grows and is split over multiple hard drives.
- We’ve already discussed the importance of storing photos in a single parent folder (per drive) rather than scattering photos around your hard drives.
- Adding new photos to lots of different folders (e.g., if organizing by topic) can also complicate your backup procedures. Some backup software can handle these additions, but it increases the margin for human error, especially if some drives are frequently offline.
- No duplication—Each photo should be stored in a single location (in addition to your backups).
- Besides taking up additional hard drive space, it also creates chaos when you start trying to add metadata or Develop edits to your photos.
- Duplication is the major disadvantage of topic-based folders, which we discussed in the last post.
- Standard characters—When naming your folders, stick to standard characters—A-Z, 0-9, hyphens (-) and underscores (_)—to prevent problems in the future.
- Although your current operating system may accept other characters, you might decide to move cross-platform one day, leaving you the time-consuming job of renaming all of the folders manually.
- Consistent—You should always know where a photo goes without having to think about it.
- If you have to debate each time, there’s a higher chance of making a mistake.
Why use a date/time-based folder structure?
The simplest option is to use one of Lightroom’s default dated folder structures. They tick all of the boxes, and you don’t have to think about it:
- It’s scalable, because you just keep adding new dates to the end.
- It’s easy to back up the original photos, even to write-once media like optical discs, because you’re adding new photos to the latest folders. (Note that if you save derivative files with the original files, such as those edited in other software, you might still be adding photos to older folders too.)
- It’s easy to restore from a good backup. In the event of a disaster, it’s even possible to rebuild the folder structure from files rescued by recovery software, because the capture dates are stored in the file metadata.
- It uses standard characters, which are accepted by all operating systems.
- The folders can be nested, so you don’t have a long unwieldy list of folders.
- Lightroom can create the folder structure for you automatically on import, so you don’t even have to organize it manually. Lightroom mobile can also drop photos into the same folder structure.
- It’s easy to go back and move older photos into the same folder structure, especially if you’re only using one folder per month. We’ll come back to this in a later “tidying up” post.
Do I have to use a strict dated folder structure?
As long as you follow the basic principles above, you can adapt the folder structure to suit your needs without causing unnecessary headaches. It just requires a little more thought initially. Here are a few examples to consider, and I’m sure you can think of a few more:
- Unless you’re shooting thousands of photos a day, you probably don’t need a full folder hierarchy with one folder per day. A folder for each month, nested inside a folder for each year is a very popular choice, and it’s the system I use personally.
- If you want to be able to find photos outside of Lightroom, you might want to use a named folder per shoot, nested inside a year folder. The “random” photos that don’t fit inside a full shoot folder can go directly into the year parent folder, and it still follows the basic principles.
- If you’re grouping photos by day, you may want to add a descriptive word to the folder name to describe the overall subject, for example, 2015-04-21 Zoo. This makes it possible to find the photos in any other file browser, however the folder list can get quite long, so it’s worth nesting them in month folders and showing the folder hierarchy so you can collapse them down.
- A event photographer may prefer to use a folder for each event within a parent year folder, sorted by name rather than date, for example, 2016/John_Kate_wedding_20160421.
- If you shoot for work as well as pleasure, you may want to have separate dated folder structures for Work vs. Personal. But as we saw in our earlier post, if you decide to split your system, make sure there are no overlaps where a photo may fit into more than one category.
Alternative filing systems aren’t ‘wrong’ but you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches if you follow the basic principles. Tell me what kind of folder structure you prefer in the comments below!
In the next two posts in the series, we’ll learn how to use the Destination panel to automatically create your chosen folder structure.
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Definitely a beer conversation. FWIW, I arrange my folders by the event but name the files bu YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.*. Within the event , I may had sub-organizations. For example, for my trips from Canada to the US. I have a US folder with a sub-folder for each trip e.g. Big Sur, Yosemite, Utah etc. Sometimes it’s also by year for example ‘Cayman Islands’, 2011,2012 etc.
What I also do is use EXIFTOOL to set initial metadata including location before loading into LR.
Hi Victoria, I need to clean up our photo storage. We take pictures with a Canon, an old digital camera and various phones. What would you suggest is the best way of handling photos from different cameras? Currently I have a folder for my phone, my husband’s phone, the Canon, and so on, and within the larger folders also subfolders by year / holiday. Is it better to have all photos from all cameras in one dated structure? If so, how do you avoid file name duplications (e.g. photo with same file name but from different phones)? Do you rename photos?
I’d drop different cameras all in together, because the Metadata Filters can very easily filter by camera. I suggest renaming photos to avoid any confusion. I personally use YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS, because the chances of multiple cameras taking photos at exactly the same second are very slim, and Lightroom automatically adds -2 on the occasions it happens.
Great idea to separate captured and outputted or exported files in subfolders. I will have to try doing that. Thanks.
Im using a named folder structure, no dated folder ma named fodler – why? Because Its more useful and practical to find in alphabetical order than dated order.
So:
Party
\Party Marc, 2017.03.17
\Party Marc, 2017.02.10
\Party Eric, 2017.02.05
\Party Eric, 2016.12.17
Nightshooting
\Luc, 2017.01.10
and so on.
Very similar to my own set up. I agree with leading with the event name as this is retained in the mind more easily than the date. Also if I want dates I can use the search/filter option.
I also like to keep the captured files seperate to the ones exported to jpeg so create sub folders called capture and output. As you say, there usnt a right or wrong; just a personal preference.
Exactly.
Is there a particular reason you find you need the exported photos back in Lightroom?
In my case I keep both a RAW and EDITED folders on my HD.
So before anyone asks, I keep the RAW as backup and to be able to take advantage of future improvements in Lr.
Yep, good plan. That still fits the basic principles above, but in a way that’s easy for you to remember.
Hi there,
Here’s what I do:
I have a year folder followed by a “trip” folder. My wife and I take 99% of our pictures during our trips, so this is our main criteria for the folder structure. After the trip I have day folders for each trip.
Here’s an example:
2016\2016_usa\20161001_usa\{initials}_yyyymmdd_hhmmss_0001.ext
I like to think of boxes or containers which include our pictures. The first box is the year. Then I have 3-5 boxes for our trips every year. In Lightroom I am able to see the number of shots we took for a whole trip as well as every day – we like to have this information. The trip box contains boxes für every day. So I am able to split a trip in x days, which makes it easier for us to tag/develop the images.
All in all I think this is a useful approach for travel photographers like us.
Best regards,
Michael
Sounds good Michael. That’s a nice variation on the date-based folders.
Hi Victoria
Like you , I have a horde of pre-digital film scans. Out of interest, what system do you employ for naming these types of files? Is it a different naming regime to the one used on your digital camera files?
It is slightly different Terry, because I don’t have dates for most of those photos. Instead, each physical album is given a name (e.g. 1985-1) and the name tokens are album name-sequence number. For the negatives that aren’t printed, I’ll do basically the same thing, but give each negative packet a name (so rough year – neg packet name – neg number gives me 1985-003-12).
I must admit that I am only a theoretical LR person, in that my LR computer is currently broken. I have imported my folders that are named by the type/model of camera that I have owned over the last 50 years, add in some scans and some relatives photos. My volume is perhaps 6000 images with 300 (average) added each year. The internal drive is backed up to two externals.
I have ignored all the advice regarding folder naming with date information as my folder structure gives some sort of chronology. Other than for the occasional family wedding, I do not take large volumes of images at any one time; rather my usual annual collection is comprised of ordinary family events and travel photos, those few taken whilst my wife is urging me to hurry.
My objective is to record, then be able to find a family or travel photographic record and this is where I get to the theory. I have put together what I believe is a comprehensive list of keywords and my next job is to connect those words to my images.
Within the context of my existing and future volume is there any need for me to worry about date/event related folders (or collections) or should I be able to find whatever images I want with the use of keyword/metadata searches? I am a little concerned that my theory has some fault in that I have never read of keyword/metadata searches being the simple solution that I envisage that it may be. Perhaps impractical for larger volumes or slow computers.
Will be very glad of your advice so that I only do the job once.
That folder structure works Ron, because a photo can still only be taken with one camera at a time. You might want to subdivide the camera folders by year at some time in the future, if you ending up shooting a lot more photos, but even a few thousand per camera is very manageable.
Don’t go overboard with your keywording initially, as it’s easy to get bored with that task, so focus on the keywords you’re most likely to want to search.
But yes, your system sounds good, and you won’t have any issues with the keyword/metadata searches. Even with 10x as many images, that would still be quick.
I don’t use a date structure but have folder groups; e.g. Holidays, Bands, etc with sub folders. When I search it’s never by date but by subject and using keywords is not something I’m great or consistent in using.
That works fine as long as there’s never any overlap. It just gets into trouble when there’s a debate over whether a photo should be in one or more folders.
I followed the advice to use a date based structure some years ago. It took a while to reorganise my images but was well worth it. Within “my pictures” I have folders for each year. I then have sub folders using the date_location structure (yy-mm-dd_location) the folders then automatically fall into date order and location helps when you want images of a certain place. I then use “location_yymmdd_sequence number” for the images. This together with keywording means I can find old images very easily
Seeing this I thought for a moment I had missed the point when starting LR not making a ‘decent folder hierarchy’, but checking my Mac and the way I use LR I am calmer now 🙂
My Mac Pro setup is: LightRoom (and catalogs) are installed on system disk (512GB SSD), photos, and all other data, resides on 2 x 4TB as RAID1, I make weekly backup of all data to my Synology NAS, 4x4TB as RAID5.
Photos are ‘just imported’ and end up in folders according to date. Whenever I need to locate a photo, if I just cannot see it, I use the Library Filter and go for, maybe: year, camera, metadata, attribute… this saves me hours. I have close to 19.000 photos, half of witch has just their name and meta. I am happy I dont really have to bother or organise the photos on the disk LR keeps track…( I was clever once, and rearranged directly on disk, bad idea lost many originals… luckily I re-found them from backups, but it took hours)
So if you dont feel folders are for you you may still live happy, like I do 🙂
Sounds perfect Palle.
I’m wedded to organising by date even down to the file name. If I can’t confirm a date I have “undated” folders under the level I can confirm. I rely on keywords, collections and IPTC data to categorise.
Even if you catalogue folders by date you can (at least on the Mac) create virtual folders that will categorise on just about any exif/iptc data you wish. So long as you save metadata to the file that is.
Very true Greg.
Victoria, do you rename the photos? I shoot with 2 cameras and file names can be the same. I am not satisfied with my current Year/Month/Camera1 structure. Any views? Ciao
I do rename to a very simple date/time filename = YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.jpg.
It follows very simple principles as those for folders – standard characters, easily scalable, done automatically during import, easy to restore even from data recovery software, duplication is fixed automatically (LR adds -2 to any extra photos in the same second), and I don’t have to think about it.
Some people prefer YYYYMMDD-HHMM-original filenumber.jpg or something like that, if they don’t want extra -2’s on the end of bracketed shots.
Found it!
Preferences/File Handling/File Name Generation
‘When a filename has a space: Leave as is’
solves the problem for some reason.
Well done Richard!
Victoria,
When I create a new folder on import, LR does not allow me to use a space whereas creating a new folder in the library module does allow a space. Am I missing a setup selection somewhere?
Thanks, Richard
Victoria: I am carefully considering your Lightroom organization post. I used to follow a similar methodology, but I took some regrettable advice and changed my date-based scheme to one based primarily on categories. I now think that given the ease with which Lightroom allows one to locate photos based on keywords and other criteria (which I also used), my recent choice was mistaken. I note that Andrew S. Gibson recommends a methodology similar to yours. I must now find a way to undo what I did. Thankfully, my original images are still stored on my drives in a date format. The challenge will be to keep the .xmp files (which reside next to the original images) co-ordinated with those images when I make the necessary changes inside Lightroom. One of my keywords associated with each image is the shooting date, so my job may not be as onerous as it could have been. A word to the wise (not me, obviously).
If you decide to reorganize them, just make sure your do it in Lightroom. I have a post coming up in a few weeks time, for those who want to shuffle their photos into a dated based format, so watch this space. You can use the Metadata filters to grab one date at a time, which is easier than using your keywords to select then.
Oops. Looks like it didn’t like my formatting for the folder name template I use.
It is actually {WHEN}_{WHO}_{WHAT}_{WHERE}
I use a simple folder per job/session and it’s based on the following name template – ___.
For WHEN, I use YYYY-MM-DD.
For example, a portrait session I do for Jane Doe on January 10th, 2016 at the Central Park in NY would be saved in the folder banged 2017-01-10_JaneDoe_Portrait_CentralPark_NY.
This makes it easy to just scan through what I’m looking for outside of LR even if I have tons of folders.
I urged to use the same folder name for creating the collection when I import into LR as well.
Good choice, thanks for sharing Sibn.
This is my option too.
I file under Year folder new folders like 20161110_NameSession when one exact day and with 20161100_NameSessionOrTheme when the session/theme It takes several days.
I use a similar rule to name files that I made scanning film (negatives and slides): 20161110-001, 20161110-002,…
I like the idea of using 00 dates for multi-day sessions!
I use the same YYYY-MM-DD folder structure. Before importing the photos, I rename them based on the date of capture (including hour-minute-second) and camera model. Since I use extensively multiple exposure for HDR processing, the exact time of capture is useful. And since I may use two different cameras on the same day, I include the model in the filename. Before importing the photos into the catalog, I do all the file renaming outside of Lightroom, using the free XnView for Windows software. Sometimes, I add a keyword to the folder names (for special events, travels, or specific location). I have been very satisfied with this organization so far.
Ditto here, except when a “session” lasts a few days, I just write in the 1st and last day of the date range: YYYY MM DD-EE (where EE is the last day of the range). If a session goes from one month to the next, I write YYYY MM DD-NN EE (where NN is the next month and EE is the last day of that “session”).
I have a master external hard drive where I store all my NEF files. I don’t ever touch that drive except to copy in a new batch of photos. I do not change the names of the files – I keep the default Nikon names.
Then I have a backup of the master.
Then I have my “working” hard drive, into which I copy the folders from the master to work on. The main folder name remains the same, but inside I add another folder I name “Done” for the processed files and a “Junk” folder for the rejects. The working drive is an internal HDD which I insert into a caddy when I work on my photos.
The working folder is the one I “catalogued” in LR and, for better or for worse, I decided to put the catalogue files on the “working” HDD. Will anyone convince me that this is an absolutely bad idea?
***
That said, this is my first appearance here 🙂 I bought LR6 as a birthday/Christmas gift to myself last year, mainly to grab the last non-subscription version of the program. So I have absolutely no experience with LR. My previous RAW processing was done in Nikon NX-D and before that in a little program called Bibble (bought up by Corel).
My only connection with LR is that when I first got into digital photography, I started off with another little program called Rawshooter – so by getting LR I figure I have come around full circle to back where I started.
Sorry for a lengthy first post.
Welcome Paul!
So if you needed a file from your master external, how would you figure out which one you need? And how does the default Nikon name benefit you there?
No issue with having the catalog on the working drive with the photos, as long as it doesn’t accidentally get disconnected while you’re working. When you move the photos into your Done or Junk folders, just remember to drag and drop them within LR so it can update the database file locations at the same time.
Um, I’m not certain I understand your question.
I do not have many photographs – probably about 15 000. Any particular folder rarely contains more than ~150 photos. Most contain less than 100. So if a particuIar file was missing from a working folder, I would probably locate it “visually” through Windows Explorer and copy it from the master.
I keep the original file name for no particular reason (even though I’m well aware that the camera recycles the numbers after reaching 9999).
The problem is that I have a general difficulty with understanding (rather: in accepting) the catalog philosophy of LR’s asset management. It seems very “all eggs in one basket” to me.
Sofware with no (or less extensive) asset management functions (such as NX-D) is sort of self-contained – the sidecar files stay in the folder in which I process my NEFs, so even if I move these folders around, the work stays in that folder.
I will need to get used to it, I suppose.
The database concept does take a bit of getting used so, but there are benefits too. It’s quicker to search for files based on all sorts of metadata, you can have virtual copies and virtual collections and other stuff that just doesn’t quite work with a file browser.
Yes, I understand (and appreciate) that. This makes projects like “children’s pictures for the grandaprents” much easier to manage without duplication of files into separate dedicated folders.
I store my photos under the year they were taken. The sub-directories are by Date-Time-Group – Subject.
More important is where all the photos are being stored. Storing your photos on a RAID 1 (mirrored) drive on your computer is one way of protecting those photos in case of a boot drive or drive failure.
I suggest storing your photos on a Network Attached Storage (NAS). NAS 4TB, 6TB and larger are available at relatively reasonable cost. RAID 0 – 10 can be configured depending on the number of drives available. I’m using a RAID 5 configured NAS and the drive size would depend on your storage needs.
File structure according to this article is a good start. If you are thinking of using a NAS make sure you can change the directory (default) structure of the NAS.
I am a beginner and new to Lightroom so forgive me for asking such a basic question.
My photographs are filed in a folder called ‘Lightroom photographs and within that I file them by Location/date. I have just imported a new folder from photoshop which I have called ‘old images’. However this folder has not ‘joined ‘ the others alphabetically. How can this be sorted
Thank you
Is the Old Images folder inside the Lightroom Photographs one? Or elsewhere? Quickest way to spot the problem is simply to post a screenshot on the forum at https://www.lightroomforums.net
/Users/DavidEacott1/Desktop/Screen Shot 2017-01-11 at 09.58.29.png this screenshot shows the latest imported folder “old images’ . My question is how do I get it into alphabetical order with the other folders?
Screenshots won’t post here David, which is why I suggested the forum.
thanks Victoria, I’ll try the Forum
David