Having decided where to store your photos, you also need to decide how to organize them. Why not just organize your photos by topic?
Before you used photo management software, such as Lightroom, you may have organized your photos into folders by subject, so why not carry on doing that? The main reason… a file can only be in one folder at a time, so if you divide your photos up by topic, how do you decide where a photo should go?*
For example, if you have a photo of John and Susan, should it go in the John folder or the Susan folder? Perhaps you duplicate in both folders, but then, what happens when you have a larger group of people? Do you duplicate the photo in all of their folders too, rapidly filling your hard drive and making it difficult to track? And if you duplicate the photo in multiple folders, when you come to edit that photo, do you have to update all of the copies too?
Folders work best as storage buckets rather than organizing tools. If you keep a single copy of each photo in a folder (plus backups elsewhere, of course!), then you can use keywords, collections and other metadata to group and find the photos easily.
Using metadata as your organizational tool, the photo of John and Susan would be stored in a single 2016/12 folder, but it would show up when you searched for photos of John, Susan, or even photos shot at a wedding.
In our next post we’ll discuss the building blocks of an organized folder structure that is scalable, easy to back up, consistent and doesn’t create unnecessary duplication.
* There are some workflows which can benefit from storing in folders by topic, such as event photography. However, these still stick to the best practices of digital asset management.
For extensive information on Lightroom Classic, see Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ.
If you have the Photography Plan, then as well as Classic you have access to the Lightroom cloud ecosystem including the mobile apps and web interface. For more information on these apps, see Adobe Lightroom – Edit Like a Pro.
Note: purchase of these books includes the first year’s Classic or cloud-based Premium Membership (depending on the book purchased), giving access to download the latest eBook (each time Adobe updates the software), email assistance for the applicable Lightroom version if you hit a problem, and other bonuses.
We also have a special bundle offer for the two books. This includes Premium Membership for the first year as described above for the whole Lightroom family!
Originally posted 19 December 2016, updated for Lightroom Classic in 2019.
I just love the graphics you’re using in these articles. Do you draw them yourself? If so, well-donee. If not, where do they come from please as I’d love to have something like them in my workshops & lectures.
Thanks Roger. The 3d people and folders etc. are all from Adobe Stock, but I’ve combined them into the graphics I needed.
Thanks – must look more closely at Adobe Stock!
Storing all images in folders based on dates is fine until someone in the family who doesn’t know how to use a catalog wants to find some images. That explains why I store all my images in folders based on one of two hierarchies — location the image was captured or family. If nobody in the family is displayed in the photo, it is stored in the location-based hierarchy.
Using a catalog in combination with those two hierarchies for storing physical image files seems to be the best of both worlds; I can quickly look up images using the catalog and my wife, who doesn’t use the catalog, can less quickly but with just a bit more perseverance can look up images using the two hierarchies.
That’s a reasonable solution Mike. Have you considered syncing the photos to the LR Sync cloud, and then giving the family access through their web browsers?
As a working professional, my LR catalogue and archive are my lifeblood. I wouldn’t consider letting a third party access it through LR; too much can go wrong by inadvertent clicking or “helpful” interventions.
I agree with Victoria re letting folk only access subsets by one step removed.
Family convenience vs archive security is a no contest question from my point of view.
Happy Keywording!
I do my family sharing thru Facebook or SmugMug. No one goes near my LR ?.
For those who wish a print, I’m happy to oblige with one of the online services. I happen to use MPIX.
I do my family sharing thru Facebook or SmugMug. No one goes near my LR ?.
For those who wish a print, I’m happy to oblige with one of the online services. I happen to use MPIX.
Well, I have to agree with Mike Buckley. I also have to say that contrary to your statement that folders are best used as storage buckets rather than organizational tools is, in fact, incorrect. Folders are important organizational tools and to say otherwise is misleading your readers.
Organizing folders by date is not a good organizational method. A much better way is to organize by subject. This is the reason book indexes are organized by subject rather than page number. Imagine reading a book of Western civilization and needing to find references to British general Chinese Gordon only to find the index organized by page number. Dates are equivalent to page numbers.
In your John and Susan example you have the problem of trying to remember just when did John and Susan got married. On the other hand, if you have organized by subject then you could have a Weddings folder and you don’t have to remember when they got married you only need to look in the Weddings subfolder titled John and Susan.
From a photographer’s point of view, suppose that you are an avid traveler and have 15 years of travel related photos. In any given year you may have traveled to several countries. If you organize your folders by year then you have potentially 15 different folders to look through to find photos from a certain country. And if your further organize by month within year as your folder diagram shows then you have potentially 180 folders to look through. You could have even more to look through if you traveled to the same country more than once in a given year if your folder structure has month subfolders. Also you may have to look through folders for the years that you didn’t travel to a certain country. I think you can see that folders are important organizational tools. I have to say that having a catalog sitting on top of your folder structure does not negate the importance of the folder structure as an organization tool.
Organizing by subject you could have a top level folder titled by country name. If you want to find your photos of Namibia you can go directly to that folder. If you add year as subfolders to the country folder you add at most 15 additional folders and you don’t need to bother looking in any folders for the years which you didn’t travel to Namibia. This organization precludes the need for a month subfolder of the year folder.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Jim. I’m glad it’s got you thinking. Don’t worry, nowhere in the post did I say you must use a date-based folder structure. I didn’t even say you should get rid of folders – just that organizing photos by duplicating them in multiple folders is a bad idea.
I love your example of a book. The words have to be stored somewhere, so they’re stored on pages, just like photos are stored in folders. Folder names are like page numbers. You can group pages roughly into chapters by topic, but you don’t start duplicating the same paragraph onto multiple pages, just because they refer to 3 different people.
To find information on British general Chinese Gordon, you could turn to the chapter on the Taiping Rebellion and look through all of the pages, but that wouldn’t find you the entries about his time in Sudan. Instead, you use the index, which keeps a note of all the different topics you might search for, and on which page to find them.
Lightroom’s catalog is like that book’s index. Just as you’d look in the index to see which multiple pages refer to British general Chinese Gordon, you can search on keywords to find all of the photos that include Susan, regardless of which page/folder they’re stored in.
I finished the post saying that the next post in the series covers how to create an “organized folder structure that is scalable, easy to back up, consistent and doesn’t create unnecessary duplication.” That post will go live on January 9, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on it.
Hi, I use capture 1 and Lightroom. Each wants to establish its own archival structure and that is problematical. I use shortcuts instead of duplication in my folders. Shortcuts are usually 4 kbs or less in size.
Are you using sessions or cataloging in Capture One Anthony? Trying to use 2 cataloging programs is a recipe for disaster, I have to agree. Thanks for sharing your shortcuts tip.
Jim, I think you (and Mike, and Jeffrey) are misunderstanding.
The file structure is not about organisation and is irrelevant to finding photos.
You could even put every photo you have in one folder. As long as all your photos have keywords, timestamps, geotags, and other metadata, then finding photos of Namibia, or anything else, is just a case of using Lightroom’s filters.
Thanks Dave.
I completely understand how the LR catalog works. I designed, implemented and programmed relational databases for years and I’m quite familiar with indexes and SQL queries.
The LR catalog can disguise the deficiencies of your HD folder structure. However the way you organized your HD folders is important because things happen and you may not have the LR catalog.
As I told Victoria, image not having a catalog and organizing your HD folders by date. Then imagine having 200,000 photos taken over 15 years as I have. How difficult would it be if you had to find a photo of Marie but you can’t remember when you made the photo. Compare that to having a folder structure organized by subject and having a folder named People and a subfolder named Marie.
Jim
So Jim, if you’re storing photos by names of people, how do handle a photo that has both Marie and John in it?
Hi Victoria – I have been using the term “subject” which was a poor choice and has lead to confusion in this discussion. A better term is the word category.
I have a folder named for the category People. In that I would have folders Marie, John and Marie and John.
I agree Jim. I have 15,000 travel pics organized by Country.
Some family photos are organized by holiday ,e.g. Passover 2009, 2010, etc.
Same with grandkids’ birthday parties, etc. , graduations, whatever.
Your Table of Contents analogy is spot on.
But you don’t then duplicate the photos of the grandkid in additional folders of their name, right Jeffrey? Then we’re on the same page!
Although I haven’t yet found the need en mass , I would use Collections to group people.
E.g., I recently used the LR Facial Recognition feature and tagged family members by name. Me, my wife, kids and grandkids. Did my whole catalog, over 17K pics.
I’m now in the midst of putting together a coffee table book solely of pictures of my wife and I , taken on our international travels between 2006-2016.
So I created a Collection specifically for that task. I then ran LR to find the pics of she and I. After culling, I transferred them into the Collection for further culling then final Development applications.
As an aside, LR really needs to up its game with facial recognition. It’s not even close to Facebook. Adobe has no excuse with all their resources . Not to mention speed, the bane of serious LR users. But that’s another subject all,together. I recently switched to Photo Mechanic for initial culling when I’ve got more than about 30 or so pics to import.
Happy Holidays!
That is an excellent idea Jeffrey.
Jim
Thanks Jeffrey.
This discussion looks as though it could develop into one of those religious wars where absolute positions are taken up and dissenters are consigned to the flames. Let’s take a deep breath…
The first point to recognise is that anyone is free to use whatever method to organise their photo collection they choose. If it works for them, then fine. If not, then it’s time to think of something else. For a hobbyist with a few hundred files, there is not much problem. But when the file count reaches several thousands, basing the organisation on folders alone can cause difficulties, especially when the collection covers a large range of subjects, topics, techniques etc. For a complex collection you can soon end up with either a proliferation of folders, many of which may contain only one or two files, or the logic of the system may require copies of the same files being placed in different folders – at this point things have become silly. As I read her comments that started the discussion, when Victoria uses the example of folders based on dates she is not advocating a date-based organisation, she is pointing out the problems that can follow from a topic-based folder system that ignores the facilities offered by Lightroom – let’s not forget that the discussion is being conducted in the context of Lightroom.
The Lightroom catalogue is not just a bunch of folders, it is a relational database that can locate files based on the what, where, when, why, who and how that define each one. As she says, each folder just acts as a storage bucket. In fact you could have just one folder called, say, photos, dump all your files in there and the system would work. A bit extreme, certainly, and I would not seriously suggest it, but the point is valid. The advantage of Lightroom is that it allows you to group your photos into a relatively simple (or complex – it’s up to you) folder structure supplemented by the ability to search on keywords and metadata. The price we pay is the added work necessary to ensure that the relevant data are provided for the system to work. Metadata from digital cameras goes in automatically, leaving only the keywords to be supplied by hand, and that isn’t too arduous. It all works so well that I have found it worth while to integrate over 1000 scanned colour slides and several hundred prints and negatives with my digital collection, even though I had to put them manually.
Of course, you are locked into the Lightroom system. So what? If the tool does the job, then use it.
LOL Oh yes, no flaming around here please. I love that we can all have a respectful discussion on the subject though.
As you say, there’s no right or wrong on this. There are some best practices that can help avoid issues further down the line, which we’ll discuss in the next post, and it’s worth taking the time to evaluate our processes occasionally, just in case there’s something we haven’t thought of.
I teach most new users to use dated folder structures, simply because it automatically conforms to the best practices and there’s less room for user error, but I wouldn’t be dogmatic about it. There are multiple systems that can work, as long as they’re thought through properly.
Even with metadata, we’re not locked into Lightroom indefinitely, as it can be written back to the files in a standardized format. I frequently skip between different software packages in testing, and my metadata-based organisational system comes along for the ride.
I thought I was locked into LR, but because of wider issues with Adobe, I’d rather not be. I’ve spent a week using On1 Photo RAW to access my existing collection of folders. It’s not mature, and still a work in progress. But it’s blindingly fast on my average Mac, and could well be part of breaking the unpopular Adobe monopoly.
Thoughts, Victoria?
Your metadata can carry over to any other software, no trouble. The Develop edits are proprietary, although some companies are having a shot at coming up with an approximate conversion using their own tools.
I’m interested to see what happens with On1. It’s early days, but shows a lot of potential, especially as a compliment to Lightroom.
It’s never healthy to have one company dominating any market; and the subscription model is not good.
Hence I’m moving from InDesign back to Quark, and from Photoshop to Serif Affinity Photo. Serif have a great product at a great price, and are building in all the things we normal photographers want. Quark have learnt their lesson about greedy monopolies, but sadly this seems where Adobe is going, but not learning.
Have a wonderful Yule, thank you for all your shared wisdom.
Hi Roger,
No, it is not going to turn into a religious war. I have told Victoria in the past that I like what she is doing to try to help LR users. And yes everyone is free to set up their system in whatever way works for them. My comment is just a different view of how to structure your folders which I thing is better than the one Victoria was demonstrating.
My post is not about lightroom but about the organization of the files on your HD. Many LR users are mislead into believing that HD organization is unimportant because the catalog magically fixes everything. The catalog’s ability to index your photos is wonderful but it is of no use if the catalog is corrupted or deleted.
The catalog is very fragile for several reasons one of which is that photos are stored in folders on the HD and are accessible by anyone who has access to the computer. There are videos by Adobe and various experts that discuss how to fix corrupted catalogs. There is a FB group called Lightroom User Help that has a lot of talk about the problems users have encountered with the catalog.
Things happen that is why we make backups. Having a well organized folder structure on your HD is the foundation you can use to help you recover from disasters or if you decide to migrate to another platform.
Hi Jim,
OK, the reference to ‘religious war’ was a bit of hype on my part, I don’t think things have got that far! It seems clear that the intent of our two contributions was a bit different in each case. I was focussed on making use of the facilities offered by Lightroom, whereas you are expressing more general concerns, which is fair enough. I take your point about catalogue corruption, and I have seen many comments in various places from people who have experienced this. But I have used Lightroom since version 1.1, migrating version to version up to 6.8 and I have to say that I cannot recall any problem with the catalogue becoming corrupted. Perhaps I have just been lucky, or maybe I have not been pressing Lightroom hard enough! Of course, the fact that nothing has broken up to now does NOT mean that it won’t happen in the future. I think this brings us to the nub of the issue.
The difference between us is largely a philosophical one. I value the ability of Lightroom to manage my photo files as much as I value Lightroom’s capability to process the images in those files. You apparently are suspicious of the catalogue approach because of the consequences of corruption of the catalogue, and of course the danger is real, although in my experience small. To protect myself I have to be meticulous about backing up the catalogue. But while you are able to organise your files under a folder structure and presumably do not feel the need for the database facilities of Lightroom, you are still vulnerable to HD failure. I am sure that you protect yourself against this by backing up your HD regularly. I am vulnerable to exactly the same danger, so, like you, I must ensure that my HD is regularly backed up to an external drive. So we end up doing the same things for the same reasons, the difference is the approach we take to the Lightroom catalogue, and it is not really about folder structures at all.
Merry Christmas.
Hi Roger, don’t worry about the religious war statement. I took no offense. And yes we can choose
whatever method of organizing our HD files we like.
I agree that the LR catalog is a great tool for organizing. What I wrote is not aimed at current users of LR but to the new users who are trying to figure out how to organize the HD folders.
Look at the folders on your C: drive using either Windows Explorer or Mac Filer. If organizing folders by date is best practice as Victoria suggests then why do Microsoft and Apple not do that and instead organize them in exactly the way I have suggested?
Have a great Christmas Roger. 🙂
Jim
Oops, the part about the C: drive organization of what I wrote was really intended for Mike Buckley.
Here is a second great Christmas wish Roger. 🙂
Jim
If someone is concerned about catalog integrity, which is a reasonable concern (although largely mitigated by backups), then I would still suggest keywords are the best choice, especially if you write that metadata back to the files. Those keywords are written to standardized metadata that would be read on importing all of the photos into a new catalog or even by other software.
If a catalog and its backups are at risk of corruption, so are hard drives and their backups. I’ve spoken to many users who for some reason lost their photos and had to use data recovery software. This doesn’t tend to put files back in nicely named subfolders – but Lightroom was very easily about to drop the recovered files back into the same dated folder structure, with all of the keywords intact.
(And Jim, as a side point, when you let most of these companies organize your photos, they tend to do so by date by default. Apple’s Photos app and Aperture are as good an example as any.)
And you know why they do that? Because they know nothing about your photos except the file name and useless metadata. Maybe they could organize photos by lens+focal length+aperture+EV.
They don’t organize their programs by date for a very good reason. Imagine calling Adobe tech support and listening the the tech trying to locate the Adobe files on a disk organized by date.
My remarks about organizing your HD folder structure was based on the premise that you might lose your catalog . The push back to this is that the catalog will save you from an inappropriate folder structure. The push back reasons have been stated already. Let me say that whatever folder structure works for you is fine for you.
Lets step away from the idea of loosing the catalog.
Below are two links to video tutorials. The first link is to a video by Julieanne Kost on how to create collections in LR. If you go full screen you will notice that she organizes her folders by year and category within year. She does not organize by date. Watching her create the Portfolio collection it is easy to see why organizing folders by date could be a major hindrance to creating this collection.
The second link is to a video by Tim Grey given at B&H Photo in NYC. It is titled “Cleaning Up Your Mess in Lightroom 6”. It is a long video but you can advance to 29:50 to get Tim’s remarks on organizing by date. You don’t have to watch much of the video to realize that Tim is an experienced user and an expert on LR.
Also Tim shows shows how Lightroom can create a mess for you when you choose a date based folder structure and he shows how to fix that.
Like I said whatever folder structure works for you is fine. But when you tell your users, especially new users, that they should organize by date you are misleading them and it is not true that organizing by date is best practice. Best practice is creating a folder structure that works for you.
Julianne Kost:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-rF5O6kqog&t=237s
Tim Grey:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daYUG8orcF8
Jim, just to clarify, you don’t think it’s a good idea to duplicate the same photos in multiple folders, right? Then we’re on the same page, but we’re just using slightly different language to describe it.
Julieanne’s photos ARE organized by date (a year is a date, right?) – and by shoot within the year. (See her book Passenger Seat for her workflow as the one in the video just a demo catalog). It’s one of the date-based variations I’ve recommended in the next post. It’s still not organized by topic with a risk of duplication. She’s still not going out, shooting some pics, and scattering them across 100 different folders based on the subject of the photo. She uses Lightroom’s organizational tools for that, just as I recommend too.
Tim’s organizing by location. While I think that has potential for confusion when it comes to backups, because you might go back and add photos to your Home folder on 150 different occasions, it’s STILL not organizing by topic with a risk of duplication because you can’t be in two physical locations at once.
Just to be clear, nowhere have I said that organizing by date is best practice or the only way of doing things. I’ve said that organizing by date meets the basic principles of the best practices (it’s scalable, easy to backup/restore, there’s no duplication, it uses standard characters and it’s consistent). It’s a simple option for newbies who don’t want to have to think about how they’re going to set up their folder structure, so it’s a reasonable one to get started with, but you’ll find both my book and the next post offer numerous variations that also meet these basic principles, and also include some subject information.
Check back on Monday’s post and I think you’ll find we’re in agreement really.
Hi again Victoria.
Year is not a date. A date implies a month and day part. You don’t ask a person what their birth date is an expect to get an answer of 1962.
I agree that it is not wise to have the same photo in multiple folders. Also, as I said in a reply to you above my choice of the word subject was poor and has lead to confusion. The word category is what I should have used.
As an example I have a category folder named Travel. In that folder I have category subfolders with names like Venice, North Carolina, Rome, etc.
If we take Venice as an example, I have category subfolders named Color and Monochrome. I have been traveling to Venice every year since 2006 and I have folders for each year in both the Color and Monochrome folders.
In 2016 I began making photos with my smart phone so I added a category folders named Galaxy S5 to the Color and Monochrome folders. So I don’t have to look through 11 other folders to find my Galaxy phone photos. And if I get a new phone in the coming years, say an S12, all that needs to be done is add a category folder called Smart Phones in the Color and Monochrome folders and move my Galaxy S5 folders into it and then add the new Galaxy S12 category folders. With this structure, all of my Venice photos are in one main folder and its subfolders.
This is essentially what Julieanne and Tim are doing with her folder organizations. The videos I referenced also demonstrate why I took exception to categorizing folders as mere storage buckets and implying that their HD organization is unimportant.
I will remind you what Tim said: “…The old date based folder. Oh man, who thought this was a good idea?” As an educator (and I used to be one) I think it would be better to give your readers, especially newbies, more ideas than just a date based folder structure which may lead to headaches in the future.
About best practices I must have misremembered what you said so I apologize.
I will check Monday’s post. And I do think you give good information to your readers. Hopefully we (and other readers/participants) have learned something form this dialog.
Thanks Victoria.
Ah, interesting! So it’s our definitions of date that’s causing confusion here too. I was going with a more generalized definition – “the particular day or year of an event > the date of the Norman Conquest was 1066, they date the paintings to 1460–70”. It seems that may be more British English, so what word would you use in the US to define a period of time like the year 1066 or “March 2016”?
To answer Victoria’s question, “Have you considered syncing the photos to the LR Sync cloud, and then giving the family access through their web browsers?” No, I’ve never given that any thought. That’s because I actually use Lightroom only rarely but when it’s very important to edit an image in ways not possible using my primary image editor. I then export the edited image and remove it from the Lightroom catalog. All of my images are cataloged using software far more powerful than the cataloging capabilities of Lightroom. Even so, to get back to the point of my first post, that power is meaningless to my family that has no interest in learning how to use the catalog. Thus, the need for hierarchies of physical file folders that intuitively make sense based on either location or family member rather than date the photo was captured.
Jim McKinness: I agree with Victoria that folders really do work best as storage buckets rather than as organizing tools. Notice that she didn’t say they don’t work as organizing tools; she explicitly said they work best as storage buckets. However, that’s only so long as everyone looking for images is willing to learn how to use the catalog. For those who aren’t willing to learn that, such as my wife, the folders suffice reasonably well as organizing tools but not as well as storage buckets. To that extent, I disagree with you when you mention that her thinking about that is misleading her readers; just the opposite, I believe her thinking is spot on.
Dave: It would most definitely not be a good idea to tell my wife that the folders are “irrelevant to finding images.” That’s actually the only way she knows how to find them. That would be true for anyone like my wife who doesn’t know how to use a catalog and doesn’t want to take the time to learn, all of which is perfectly understandable in my mind.
Rodger Sparks wrote: “The first point to recognise is that anyone is free to use whatever method to organise their photo collection they choose. If it works for them, then fine. If not, then it’s time to think of something else.” Print that. Frame it. Hang it on the wall and put a spotlight on it. ‘Nuff said!
Thanks Mike,
From a previous conversation with Victoria I believe that some of her ideas come from the Data Asset Management (DAM) book by Peter Krogh. That is where the term storage buckets comes from if I remember correctly. Krough is selling a book that promotes, among other things, the use of catalogs and their ability to present data in multiple ways and he uses the term storage buckets to downplay the importance of the organization of HD folders and so he says that organizing by date is as good as anything because you have the catalog.
Look at the folders on your C: drive using either Windows Explorer or Mac Filer. If organizing folders by date is best practice as Victoria suggests then why do Microsoft and Apple not do that and instead organize them in exactly the way I have suggested?
Ask yourself why your phone book isn’t organized by phone number or why lawyers don’t file their cases by date.
IMO, organizing HD folders by date is not as good as anything and this is why I said that when Victoria is promoting this organization method for new LR users she is misleading her readers.
I hope you have a great Christmas, Mike.
Jim
I have re-read all of the posts in the thread. For me and perhaps only me, the crux of the discussion is that Victoria’s premise is that the catalog is available to find photos and Jim’s premise is that the catalog may not always be available. Considering that the metadata should be embedded in the image files, a catalog is always available as soon as the images are imported into it, as Victoria explained. Thus, I find Jim’s premise to be unhelpful when making the decision of how to organize one’s physical hierarchy of folders.
I doubt that I’ll continue with the discussion because I can’t imagine being able to contribute anything else that would be helpful.
ok. I work with school photos like portraits and season events(mothers day, graduation). We use here the face finder in LT and separate all students during the various events and portraits with keywords.
The problem is the catalog is organize by name of the student and to export to my site in lowRes I have to select one by one (keyword of the student) and export.
I have a software that separate in folders based on the keywords in the file, but of course a lot of pictures are group shots with various names on the keywords. And the Lt of course does not duplicate that images.
Any solution?
Hi Rafael,
This video might help you.
http://blogs.adobe.com/jkost/2015/07/lightroom-cc-exporting-images.html
Jim
Thanks Jim , but that video show a simple export workflow.
My is a little custom.
I’m looking for a way to export based on keywords(in my case the top name of the student) . Then the
export auto create a folder to each student with the images that is vinculated his name , even the pictures that have more than one name like the group shots.
I think only with a custom script …but that is expensive If I go alone .
Yes, I think you’re right Rafael, that would be a job for a custom plug-in. There’s an export plug-in based on collections, but not one based on keywords.
Just a thought – if you have software that separates into folders based on the keywords in the file, why not try running that on the exported files that you’re going to upload (which would also contain the keywords), rather than the originals.
This is a great discussion. Since my 100,000+ image database (I’m lousy at editing/culling) was started in the days of hanging folders, and the scanning happened later, I feel very comfortable with a date-based folder hierarchy. HOWEVER, my folders are not like the ones that typical camera software creates, but rather I have a master year folder and then within that I have a folder names that look like this:
2010-07-13_Gros_Morne_Bonne_Bay_Drive
2010-07-10a_St-Anthony_Whale_Cruise
2010-07-10b_Grenfell
2010-07-11a_L-Anse_aux_Meadows
2010-07-11b_Norstead
2010-07-12a_Torrent_River_Fish_Ladder
2010-07-12b_SS_Ethie_1919_Shipwreck
On occasion, I have added another layer of folder (a few excerpts)
1991-06–07_Europe_Favorites_Tray
1991-06–07_Paris_RVP_Nikon_F4s
|–1991-07-01_a_Place_de_la_Concorde
|–1991-06-30_h_Notre_Dame_interiors_RDP_Pushed_DEE_30
|–1991-06-30_k_Notre_Dame_RVP_(majority_of_images)
|–1991-06-30_l_Evening_and_Night_photos–Seine_Louvre_Notre-Dame
1991-07_a_France_RVP_Nikon_F4s
1991-07_b_Germany_RDP_Nikon_F4s
1991-07_c_Switzerland_RVP_Nikon_F4s
In this way, the overall structure is searchable within the OS.
There are also plain ASCII text files in some of the folders with transcribed information as well as PDF scans of appropriate itineraries, etc. Also GPS tracks have been stored in related folders.
It was the best I could come up with back in the 1980s (and actually a version of this went back to the 1960s with metal slide boxes (now all in hanging folders).
Since the slides were mostly scanned at 12 MP 8 bit/colour, I felt if I wanted to go back, I needed a system so the slide sheets match the folder names and the scan number is 1-20, 21-40, etc matching each sheet. A new folder starts on a new sheet. This is currently in eight jam-packed file drawers.
Obviously, the 2010 files were born digital. There are about 45,000 scans of slides and 9,000 scans from negatives. There are also several thousand scans of prints from albums and even some from picture frames (a 24 MP camera makes that a joy).
There are two copies of each image, the original scan as a TIFF or the camera original as raw NEF file, plus a JPG file of about 1 MB either directly from the camera or created from the TIFF scan.
Where I find Lightroom a great help is when I’m looking for images of, for example, Canterbury Cathedral, which I visited in 1976, 1978, and 1983.
Cheers,
Richard
Sounds like a well thought-through system Richard!
Exactly so. It’s the system I use – a variation of George Jardine’s approach.
But what I TEACH is a little different. I’ll explain, and recommend, my approach but the ultimate answer is ‘whatever works for you’. The physical layout on disk is not a critical issue – as number of folks have mentioned – PROVIDED that keywording etc. are done inside Lightroom and metadata is written back to (or in sidecars) the images.
Hello Victoria,
I didn’t see a Reply button on your post about using a generalized definition of date and giving the example of the Norman Invasion of England as 1066. So I don’t know where this post will get placed in the general thread.
Yes, it looks like we fell into one of many traps of an imprecise language. One of the problems in this general conversation is that I started off on the wrong foot talking about catalog corruption when I should have started with examples like those of the tutorials I linked. And I probably should have defined what I meant date.
Yes, the date of the Norman Conquest of England is given as 1066 but I think that is because it was an historical event that unfolded over several days ending on Oct. 14, 1066 at the Battle of Hastings.
It is generally acceptable to use year as a date when a precise date is not known or is impossible to determine.
Thanks for a good discussion.
Thank you too Jim! I picked up some extra points for clarification, so it was useful for all of us.
I have two LR cats. One for my images (stock, travel, sales, etc) and another for family. I have a LR collection titled: NO KEYWORDS. I try to keep this at or near zero at all times. I then have collections that reference the keywords – such as grandkids, “names”, family name, etc. This way, if anyone who is not familiar with a search feature in the family cat which is available to ALL family members, they can just scroll down to the collection named say “Jonah” and find ALL the photos with that keyword. The key here is to keyword the photos, hence my “no keyword” smart collection.
Sounds like a good system Jorge!
I agree totally. I am a photojournalist, and while I started with a date based system – with year – month – date format, as you move into multiple years of dealing with the same subjects, it becomes a huge problem to find the files you need. And while Lightroom and keywords is great – it is not fool proof. My latest upgrade in Lightroom broke everything and I am now in the process of trying to rebuild a catalog of over 500,000 images. And yes, I have backups of the catalog, but it didn’t help in this case. Not sure what Lightroom did, but I lost the catalog, I lost all of my import, develop, and export presets. And Lightroom itself now seems to be broke because I cannot even do an import without it locking up and having to reboot the computer. And when I get an image in it locks up when being edited, and the entire computer needs to be rebooted.
I took the folder even further – I have hard drives dedicated to particular types of photos. So all portraits go on Drive P, all Nature goes on Drive N, All events go on drive E. Having a subject folder system allows me to still find needed photos relatively quickly.
Dave, “My latest upgrade in Lightroom broke everything and I am now in the process of trying to rebuild a catalog of over 500,000 images. And yes, I have backups of the catalog, but it didn’t help in this case.” sounds very odd. In what way are your backups not helping? Post it on the forum (link on the menubar) and we should be able to help you untangle the mess.
I don’t recommend embedding too much intelligence in the filename or folder. I want my file names to be unique to help avoid collisions. I organize the folders by year / month / day. But I don’t go looking for photos in the file system. Embedding too much intelligence in the file name will lead to 2017-12-31-Christams-New-Zeland-Mom-Grandchild-6.raw
Like some of you, I’ve programmed RDMS, and have been photographing for decades.
I use the tool. I use Lightroom’s Collections, Keywords, and Geotagging to help me locate an image. If the LR Catalog becomes corrupt, then I’ve got a nightmare on my hands. If Adobe drops the product (like Apple did with Aperture), I’ve got a bigger problem. This is the problem with digital obsolescence. Just ask anyone who has wedding videos trapped in VHS-C or Betamax.
> If Adobe drops the product (like Apple did with Aperture), I’ve got a bigger problem
Your keywords and geotagging would carry over to the new software, and you could transfer collections by creating temporary keywords too. Bit of work, but not a disaster.
I use a Topic Folder based system for one reason, I keep my RAW files in folders on an external hard drive.
If years down the road I was to change programs, Lightroom was to go away or Lr came out with some new feature that made me want to re-edit a file, I can still locate the origianl RAW file without Lr.
Now I do use the date as part of file/image name. Such as……London_BigBen_01242017.
That image would reside in a folder called Places, subfolder England, subfolder London. Big Ben doesn’t need it’s own folder; I may not rember what year I saw Big Ben but I am unlikely to forget it is in London, England. (RAW folder system)
I also use metadata and keywords……England, London, Big Ben, winter, snow, etc. (Lr catalog system.)
And as far as scalable, if airfares drop and the Places folder became too large, it could have it’s own hard drive…..like it’s own file cabinet in a file room.
If you shoot only one subject, say NFL Football, then a date based system would be perfect. But if you shoot photos for all the professional sports teams in a major city, a topic based folder system might work better with a folder for each team, and a year/date subfolder inside to represent each season. This could be broken down further to home and away games.
Thing is, most of us do not shoot one subject. And most people are better at remembering events than they are dates. When has anyone heard someone say….”Remember back in January of 2015 when we went to London?” You are more likely to hear…..”Remember when we went to London and saw Big Ben, what year was that?”
There is a reason that libraries and bookstores are layed out by topics, and not publication date. I like to ask my friends who only file/catalogue their photos by date……what photo did they take on June 22, 2015?……. ; )
With my system if Adobe did drop the product like Apple or Nikon/Google (2x now) have done theirs,I can still locate my original RAW files without a third party program to locate them.
You are exactly right Doug.
This thread is full of interesting and valid points of view, but I’d like to add one that I haven’t seen mentioned. My folders are organized by date for one simple reason: It happens completely automatically in the import process. I don’t have to think about the subject, the location, or anything else to do the import. I try to add keywords, location,etc, and I have an extensive library of collections, but if I neglect some of them I know that they are at least organized by date. It is surprising how often I can find an elusive photo by guessing its approximate date. In the final analysis, I do this for the same reason we all have: “it works well for me”.
Early on in this thread, book indexes were mentioned. In the publishing world, one “undead” issue is whether a technological tool or a human index person can make a more useful index for a reader. Back in the days before artificial intelligence (AI) only a germ of an idea, text search was considered pretty good. But if, and only if, it allowed complex queries, like “Rome within x-number of words or pages of a year expressed in Arabic or Roman numerals before a specified century during public blood sport contests…” etc., could it be useful for serious searching by a user who was able to form and submit the query, and the machine and software in use could handle it…in something like real time.
One key argument back then was that a good human index person who had expertise in the knowledge field of the material being indexed, and expertise in how users would want to find specific content in the material, would create more-useful indexes than any technology available at the time. As AI and machine learning evolved, tools improved at helping searchers express what they’re looking for and delivering results lists. However, every modern web search experience teaches us that the machines are only close, not perfect, in understanding what we’re asking for. In fact, often we learn just how poorly-formed our query was, when we’re faced with umpteen pages of results that don’t seem to fit our request. As we learn to rephrase queries, the machines learn to understand us better, which makes us think that they are getting smarter. I like to think that the truth is that we are getting smarter about using them.
But, if you think about the task web search tools are designed for – looking everywhere that data is stored in connected repositories with their individual idiosyncratic eclectic arcane formats across the planet, and returning seemingly-relevant results – the main point is that the storage file and folder hierarchies and structures don’t matter! If the search tool can identify a nugget that seems to fit, it’s retrieved, along with a link to the source. Isn’t that what we’re talking about here?
I’ve always been uncomfortable with the “helpfulness” of LR’s keyword feature, so instead I have typed my own descriptive text into the Caption field. I store my photos on disk in folders by year with sub-folders by day. I don’t photograph professional assignments or events, or other kinds of categories, but if I did, I’d enter the descriptive term in the Caption, as I do the name of a destination where I photographed. LR’s Find feature filters the results as well as my query states my request. If something’s not found, it’s usually my mistake – a entry typo, omission, or a human-memory bug. Yes, it takes a bit of a learning investment to get control over asking the right question in the right way, and it also takes a lot of investment in entering detailed descriptions in the Caption or Keywords field, but the payback comes in quickly finding what I’m after.
I’ve been thinking about changing from using captions to keywords. I don’t think that either one is superior in creating complex queries for user-entered data in LR searches, but if anyone on the forum has experience with one or the other that will help me choose, please post it.
In anticipation of changing from using captions to keywords, I found a plugin called Search Replace Transfer, here: http://lightroomsolutions.com/plug-ins/search-and-replace/. It copies metadata from one field to another, as well as performing other simple and complex metadata operations. I’m testing the free trial, which seems to work as it claims. The trial version is limited to working with ten images at a time, but otherwise functions fully. Especially because many of the suggestions and opinions in this discussion seem to imply that once you make a choice in a filing approach, you’re locked into that decision. IMO, this plug-in’s value is in allowing a LR user the flexibility to change one’s mind.
(DISCLAIMER: I am not affiliated with this product or its developer.)
Hi!
The plugin you mention was written by John Beardsworth, who has written a number of excellent Lightroom plugins, several of which we list in the Lightroom Classic – the Missing FAQ book (written by Victoria).
If John and Susan got married, then they are now the “enter married surname”, that is the folder their photos belong in. Problem solved.
Set up your folders following how your public library is organized and you can’t go wrong. There are two card catalogs in a library…..subject and author….there is no publication date catalog
The subject of any photo is either a person, place or thing, not a date. We don’t take photos of dates.
When you tell a story you don’t lead off with the date because that isn’t the subject of the story, the subject is a person, place or thing.
If you asked me where my photos of London are, I could say they are in my Places folder > Countries > Europe (I agree this part seems backwards) > Britain > London. If I had been to London more than once, then there would be a date added to the folder…….London 2016……London 2018……London comes first because London is the subject, not the date. That is basically the way books are shelved in a library.