Image Organisation for Hobbiest?
Hi All,
As a weekend hobbiest who just takes images of mainly wildlife in my garden & then the occasional days out or holiday, I’m wondering what the general consensus is, in regards to the best image/raw file structure is, which would then be referenced to a catalog in C1.
When I was using Lightroom Classic before, I just aloud Lr to files my images in the default year>month>date structure on import from my SD card, but the thing I found is I was ending up with date (day) folders with just 1 or 2 images, as my photography is just as I say weekend or every now and then in the garden either with bird lens or macro. And then the occasion full day out or holiday, I’m not professional or shoot for magazines ect so I don’t do shoots as it were it purely is just a low level trickle of images, so now I’m moving to C1 I’m trying to re consider what is the best structure to follow.
A) Default ‘year’ > ‘month’ > ‘date’ filing structure of the raw files, then use key wording/albums to filter type of photography eg. Garden Birds or Species or holiday name ect...
or
B) Default ‘year’ > ‘month’ filing structure of the raw files, then use key wording/albums to filter type of photography eg. Garden Birds or Species or holiday name ect...
or
C) a folder structure where you have master folder of say ‘year’ > then subfolder of ‘Garden Birds’ or ‘Sept France Holiday’ ect...
Im interested to see what people use or any other structures?
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I generally organise them by month. (I'm also a hobbyist.) I start them off in a session (but there is no need to do that if you don't want to). I have a new session every month, plus some extras for instance when I go away on holiday (remember when we could do that?).
Once the month is over, and I have edited my images, I add the Selects folder to my catalog.
So I have a structure that looks like this...
... then in the catalog I end up with this.
It works for me!
Ian
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Thank you very much for this Ian, very helpful and appreciated.
Gives me some things to think about for sure :)
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There is definitely no right or wrong when organizing ones images. I use a slightly different approach as follows:
My RAW folder and image file name structure on disk looks like this:
You can see I use a Year folder (2017) and then within that folder I have a naming convention in regard of Year/Month and a meaningful name (1702 Dublin) for my undertakings. The name of the actual pictures inside also reflects the project_month_year and a counter added (Dublin_02_2017_035). With this I am able to always place and locate my images and they get sorted by date.
Inside CO the folder structure therefore looks like:
In addition to folders I use collections with groups (equal years) projects (equal image folder, but slightly turned name into 1017 for sorting purposes) and albums and if needed I create smart albums like in my trip to Sevilla in (1017 Sevilla).
For really huge projects/travels I use quite the same approach as described by Ian above. Create a CO session and then on completion add it to the above catalog.
Just as another idea.
Cheers,
Andy
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Thank you Andy, really helpful indeed & certainly give me more to think about!
My biggest stumble is unlike many others I don't do specific shoots, like yourself, you have '1702 Dublin' for example... well for me most of my images are just a rolling of the same thing, Garden Birds or Garden Macro shots and then only on the very odd occasion through the year I then may have holiday for example or a specific day out to a reserve. So this is why im questioning whether date structure is for me or whether im better off jus using broad folder names?...
I had originally thought that sessions may even be better for me, so have one session for Garden Birds 2020 for example and then a different session for each group of images or day out/holiday?
Lots to think about aha :)
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Something involving dates is useful when it comes to finding things afterwards. I also use dates in my file naming convention, so an image I took today, for example, ends up being named 21-02-10-0225.NEF. That way sorting in date order comes out the same as sorting in date order (useful in Finder as well as in Capture One) and from the name of the file I know where to find it.
Ian
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Thank you Ian, I was thinking this today and actually even if I go the route of non date file structure, but ‘year’ master folder then ‘category’ sub folders, I may start to rename the actual files with date as yes this would then still add a level of date ordering with in the category folders...
E.g:
2021 > Garden Birds 2021 > each garden bird image file renamed YY-MM-DD###.ORF
> Landscapes 2021 > each landscape image file renamed YY-MM-DD###.ORF
> Spain Holiday 2021 > each Spain holiday image file renamed YY-MM-DD###.ORF
....... and so on.....
And then also add some keywords, for example with landscapes, keyword what the place was or garden birds, what the species was ect...
This is what I’m thinking now after reading everyone’s helpful advice, of what would suit my style of photography and needs. It would also give me elements of both structures too, categories with an element of date ordering. :)
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Don't overlook the ability to logically organize your images in addition to physical organization. Like many, I use a somewhat date based physical organization. During import I assign an organizational keyword, something like "family", "christmas", "yosemite", "motorcycle", etc. I can then create smart collections that logically organize the images by keywords. That makes it easy to find images without having to remember the exact date or name of the event. Of course if I do remember the event I can go directly to that folder.
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Thank you Marco, although I play with my idea above, I am still going to look into collections properly and tbh I may end up realising how good/useful they are :)
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Hello All,
So today I have started putting my images into a date style structure, so I can make use of keywords & collections as per suggestions I received, but I wanted to show you a visual of one thing I am faceing....
So as you can see most of my day folders are named ‘pics from Garden’ and this is because they are just general images through the month taken in my garden (which throughout a month, is where most of my photography is done), but are a mix of bird, macro, the moon for example; these subjective sub categories I intend to use key words & collections to group specific subjects/types of photography. However the problem is many of them only end up having very few images in many case bellow 3, so after a month I could end up with almost one for every day of the month like this... (this is just a sample of image, if I did all my images like this, I’d end up with a lot of ‘pics in garden’ folders)...
So I really like the idea of using some kind of date & description method now for day trips or holiday (also shown) and then using keywords/collections for subject or photography type categorising, but what should I do about the ‘pics from garden’? do I just make one folder per month for all miscellaneous images, that are non specific to a particular trip, holiday or day out? & then use keywords ect to break down... Or any other ideas, very much appreciated.
Thank you :)
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