Topic: file management

[astrobeck]

Gah!
Help, I'm a mess!
After scanning thousands of photos the past eight years or so and then dumping them in what I thought were very organized folders
I have found I am out of control when it comes to locating a specific photo when I need to print it sometimes.
My organizing has turned into chaos- well not exactly chaos but
often I waste I ton of time looking for a photo because it's not where I thought it was.

I need help figuring out a better and more organized way of keeping my scanned photos organized.

My negative organization needs an overhaul as well since most all of them are in archival sleeves in three ring binders- but for some reason I don't have the same problems locating negs as I do with digitized photos.

What do you all use to stay organized???

Thanks all!

[vicky slater]

i wish i could offer advice.
i'm right now searching for one negative and i expect to be for the next 40 minutes.

[Francois]

I have pretty much a similar system for negatives and digital photos. Everything I do is based on the ISO date format (yyyy-mm-dd). That way, everything is sorted by date. For negatives, contact sheets and index prints go in the same folder. When I locate a picture on the print, I just have to track back the date number on it to the negative file.

For digital photos, I try and sort everything into folders and also try to add an IPTC tag to the images. Every image gets imported with the ISO date before the file name so a file like img230.jpg becomes 2009-11-05-img230.jpg or something like that.

If you use Lightroom to do the imports, you can add tags on import.
There's also Image Ingester which allows you to include a metadata file inside the images on import. This one is very simple and available for Mac and PC.

[gregor]

for cataloging of scans I would recommend either iView media pro or Extensis Portfolio. Each application creates individual databases (or catalogs) of thumbnails ou view in the application. You can base the catalogson your naming conventions and you can quickly access the original scan from. 

iView's most recent version is now a Microsoft product and it pretty much sucks. But if you can get a pre Microsoft version (3.1.4 was the last I believe), it's great.

[Pitxu]

I agree with Fran?ois, filing by date is the way to go.
This is why your (and my) negs are easier to find than digital files, we always put them together in sleeves by date.


(My slides are all over the place because I filed them by subject. It doesn't work as good.)

[Ed Wenn]

I file my negs chronologically as mentioned above. I have however split the 35mm negs away from the 120/620/127 negs which seemed like a good idea at the time, but was definitely a mistake in retrospect. Have been planning to fix it and amalgamate the sets, but never will. I also have a ring binder for sheets of negs which I have yet to scan. The idea being to have a holding area for recent negs  to go into so they won?t get damaged before they get scanned and then eventually filed with the others.

In reality this holding area still has significant number of negs dating back to 2003 and is in danger of spilling over into another binder, so the system has failed. Actually, this is all part of the reason I gave up shooting film for several months from the end of May this year until recently - the situation was becoming unmanageable. It's no better for the break, but at least it's no worse 

Digi photos and negs scans are filed (and backed up!) chronologically by year in 12 'month' folders with sub folders along the lines of "France - Sept 2008". I don't tag my photos although I really should.

Chances of me finding a specific neg from years ago for printing etc. run at about 40% based on experiences over the last 24 months.

[Skorj]

Ahhh... the problems of the modern age... File structure at this end for over 50,000 photographs:



Additionally, you can consider an app to append tags to each set, helping with index searches. There are a number of free batch taggers for photographs on PCs. I've been known to use Reveal. See ya! Skj.

[greenstphotography]

Here's my system.  For film each sleeve gets a number.  Any scans from the sheet are put in a folder with that number along with the image number on the film.

For example: 500-01 would be the 500th film sleeve and -01 is negative no. 1 on that sleeve.  Any scans would be put into a folder labeled 500.  If I make a contact print it gets labeled 500 as well.  I store all my negatives in binders in numerical order.  I store my contact sheets in boxes separated by subjects. So I can either browse the negs or the contact sheets and always know where the film is or where to look for scans.

For digital images I use the date time stamps and a brief description of the shoot as file names.  I also make contact sheets out of my digital files (once I have deleted the images I am not going to use, I do tend to keep a fair number of "iffy" images just in case).  These also get labeled with the filename so I know where the images are stored.

This system, as any system, requires some work up front.  My main problem is keeping caught up with contact prints.  I am like 75 behind right now.  I like having the contact sheets because on occasion I will just sit down and browse through them and find a jem or two that I originally passed over.