>Over the years I imported tens of thousands of images into iphoto and did not keep a separate, well organized, folder-based film archive.
I use Aperture and as far as ,I know it and iPhoto use the same library format. In which case your photos *are* stored in an well organised, folder-based archive. The iPhoto/Aperture library basically stores them in a simple year/month/day structure which is pretty much how I think I would organise photos if I was to do it manually.
I'm not knocking your efforts - they are your photos and you have your own requirements - but thought I should point this out in case other Mac users panic at the thoughts of their photos being unattainable.
For those of us with the ability to hack a bit of xml, the metadata about the photos is maintained in a parallel folder structure in xml files, so it is easy to find which xml file of metadata belongs to which photo.
Personally I'm looking forward to the new Photos app to see what it offers. Shouldn't be too long now.
This is getting kind of nerdy, and soon someone like Leon is gonna tell us to 'take this outside' as we are not talking about film enuff
(I'd argue tho that file management if more important for film than digital as at least digital has EXIF data.)
Obviously no one should panic (in fact probably you, Francois and myself may be the only ones that care, haha). But a few points:
#1) We both agree that it is a good idea to have your images accessible somewhere in a manner that makes sense to you, even if you use a Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) such as iphoto, aperture, or lightroom. If the DAMS's library's folder structure makes sense to you, thats fine. In fact both Aperture and Lightroom (and I think Picassa) let you use your own 'human readable' folder structure and merely alias or reference those files within the library. This is probably the best of both worlds. It is more of a problem when one uses iPhoto which imports the images into its folder structure because then you are locked into iPhoto's folder structuring conventions. I started with iPhoto and it was difficult for me to migrate everything out and use Aperture with my own folder structure. For me the iphoto method of naming the directory structure just does not work. Yes it is sorted by year/month/day but the Event name is not included in any of the folder names. And it is a bit too nested for my liking. It is no where near how my brain wants the folders arranged, and I do not find it easily browsable at all. (YMMV)
#2) A huge problem is that the files are organized by the file modification date not the date the images were shot. One can easily add this metadata us before importing it into iphoto or by iphoto can do it. No matter how you do it, the files will not be filed by this date but by the file creation date (the date scanned or last modified). As I am often scanning negs that are decades old, this is a deal breaker to me.
#3) I know that the metadata is accessible in these apps if one can parse XML. I have done that on occasion. I also understand that when you are modifying and tagging thousands of files that it makes most sense programmatically to separate the metadata out. But I want the metadata incorporated into the header of the jpegs. I like the application/platform independence this gives me. As an example if my files have the metadata burned into them I can search within the finder and not even start iphoto. For example, what pics of frodo do I have? ;-)
#4 Lastly, I am a Mac nerd and have been one for a long time, but I am getting to be an old, cranky, jaded Mac nerd so I am awaiting the arrival of "Photos" with my arms crossed. If you want to know how I became a cranky and jaded mac administrator, I guess you should PM me as it has zero to do with analog film, haha
