Katsmeow
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2009
- Messages
- 5,308
Curious how people organize their digital photos on their computer. And, by organize, I mean what kind of file structure do you set up?
I have Photoshop Elements which I use for editing and for some organization tasks. It is really good, for example, if I want to go and look at all the photos with me in them. I can just go and do a search for those tagged with me. Fine.
But, sometimes I don't want/need to use the organizer. I either just want to find one specific photo (typically because I am going to use it for something) or I want to find a specific group of photos.
In my case we have actual digital photos where it is easy to know when they were taken as the photo properties show that. Several years ago, however, I had scanned in all of my non-digital photos. For those the date is simply the date of the scan.
One I got all of the photos. I created files by date. So there is a folder for each decade. For example, the 1990s. Then in that folder, there are 12 folder, one for each month. I then put each photo in the appropriate month folder.
The problem of course is that sometimes I may know the year a photo was taken but not the month. If I am fairly sure I just put it in the most likely month. If I have no clue then I leave the photo in the 1990s folder but not in one of the month subfolders.
There are some photos though that I can't narrow down to year. For those I make my best guess of decade and put in the appropriate folder. So in the 1990s folder I have 12 folders for the months and then I just have some loose photos that I think were taken in the 1990s.
So all of that is fine and I could just continue with it. But I keep running into certain problems.
1. Some photos are very easily located by date. Others aren't. People aren't so much a problem as I tag them in Organizer and can search there. But, for example, tonight I needed to find some photos that had been taken of the interior of my house. It really isn't important when they were taken. And, really, those are the kinds of photos I want grouped together. For what I was doing tonight I needed to look at all of the kitchen photos not scour through years of folders by date to find kitchen pics in several different folder. It was actually not a problem because I had totally not used the date format for those pictures. I had a folder with the street name of the house and then subfolder for each room.
That worked but I sort of felt guilty they weren't in the folders by date. I wanted to have one system and not a hybrid system. And, even this hybrid system isn't perfect. That is, many of the pictures in the date folders are also pics of the interior of the house. They weren't taken for that purpose but they do show the interior. I considered putting a copy of them in the house folder but I want to avoid having duplicates of the same photo.
2. In Photoshop Elements Organizer, I basically import in all of my dated folder. So, in Photoshop Elements if someone looks at the folder for May of 2016 they will see all the photos I took that month except for those in specialized folders (like the house pics folder). The problem is that some of those folders I really don't want someone who might be looking over my shoulder to see. And that happens. That is, someone comes over and I want to show them pics from some event in May of 2016. So I would call of Organizer and then call up those pics from that month.
But, in that month I may have taken other photos that I wouldn't want them to see. For example, I had surgery that month and there are some post-surgical pics. It is not the kind of thing I want to show most people.
And, as mentioned above, there are specialized type photos that I took that I didn't put in a separate special photo. So, maybe a photo of what I ate at a restaurant, or a photo of a broken something or other at home. I don't have specialized folders for them so I put them in the dated folder but really if I am showing people photos from the dated folder I really don't want them to see those folder.
So -- for those of you have a lot of photos what folder structure do you use?
Also do you just keep all the photos or do you cull out some of them? What is your criteria there? I cull out photos that are really unusable or super bad. So if it is very blurry or a photo of someone where they look terrible. I will just outright delete those. What I have more trouble with are photos that are fine, but repetitive. So we took 10 photos that were very similar. Do you get rid of 9 of them or keep them all?
Or, you took some photos that have real flaws in them but it is the only photo you have of that event? This happens with photos from trips or special occasions. There are some photos that I really don't like and that have major flaws -- but it is the only photo of a particular thing or person so I am reluctant to delete.
One thing I did for a major vacation we took was that I put in the dated folder only the really good photos from the trip. I then kept the rest of the photos in a separate folder that is not part of the dated folder structure. Theoretically I could expand that and just put good photos in the dated folder that I want people to see.
I have Photoshop Elements which I use for editing and for some organization tasks. It is really good, for example, if I want to go and look at all the photos with me in them. I can just go and do a search for those tagged with me. Fine.
But, sometimes I don't want/need to use the organizer. I either just want to find one specific photo (typically because I am going to use it for something) or I want to find a specific group of photos.
In my case we have actual digital photos where it is easy to know when they were taken as the photo properties show that. Several years ago, however, I had scanned in all of my non-digital photos. For those the date is simply the date of the scan.
One I got all of the photos. I created files by date. So there is a folder for each decade. For example, the 1990s. Then in that folder, there are 12 folder, one for each month. I then put each photo in the appropriate month folder.
The problem of course is that sometimes I may know the year a photo was taken but not the month. If I am fairly sure I just put it in the most likely month. If I have no clue then I leave the photo in the 1990s folder but not in one of the month subfolders.
There are some photos though that I can't narrow down to year. For those I make my best guess of decade and put in the appropriate folder. So in the 1990s folder I have 12 folders for the months and then I just have some loose photos that I think were taken in the 1990s.
So all of that is fine and I could just continue with it. But I keep running into certain problems.
1. Some photos are very easily located by date. Others aren't. People aren't so much a problem as I tag them in Organizer and can search there. But, for example, tonight I needed to find some photos that had been taken of the interior of my house. It really isn't important when they were taken. And, really, those are the kinds of photos I want grouped together. For what I was doing tonight I needed to look at all of the kitchen photos not scour through years of folders by date to find kitchen pics in several different folder. It was actually not a problem because I had totally not used the date format for those pictures. I had a folder with the street name of the house and then subfolder for each room.
That worked but I sort of felt guilty they weren't in the folders by date. I wanted to have one system and not a hybrid system. And, even this hybrid system isn't perfect. That is, many of the pictures in the date folders are also pics of the interior of the house. They weren't taken for that purpose but they do show the interior. I considered putting a copy of them in the house folder but I want to avoid having duplicates of the same photo.
2. In Photoshop Elements Organizer, I basically import in all of my dated folder. So, in Photoshop Elements if someone looks at the folder for May of 2016 they will see all the photos I took that month except for those in specialized folders (like the house pics folder). The problem is that some of those folders I really don't want someone who might be looking over my shoulder to see. And that happens. That is, someone comes over and I want to show them pics from some event in May of 2016. So I would call of Organizer and then call up those pics from that month.
But, in that month I may have taken other photos that I wouldn't want them to see. For example, I had surgery that month and there are some post-surgical pics. It is not the kind of thing I want to show most people.
And, as mentioned above, there are specialized type photos that I took that I didn't put in a separate special photo. So, maybe a photo of what I ate at a restaurant, or a photo of a broken something or other at home. I don't have specialized folders for them so I put them in the dated folder but really if I am showing people photos from the dated folder I really don't want them to see those folder.
So -- for those of you have a lot of photos what folder structure do you use?
Also do you just keep all the photos or do you cull out some of them? What is your criteria there? I cull out photos that are really unusable or super bad. So if it is very blurry or a photo of someone where they look terrible. I will just outright delete those. What I have more trouble with are photos that are fine, but repetitive. So we took 10 photos that were very similar. Do you get rid of 9 of them or keep them all?
Or, you took some photos that have real flaws in them but it is the only photo you have of that event? This happens with photos from trips or special occasions. There are some photos that I really don't like and that have major flaws -- but it is the only photo of a particular thing or person so I am reluctant to delete.
One thing I did for a major vacation we took was that I put in the dated folder only the really good photos from the trip. I then kept the rest of the photos in a separate folder that is not part of the dated folder structure. Theoretically I could expand that and just put good photos in the dated folder that I want people to see.