Organizing Old Images (Digital)

Hey All,

I'm in the midst of organizing a lot of old digital pictures. Before I realized how many images I'd be making on a regular basis and adopted a DAM workflow I dumped all the photos into a single folder and renamed them all kinds of junk.

I'm sorting through them and assigning keywords where appropriate but this is getting really tedious and I'm tired . It is also slowing down my work on newer images which I'm dying to get to. Does anyone have examples from their past to make this a bit easier or am I being a weiner and just need to suck it up?

Cheers,
Alex

I have been working for about 9 months on completely revamping my digital catalog and storage. I started with some 12,000 images and now am approaching 15,000. It is simply tedious work that you have to slug your way through as time permits. You can try to prioritize the work based on image quality and marketability (if you are marketing your work). Images that won't sell don't necessarily warrant spending a great deal of time on. Tag them with some basic keywords like the names of people in them, where they were taken, etc so you can find them for yourself later. For images that are more marketable, you can spend more time tagging them with all the requisite keywords that you feel are appropriate.

If you use a tool like iView Media Pro, it can save some time because you can drag-n-drop images onto keywords to assign them and then write the annotations back to the original files. You can also create metadata templates in Bridge that include keywords for specific subjects you shoot a lot. You can also select multiple images in Bridge and assign keywords to them all at once from the File Info panel.

Keep at it - it just takes time.

Walter,

Thanks, I thought that might be the case.

Well, off I go.

Alex

Walter mentioned using templates. This can be a real time saver. If you can group images that need similar metadata (captions, keywords, etc.), you can then apply metadata to large groups all at once, saving you lots of time.
If you're using Iview or PS CS and Bridge (and probably others) this can easily be done.
It's a lot of work and I'm looking at a similar backlog. Won't it be nice when (if ) it gets done!
I'd also suggest prioritizing new images. Get yourself into a workflow that you can apply to new images and at least those will be done. Then catch up to the old ones as you can.
By the way, have you read Peter Krogh's The Dam Book ?

Thanks guys,

I do have the DAM book and use it for all of my new photographs. I'm currently wading through Bridge (although I might switch to iView) and entering keywords (or checking boxes as the case may be).

Thanks for the tips,
Alex

I have several groups of keywords for different purposes on a Word document and just copy and paste if I get lazy.

I have one core metadata template I apply to every new image. It provides all my contact info, terms & conditions info, copyright notice, etc. I then go back and apply image specific metadata on groups and on individual images as required. Some go fast (like all the images from a single concert or day of shooting at the same location) and some go slow (like several days worth of shooting at different places).