Not the most interesting topic in the world I'm afraid!
To my shame, I've recently found myself having my photograph collection spread over three PCs, an external hard drive and a box of slides - at two separate addresses! How this transpired I have no idea!
I find myself in the position of having to collect all my images into one place, and I just wondered how other people go about filing/cataloguing their images? This is a good opportunity for me to start from scratch again, but I want to make sure I establish a system that I can continue to use and add new photos to (without starting again!).
+ Do you give filenames a code and keep a separate database?
+ Do you group your files according to subject (birds, mammals etc.)?
Any pointers would be much appreciated!
Many thanks,
Pete
Posted by John Robinson on October 21, 2011 at 6:46 PM
Hi Pete
Good question ! I have approximately 52,000 Natural history digital images (32,000 birds)apart from all the other stuff, and 16,000 transparencies.
Mine is a rough and ready method but here's what I do.
I keep all my nature stuff in a month/year folder under species (eg Blue Tit, Robin )for birds and groups for others like flowers ,fungi, dragonflies etc.
At the end of each month I send them off to their final resting place on other drives both internal and external- with copies.
I have a drive for "ALL BIRDS" where they are in folders like Tree Creeper, Finches-sub folder Chaffinch etc. Al lthe months birds are copied to their respective folder and the monthly record kept as a back up on another drive.
All animals go into their species folder on an "ANIMALS" drive. All Flowers , Insects Dragonflies, Fungi and other stuff etc etc go into their respective folder on a "NATURE" drive. Thats it really. I copy everything every so often.
I can usually find anything fairly quickly. Dave Kjear could posibly gice advice on a good back up sytem he uses.
. I don't rename many slides- it would take a lifetime now. OK- if I open the Blue Tit folder in "all birds" for example there will be a lot to browse (1900) but I can live with that.
The other thing I do is be ruthless !!! Don't keep everything like we all do at first !
Cheers
Hope that helps
John
Best thing to do is to look at something like iMatch or iViewMediaPro on the PC, or possibly even Lightroom. iMatch and iView can help you catalogue your images in-situ and add metadata and keywords to a big searchable database. The organisation of the catalogue itself (and any image keywords) is independent of how the images are organised on your disks, meaning you don't have to use any particular file naming conventions or directory structures.
I think Lightroom can manage to help you catalogue your images too, but from what I've seen of it, it isn't the best of breed for that as it begins to bog down once the number of images in the library grows. I know it certainly couldn't cope with the size of library that I run in Aperture (10yrs ~ 250K images). Having the images keyworded in a library allows you to do searches for particular keywords, or groups of keywords.
So, what I'd do if I where you - collect the disks together, get one of the above programs, and then spend a long time importing the images into the database. Don't worry about organising them on disk, or renaming the files. Once they're in your database, then you can begin to run through them all and start to assign keywords, and that's when you begin to reap the benefit as you can create 'saved' searches which automatically pull out all flowers, insects etc or pull out all of a particular species as you add them.
Have fun - you've a bit of googling and reading up to do - should keep you busy for a bit!
Posted by Andy Astbury on October 25, 2011 at 6:30 AM
"...or possibly even Lightroom...." what are you like Nick!!!!
Pete - Lightroom would be a superb option for you to consider - if you spend a few minutes setting up your catalogue collection structure you can do the majority of your DAM at the import from card/drive stage just by adding a handfull of keywords.
It's really simple and vary efficient, and you end up with a searchable image database.
Andy - seriously, I just never got on with Lightroom as it's simply to lightweight . Last time I tried it started croaking before it even got anywhere near to 100K+ images, and it's interface is too restrictive for me. But then it's all you've really got on a PC
Posted by Andy Astbury on October 25, 2011 at 6:57 AM
LoL
Posted by John Robinson on October 25, 2011 at 6:42 PM
I still say my system works even with only 70 k images. If I ask for a Hawfinch pic it finds all my Hawfinch pics.
Good enough for me.
It won't find a female hawfinch in a bush in snow in Herfordshire with a berry in its beak looking left etc,etc but by the time I had logged in the key words initially I could have found it anyway
JR
Only trouble John, is what do you do when you end up with a couple (or more) of species in the same shot? Say your Green Woodie and Jay?
Posted by John Robinson on October 25, 2011 at 7:39 PM
Good question Nick and its only happened about three times. Simple -they are in the files for both species... There are so few they are easily found anyway.
Group waders shots go in Waders/Mixed.etc. Group wildfowl in flocks, for example go in Wildfowl /mixed,
Finches go in the finch folder under Finches/mixedflocks.
Once you have the folder its quick and simple to move stuff from each months master folder to their final resting place.For example October so far on birds alone is 1000 files (birds) and at the end of the month it doesn't take long to put them into their respective folder on the master bird drive. Maybe not high tech but has worked for me for a long time and I,m thick !
John
Discussion
9 repliesNot the most interesting topic in the world I'm afraid!
To my shame, I've recently found myself having my photograph collection spread over three PCs, an external hard drive and a box of slides - at two separate addresses! How this transpired I have no idea!
I find myself in the position of having to collect all my images into one place, and I just wondered how other people go about filing/cataloguing their images? This is a good opportunity for me to start from scratch again, but I want to make sure I establish a system that I can continue to use and add new photos to (without starting again!).
+ Do you give filenames a code and keep a separate database?
+ Do you group your files according to subject (birds, mammals etc.)?
Any pointers would be much appreciated!
Many thanks,
Pete
Good question ! I have approximately 52,000 Natural history digital images (32,000 birds)apart from all the other stuff, and 16,000 transparencies.
Mine is a rough and ready method but here's what I do.
I keep all my nature stuff in a month/year folder under species (eg Blue Tit, Robin )for birds and groups for others like flowers ,fungi, dragonflies etc.
At the end of each month I send them off to their final resting place on other drives both internal and external- with copies.
I have a drive for "ALL BIRDS" where they are in folders like Tree Creeper, Finches-sub folder Chaffinch etc. Al lthe months birds are copied to their respective folder and the monthly record kept as a back up on another drive.
All animals go into their species folder on an "ANIMALS" drive. All Flowers , Insects Dragonflies, Fungi and other stuff etc etc go into their respective folder on a "NATURE" drive. Thats it really. I copy everything every so often.
I can usually find anything fairly quickly. Dave Kjear could posibly gice advice on a good back up sytem he uses.
. I don't rename many slides- it would take a lifetime now. OK- if I open the Blue Tit folder in "all birds" for example there will be a lot to browse (1900) but I can live with that.
The other thing I do is be ruthless !!! Don't keep everything like we all do at first !
Cheers
Hope that helps
John
Best thing to do is to look at something like iMatch or iViewMediaPro on the PC, or possibly even Lightroom. iMatch and iView can help you catalogue your images in-situ and add metadata and keywords to a big searchable database. The organisation of the catalogue itself (and any image keywords) is independent of how the images are organised on your disks, meaning you don't have to use any particular file naming conventions or directory structures.
I think Lightroom can manage to help you catalogue your images too, but from what I've seen of it, it isn't the best of breed for that as it begins to bog down once the number of images in the library grows. I know it certainly couldn't cope with the size of library that I run in Aperture (10yrs ~ 250K images). Having the images keyworded in a library allows you to do searches for particular keywords, or groups of keywords.
So, what I'd do if I where you - collect the disks together, get one of the above programs, and then spend a long time importing the images into the database. Don't worry about organising them on disk, or renaming the files. Once they're in your database, then you can begin to run through them all and start to assign keywords, and that's when you begin to reap the benefit as you can create 'saved' searches which automatically pull out all flowers, insects etc or pull out all of a particular species as you add them.
Have fun - you've a bit of googling and reading up to do
Pete - Lightroom would be a superb option for you to consider - if you spend a few minutes setting up your catalogue collection structure you can do the majority of your DAM at the import from card/drive stage just by adding a handfull of keywords.
It's really simple and vary efficient, and you end up with a searchable image database.
Good enough for me.
It won't find a female hawfinch in a bush in snow in Herfordshire with a berry in its beak looking left etc,etc but by the time I had logged in the key words initially I could have found it anyway
JR
Group waders shots go in Waders/Mixed.etc. Group wildfowl in flocks, for example go in Wildfowl /mixed,
Finches go in the finch folder under Finches/mixedflocks.
Once you have the folder its quick and simple to move stuff from each months master folder to their final resting place.For example October so far on birds alone is 1000 files (birds) and at the end of the month it doesn't take long to put them into their respective folder on the master bird drive. Maybe not high tech but has worked for me for a long time and I,m thick !
John