Digital Photo Organization
on 07.16.06, 10:46am in media • comments (17)
I’ve finally gone ahead and purchased my digital SLR (and thanks for all the comments, I actually ended up going with the Nikon D70s).
With my point and shoot camera, I had a pretty simple method for storing images up on the network server: I created a folder with a ‘friendly name’, and just threw the JPGs up there. This turned out to be really convient because all the machines/appliances (such as TiVo, etc) in the house then would get access to the photos.
But now that I have RAW support, I’m wondering if there’s a better strategy for saving and organizing digital photos:
- Do people actually store photos with their native names (DSC0101010111)?
- Do you save both RAW and JPEG files?
- Do people actually tag EXIF data?
- How do you have your folder structure laid out?
Anyways, I’m looking for any general advice, tips or suggestions. Comment away! (and thanks in advance)
Werner (July 16, 2006 @ 11:36 am)
Steve, can you tell us what it was that made you finally decide to get the Nikon instead of the Canon? Which lens did you get?
Cris Pierry (July 16, 2006 @ 12:41 pm)
Check out this book — The DAM book: Digital asset management for photographers… (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596100183/sr=8-1/qid=1153078827/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-6531247-5684646?ie=UTF8)
Nat (July 16, 2006 @ 1:13 pm)
I leave all the filenames intact (as do most of the people I know) and usually use only a single folder. Why ? Because I tag all my pictures using an utility called pixvue (www.pixvue.com) This will tag the photo with both IPTC (legacy) and XMP information. This way I can easily search for pictures using IPTC/XMP aware programs (Picasa, Iview, Lightroom, to name a few). If I go on a trip I will usually make a new folder for the particular trip.
Neil Cowburn (July 16, 2006 @ 1:15 pm)
I have a 300GB NAS device where I copy all my RAW files to, I then pull off the images I want to work on, process them in Photoshop or Aperture and then dump them back onto the NAS device as JPEG. As for organizing them, I have a folder hierarchy which is date-based. The top-level folder is the file format, one each for RAW and JPEG. This is followed by a year folder and then I have a folder for each month underneath the year folder. I don’t see any point in increasing the granuality any further than that since the exact date and time is captured in EXIF and other metadata.
If you want to do mass conversions from RAW to JPEG/TIFF/etc, then Photoshop actions are definitely the way to go.
Steve (July 16, 2006 @ 1:41 pm)
Interesting. I have both Photoshop and Aperture, so was thinking about going down that road.
Keeping the files (still) on a server is my preference, Aperture is just a bit of a pain with it’s own library.
gdkzen (July 16, 2006 @ 4:52 pm)
Steve,
I’m interested in your eventual decision here. With the D70, alot of people set the camera to render a basic jpeg and a RAW at the same time so that non-RAW compatible programs like iPhoto can be used to triage the images.
Does aperture not provide much of the same functionality that iPhoto does, but for RAW files?
Nat (July 16, 2006 @ 6:14 pm)
The main problem with Aperture is that it’s a one trip way for the pictures, you need to use their database system which is not always convenient. I’d look into lightroom, not released yet but it looks promising.
Steve (July 16, 2006 @ 7:36 pm)
Yeah — while I really like Aperture for editing, it really is cumbersome having their own library/database.
In the end, I need to be able to view photos on the Macs, PCs, Tivos and 360’s scattered throughout the house. Right now, seems like the best bet is to keep both RAW and JPGs up on the server.
Nat (July 16, 2006 @ 9:27 pm)
If I were you I’d keep both the RAW and JPEG. JPEG loads much faster and are more convenient for quick edits like resizing to send to the family. RAW is fun when you want to tweak a little more when you want to print or heavily process.
Rick Lobrecht (July 17, 2006 @ 8:04 am)
I also have a D70 (and love it.) I started off shooting RAW, and quickly found that I don’t have the photoshop skills to make having a RAW file useful. My basic procedure is to copy the original files into a triage area. I then use a tool called exifier to rename the files to a combination of the date/time the picture was taken, and sometimes an event/subject name. I then store these files on my server in a date based arrangement. I also create a 1024×768 version for posting on out photo gallery.
Nat (July 17, 2006 @ 8:16 am)
“and quickly found that I don’t have the photoshop skills to make having a RAW file useful”
That was my case in the beggining when I was using photoshop to work with RAW files. It wasn’t intuitive and the workflow was terrible. For this reason I shot JPEG most of the time. This is until I discovered RAW Shooter. This software is really a gem, it works fast, really easy to use and it makes working with RAW a real pleasure. Unfortunately Adobe made an “hostile” buyout and the software isn’t sold anymore, I hope lightroom will be as good.
Dave Goodman (July 17, 2006 @ 9:04 am)
I use cam2pc to transfer photos from my camera to my system, and I have it rename photos with the date and time, and they go in folders named for the date of the photos. That makes it easy to locate photos taken on a certain date, and I can rename a folder for the event that occurred on that day.
gdkzen (July 17, 2006 @ 12:05 pm)
Important note: Nikon NEFs aren’t completely lossless. There is a small(literally miniscule) amount of lossy compression used in this RAW format. No way around it with Nikon cameras.
I’ve been using high quality jpegs and iPhoto to do my lighttable work. These are my steps:
1) Import the files into iPhoto via my cf reader
2) Closely examine the new photos for obvious blurs etc - throw away all of the garbage
3) Photos that I want to print or post are editted with Photoshop CS (I setup PCS as my default editor in iPhoto)
4) When I have completed my editing, I save the image as a high quality JPEG to a seperate directory where I keep all of my completely finished images.
5) Import the finished image into iPhoto
Periodically I go through iPhoto and tag my images. This is fairly important because it’s easy to get lost with so much floating around. iPhoto automatically does a good job of organizing by date however.
Anybody get NEFS to work w/ iPhoto?
hvac (July 21, 2006 @ 2:14 am)
Lots of handy batch naming tools out there, Using a card reader and not the camera, D/L to a temp folder and throw away all the oblivious mistakes / dups. Batch rename them using a short word and the date. Put the all in one giant photo folder so they are easy to see /use. Now use a database to fill in all the descriptions you want about the set and or individual pictures. Then link from the database to that set or picture. I run the database and the viewer on a split screen. After a year and a thousand pictures you will not remember what that really good picture was about or where it was taken. Browsing the database is easy and one click brings up your picture. I have even started using thumbnails in the DB. Ok there are “Photo Books” that “allow” you to do this but using your own DB and viewer / editor you will get it just the way you want it, with the flexibility to change and adapt as your needs change.
werner (July 21, 2006 @ 9:55 pm)
BTW Adobe Labs just released the windows beta version their workflow system dubbed lightroom for windows. The one for Mac’s has been out since January (http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/)
Of the otehr software mentioned: RawShooter can be downloaded from here: http://www.photo-freeware.net/raw-shooter-essentials.php There are more of these transfer utils at this site including the cam2pc util mentioned.
Does anyone have experiences with iView?
Steve (July 23, 2006 @ 3:06 pm)
I tried out iView last week on the Mac, and while it looks pretty good, it didn’t seem to make much sense for me to use it since it replicates most of the library functions that are already inside Aperture.
If you’re looking for a PC solution, it does look pretty complete though.
Steve (May 22, 2007 @ 10:18 am)
I realize this is an old thread, and kind of off topic, but I’m not sure who to ask this question to…
My office needs a photo organization system that can live on a server, and be accessed by both Macs and PCs, and is fairly easy to use.
We have a combination of stock art and digital camera photos that we would like to condense into one library that would be searchable by anyone in the company.
Any help would be appreciated, thanks.
Steve