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Organizing your images before you Import them into Lightroom.
I am usually pretty good about organizing my images into logical folders and subfolders before importing them into Lightroom, but for the last couple of months I have been fighting a recurring flu and other related ailments and the logical part of my brain has flown right out the window.
When I finally sat down to redo the mess, it hit me that this might be a good time to see what some other Lightroom users are doing to better organize their files. As usual John Nack turned out to be a great resource by pointing me to the Adobe Design Center and a set of (very good) tutorials by Rob Sheppard. I of course say very good because Rob Sheppard turns out to use pretty much the exact same logic and structure that I use (when my brain is functioning properly), when organizing his files. You can see the complete Rob Sheppard tutorial here - Setting up an organizational system in Lightroom.
A simple recap (my version) of the system:
1. Set up a basic (and consistent) file structure on your computer, ie. year / location & date / specific content / sub-category of specific content. The type of photography you do will determine the best structure for you.
2. Set up a list of (consistent) keywords that will allow you to easily search your image database.
3. When downloading a new set of images to your hard disk drive, first set up the specific content folder and then download your images from your memory card to that folder. If there are sub-categories of specific content they can be divided into multiple folders within the specific content folder after they have been downloaded to your hard disk drive.
4. Make sure to create a back-up to another (external) drive of all your images before continuing to the next step.
5. Set up your folders and sub-folders in your Lightroom Library to reflect your hard disk drive organization and import the folders you are working with to the related locations within the Lightroom Library.
5. Have fun and please let me know what method you have devised to better organize your files before Importing to Lightroom.
Comments (13)
From the very begin I appreciated iPhoto's system of building up a database driven library where I never had to touch the original folders. iPhoto physically creates folders on the hard drive and organizes them by date. In iPhoto you never saw it.
With Lightroom I completely changed my organization. I put every image into one single folder and have Lightroom the work. I make extensive use of collections and keywords.
My folder on the hard drive is a mess - and I don't care! I never look into it and use Lightroom's database to maintain a proper organization.
I have a double backup strategy: Pictures from the camera are backed up immediately on an external HD. Apple's excellent Time Machine keeps copies of my Lightroom catalog and the managed images.
I am considering reworking my photo organization in Lightroom. I currently have a folder system based on the DVD bucket principle of Peter Krough. I am considering having only one folder and using collections for dividing the folder into the bucket system and also using keywords along with other collections to find specific photos. I currently have over 15,000 photos in Portfolio.
I am in the process of scanning old family photographs going back to the 1800s. I have scanned negatives, prints, slides and also have current digital photos. The scanned photos are in no organized sequence. They are just as I took them from albums, shoe boxes, etc. Therefore, there is no logical sequence of dates, photo sources, type of scanned original, etc. Additionally, there are many duplicates because the source of the photos came from several family members.
Why one folder? I believe it would help, with proper use of keywords and subject collections, to manage what really is a disorganized mess. One advantage of a single folder is stacks could be used.
Wow. I can't really imagine giving up my hierarchical, folder based filing system and just trusting the software to deal with it for me, but I guess this shows how old school I really am.
If I had a spare computer with some big hard disk drives available I would probably set up a system like you guys suggest, just to see how well it holds up.
I have (of course) organized my pictures in a Shoebox (-that's the name of the parent directory), where every shoot is sub-divided in a hierarchical folder structure:
/Shoebox/2008/2008-02-18-Description of the shoot/{pictures}
This way I get a basic and hierarchical structure right from import, where I in a quick and dirty way easily can find most of my pictures just be scanning the Folder tree in Lightroom or searching on "description of the shoot".
I use Collections to manage collections traversing several folders, as I find that folders manage a particular shoot nicely on their own.
(I import directly to Lightroom as described above; backup is handled by TimeMachine to an external drive.)
Just imagine: You have properly backed up your images and the Lightroom catalog. What would you lose if you placed your images in one single folder and delegated the organization to Lightroom?
The Collection pane in Lightroom takes over the hierarchy you set up previously with folders?
George, find a spare hard drive and give it a try :-)
I strongly recommend not doing this.
Organize by date. Use Keywords Collections for Themes and Structure.
The argument has not been made any better than by John Beardsworth - so here is a link to it!
http://www.beardsworth.co.uk/news/index.php?id=P1071
http://www.beardsworth.co.uk/news/comment.php?id=1140_0_1_0_C
Thank you again for all the interesting comments. I will give all your suggestions some serious thought.
Dear,
I only recently started to use lightroom, and use a really simple and logical way to organise my photos and it is as follow:
-Download photo to internal HD under YYYY/MM/DD with a subfolder for each year and sub sub folder for each months, once in a while (when de internal HD is quite full or when i prepare i trip somewhere) I move the photos from the internal HD into a external HD.
- This logical chronological structure is only valid when you are not shooting 1000s of shots a week but it pretty simple and quite efficient.
Gary
I don't find it particularly difficult to copy a dated folder of images on my camera to another folder on my hard drive organized by month and year. This allows me to use Bridge or other File management program to view images. LR is great but I don't want to be entirely dependent on it. Plus since I went digital in 2000 I've used ACDSEE, Photosuite,ULEAD,PHoto Explosion, Dimage Viewer, Nikon Viewer, Elements, PS, and finally LR. The one constant was the organization of my pictures. I hope and expect to be using LR for the foreseeable future but I ain't counting on it.
The one thing we can count on is that there will be a more advanced version, a better program, another program that does some things that Lightroom doesn't, or a program that just happens to do one thing so quickly and well that it's worth the time to do it.
If you organize folders by year, month, and day it's easy to locate what you've backed up and all the other programs will know where and how to look for the files. Lightroom still won't have any problem finding them all.
On the other hand, I totally agree that what works best for an individual is what that individual should do until knowing that something else feels better.
I truly admire all the people who put their trust into the software and have no folder structure at all.
Thanks to LR's ability to write xmp directly into my original JPEGs and the fact that I have a folder structure by year-month-date I will be always able to find any image I want whether I use LR or something else. I can even find images by just using Spotlight in OS X and filter by keywords. Bullet proof if you ask me. Of course assuming my originals are safely backed up often. Which they are.
Regards,
Marek
Great comments from everyone and truly amazing how different our image filing systems and our level of trust concerning software databases is.
Since I am both paranoid and schitzophrenic, I actually keep both a date based and subject based image filing and storage system. The date based system is never (or rarely) touched (it is my insurance policy)and the subject based system is my day to day system, which I feel free to weed, edit and use with various software applications.
I set up a folder for each day. Sometimes more than one if I have landscape/still as well as family photos. I use the keywords to describe and locate my photos.
I do need to start backing up using Lightroom. So far I backup the entire hard drive each night.