Establish a Photo Library
Everyone has different ways of organizing their pictures. The really only wrong way is no organization at all; unfortunately, this is the most common. Your mileage may vary but I will try to outline my approach that seems to serve me well. First off, my pictures are family centric. I don’t have clients or jobs that are clear ways of separating your pictures.
Let’s start out with a few rules:
- Assign a picture a filename and never change it. Use a naming convention that will grow overtime and be consistent. Most Canon’s have a naming convention of IMG_NNNN.JPG. That might sound like a good start, but you will quickly outgrow 10,000 pictures. The filename should never change after it is loaded into a library. Many times I have shared pictures and need to reference back to the original
- Do not modify originals. Never edit the official copy of a picture to make an adjustment (crop, contrast, etc.) but metadata is ok (GPS, keywords, etc.). Non-destructive edits are also ok (e.g. Lightroom).
- A picture is only in place in the library. Don’t make copies with in your official folder structure for the sake of making copies. Let me explain. If you copy the an original and suffix the filename with _BW to represent a black and white version of it, that’s fine to have both copies as long as the location and names of the files are predictable. Don’t get me wrong, I often make copies of the originals in a working directory for some creative project. However, the originals are in their safe, known place and there is no confusion about the where the golden version of the pictures are. The side benefit is you have to only tag a picture once.
Naming Convention
So what’s in a name? I have tried a few patterns and this works well for me. I have 2 different naming conventions:
- Date Centric: The Date Centric pattern is used for all pictures that I have taken using a digital camera. The filename is YYYYMMDD_NNNN, where NNNN is the number from the original file. An example file is 20100101_1234.jpg. In Lightroom, the pattern looks like:
- Sequence Centric: This format is used for all pictures that I receive from other people or scans. The filename is PNNNNNNN.jpg, where NNNNNNN is a sequence number that started at 1 (zero padded). An example file is P1234567.jpg. In Lightroom, the pattern looks like:
So why 2 different? Well, at first, I only used Date Centric. It was nice and clean and seem very easy to find things. However, I soon found out that I didn’t always know what the date was at the time of import. Often with scan of family pictures, the date information was late arriving if even known. Sometimes, it would even change. That caused huge headaches because I would have to break rule #1 and rename the file. Therefore, the genesis of the Sequence Centric approach. I could use the Sequence Centric approach for all types but I enjoy the natural organization of the dates compelling. As listed above, I also use the Sequence Centric for other people’s digital photographs that have full EXIF information (dates). However, I find that not everyone is diligent about keeping their time AND date accurate in their camera. I just don’t mean Daylight Savings issues, either. Regardless, there is this visual indicator to me if this is mine or someone else’s.
Folder Structure
Library
2000’s
2001
2001-01
2001-01-01
2001-01-03
etc.
2001-02
etc.
2002
etc.
2010’s
2010
2011
PIX
P0000
P0000100
P0000200
etc
P1000
etc.
Output
Originals
The date centric guys are dynamically built (except for the decade) via Lightroom during import:
That coupled with the naming format makes pattern #1 really easy to implement.
The PIX folder structure just supports the sequenced approach. Each leaf folder supports a max of 100 files. The nesting just makes it easier to navigate around. Unfortunately, Lightroom cannot support the automatic creating of the folder structure. However, I just import and move around, as necessary. I have also used IMatch and it is easy to script either pattern.
All of the important, sacred stuff is under the Library folder. But I have also listed Output. This is my default folder to make working copies of any my pictures. Anything from photoshopping to exporting to print at Sams. I could lose any picture under this folder and not shed a tear. The Originals folder is an optional one. Since I do modify my library pictures (metadata only), it is another place to go when bad things happen. Lightroom can “make a second copy to” when importing. I never do anything with these. The only overhead is storage. One other note about the Originals. I use DNG’s and Lightroom will put the original CR2 here during the import. But RAW vs. JPG and DNG vs. CR2 is a discussion for another day.