Refer to my Blog for Why Use Multiple Software
My Capture One, Lightroom, Photos, Photoshop and Aperture Workflow
Part 2 – Organizing Convention
Part 3 – Working with the multiple Applications
Part I – Basic Rules
Before starting organization everyone need to write down some basic rules convention, that will be followed. These are the things that works for me, everyone has different needs and style, so choose the one that best suits you making sure you write them down.
1. Only one level of folder
I tried different options of multiple level of folders , Place name->Year name, Year->Places., event name->days, country->city->year.. , all made it very tough to look for later. Finally get rid of ev
erything and kept one level, which
is much much easier to manage.
2. Don’t start a name with year
Of all the things I tried, this was least useful, which might sound counter intuitive, but believe me after few years, it is hard to know which year it was. Was it 2012, ’13 or ’14. won’t have any clue now. Now all the photos have exif data which stores the date time and year, there is absolutely no reason to keep the day, month and year in the name. Rarely I look for photo based on the year, it’s mostly based on an event or location, then the year.
3.Keep less images in the catalog with external backup
Easier said than done. We are (at least I’m) lazy to the review and delete at the time of import or just after import. Since we can’t easily choose which one delete, the catalog is getting quite bigger. Other problem with the deletion, we might need some part of the deleted image.
One solution that works for me is keep an external backup while importing, then it’s quite easy to delete in the catalog. That way I immediately delete everything that’s looks under exposed/ overexposed, slightly blurry, face not clear. Next purge is if there are 10 similar shots, I just keep one or two and delete all others, knowing well that I have backup. When working on the photo, if I need do HDR, get a better face of one person in a group photo, or any thing else then I need I can always go back to the related ones easily by using the file name and date. This way I keep 300 images instead of 3000 images after a trip in the catalog.
It’s not that expensive as well, For me the even with D810, the average image size is 50MB, most of the other cameras are less than half that. So a 8TB ($215) can hold 160,000 images, which is 600 images every week for more than five years. Or comes down to just a $1 for 1300 images.
K Nathan's Photo Blog 