[ajack]

I am looking for other amateur / nonprofessional opinions about how to organize photos in Lightroom.

I am convert/refugee from Apple's Aperture program, which I really liked but was discontinued about 2 years ago so it's time I find a new home for my photos.

I am casting about trying to figure out how to organize my photos. Folders? Collections? Tags & smart collections? My photographs are a mix of random snapshots (either on my DSLR or my iPhone) and also more intense shooting sessions where I may take hundreds of photos in a short period of time. Since these aren't paid & discrete gigs I am particularly wondering how non-professionals organize their photos in Lightroom.

Any & all opinions welcomed!

[Bruce Clark]

Hi

Suggest you watch this.

You Tube

You Tube

Plenty of useful tips which certainly helped me understand.

There are no hard and fast rules but for me I went away from a date based folder structure to a topic based one.

ie

Nature
> Flowers
> Birds
> Animals

Places
>Australia
>> South Australia
>>>Kangaroo Island
>New Zealand

Events
>Weddings
>Birthdays


and so forth. Naturally there are photos in the places folder that are in fact flowers but this I pick up in either collections or by keywords or both. It really depends on what I associate the image with and how i am likely to recall where it is stored.

One thing to remember is that if photos are managed in lightroom you should always manage your photos with lightroom. Otherwise photos will get 'lost' and Lightroom will have to relocate them. It can be fixed but can be quite frustrating at first.

[jatrax]

I store images in folders by day. Then in Lightroom they get keywords and put in collections if appropriate. That way even without Lightroom things are still organized by date.

[BigMackCam]

^^^ +1 The important thing here is adding key words, and being consistent with those. For instance, with photos of our cat, I add "Animals", "Cats" and "Pluto" (his name) as key words. With portraits, I will add "People", "Portraits" and the person's name (or names, if it's more than one person). It helps immensely with general and more specific Library filtering while looking for specific photos.

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Last edited by BigMackCam; 06-18-2016 at 01:53 AM.

[rod_grant]

I use folders, eg Places, People (grouped by family name, and in the case of my son's family where I have grandchildren I have sub folders by year!!), Events, Holidays, Animals, Transport, etc
It gets tricky because of overlaps (holidays are always to places) and so each holidays is a sub-folder of Places. But then I go on holidays with my wife and sometimes with others!!
Decide on an overarching system that will suit you, and then use keywords or collections to further complicate the mess.


I suggest that you start off with small group of typical files and manipulate them until you are happy with the arrangement.


I keep the original file name as part of the processed file name (eg K5_12345 Mary Smith on horse) so I can easily find the original RAW file if the JPG gets corrupted or I want to reprocess it.
I keep the RAW files in a separate catalog, grouped within ranges of 1000, - 1-1000, 1001-2000 etc.

[Peter Nutkins]

Check out this vid from Phlearn.... https://phlearn.com/ultimate-guide-workflow-lightroom-photoshop

[stevebrot]

I store images in folders by day. Then in Lightroom they get keywords and put in collections if appropriate. That way even without Lightroom things are still organized by date.

^^^^ What he said.

I import by copying into a folder for the year using the option to organize by date. Collections are created per need with keywords copiously applied both on import and as photos are processed. I am also careful to apply useful names to virtual copies so that they make sense down the road.

The catalog aspect of Lightroom is very useful and, unfortunately, inadequately documented in terms of best practice. The most powerful catalog features, IMHO?

• Keywords/ranking/flagging
• Hierarchical collections
• Virtual copies and copy-specific metadata
• "Edit in" feature allowing real time monitoring of external edits
• Comprehensive search

Steve

[Murfy]

I have 14K images, I don't organize, I just dump them all in one folder and then I keyword them. I also use metadata for sorting. when I chose photos for showing, I pick a keyword and create a smart collection. I have smart collections based on date, black and white, aspect ratio, anything I want.

I do have one folder for raw files and one folder for jpg files and then one folder for finished export files. I pull them all into lightroom, but don't create different folders or catalogs for them, I just keyword them.

I don't create separate folders because sometimes I will have photos that can fall under more than one category.
If I want to take the time to rename or sort them, I plan to do it through lightroom

[stevebrot]

inadequately documented in terms of best practice

An important thing to remember as far as best practice is concerned is to have your actual directory structure follow a natural property of the files and use collections to categorize for easy reference and retrieval. For example, my file system directories are by year and date of exposure with a few extra quirks thrown in for dealing with scans from negatives where the "original" is non-electronic. The directory structure looks something like this:

.
.
.
+ 2014
+ 2015
- 2016

10 Jan (filenames based on camera and exposure number)
21 Jan
.
.
.
16 Jun
film_scans (subdirectories by roll number)

1001 (files named by serial accession number)
1002
1003

tiffs

1004
.
.
.

Filenames for the digital camera images are managed with copy on import to Lightroom. Dealing with the film scans is a little more involved and has provision for both proof scans (most) and full resolution TIFFs for printing. I maintain a separate database for the film stuff and eventually will write a program to automatically apply camera, lens, and development metadata to the EXIF from that source where it will be available and searchable from Lightroom.

As for collections, I have top-level collections "events", "travel", organizations, and so on. A given image might live in multiple collections.

Things I regret:

• Waiting several years before being diligent with keywords
• Waiting several years before seeing the full benefit of collections
• Not having created collections for images published to Flickr (several thousand at present), Facebook, and other outlets, including prints.
• Not having a robust archive mechanism that does not depend on Adobe products to reproduce a published image.

Steve

[p38arover]

I gave up keywording in LR. It is simply too time consuming when the pics being imported bear no relationship to each other. That is, I might use the same SD card for several weeks taking one or two pics some days and lots on others. They are not all, say, "My trip to the mountains", or "Family Photos" (I don't take photos of family or anyone else). They might be "car radiator removal" and "camping set up", a disparate range of subjects.

Importing just some images and keywording those, then doing it again for a few more, etc., just takes too long.

[RGlasel]

use collections to categorize for easy reference and retrieval.

Yes, yes, yes! 100%! I can't tell you how many hours I wasted setting up directories and renaming and moving files around when all I had to do was click in the top right hand corner of the thumbnails after importing to create a quick collection that I could either dump in an existing permanent collection or save as a new permanent collection.

[Murfy]

I gave up keywording in LR. It is simply too time consuming when the pics being imported bear no relationship to each other. That is, I might use the same SD card for several weeks taking one or two pics some days and lots on others. They are not all, say, "My trip to the mountains", or "Family Photos" (I don't take photos of family or anyone else). They might be "car radiator removal" and "camping set up", a disparate range of subjects.

Importing just some images and keywording those, then doing it again for a few more, etc., just takes too long.

I agree that is a flaw, you have to reimport your card to add keywords to different set of images. what I do is just give them all the same keywords in one import, and then go back and select all the ones that don't match and remove those keywords from the selected images I just imported. But then again, I only import 10-20 images, maybe 40 at the most. There needs to be a way to select images, attach a keyword, select others, attach different keywords, then when done everything, import them all at one time.

[p38arover]

I am part way through that 2-hour video. I fell asleep watching it last night. (I shouldn't have been drinking shiraz at the time. )

[stevebrot]

I gave up keywording in LR. It is simply too time consuming when the pics being imported bear no relationship to each other. That is, I might use the same SD card for several weeks taking one or two pics some days and lots on others. They are not all, say, "My trip to the mountains", or "Family Photos" (I don't take photos of family or anyone else). They might be "car radiator removal" and "camping set up", a disparate range of subjects.

Your examples are more typical of collections. Keywords would be more like "motorcycle", "blonde", "dirt bike", "MX", "flowers", "blue flowers", "flower", "desert", "fisheye", "abstract", "Sydney", "Sydney Harbor", "harbor", "boats", and so on. After a short while, one tends to standardize, particularly if you often shoot similar subjects.


Steve

[stevebrot]

There needs to be a way to select images, attach a keyword, select others, attach different keywords, then when done everything, import them all at one time.

Keywords can be added both during and after import. I set the words in common for an import and go back after to add obvious additional to specific sequences. In some cases, I do what you describe and split the import into two or three batches of related images. They all end up in the right folders since I have them saved in by date.


Steve