Folders structure

[Mattia Panciroli]

Hi everyone, I post here a mail I wrote to Peter few days ago:

Hi Peter, I'm Mattia, from Italy. First of all, thanks for the help "The DAM Book" gave to me setting up my DAM. That book is the holy bible for every digital photographer! I write to you because I would like to explain to you my folder structure scenario.

I chose to not make buckets (but I'm still thinking on it), but I adopted your folder structure with a Raw_Archive folder, a Working folder, etc.

My doubts regard the lower level, the name to assign to the folders containing photos.

For a 1 day shoot I call the folder something like that: 20100629 Diane Photoshoot.

But I defined three others type of shoot in my scenario:

1. n-day continuative shoot (e.g. a travel, 9 day in Japan)
2. n-day not continuative shoot (e.g. home renovation, photos of the work in progress, not every day)
3. n-day recurrent shoot (e.g. photos of my home, or of my pet)

Currently, for case 1 I create one folder, with the starting date of the shoot (Japan from 20100319 to 20100329, I called the folder 20100319 Japan). For the case 2 I do not have ideas and for case 3, I create one folder for day of shoot. But I'm not satisfied..

I have some ideas and options, but I would like to have some advise from you. What would you do if you'd be me?

Two clarification: this is only about the folder structure, I manage the organization of the photos in Lightroom. The date for me is very important, at least as the subject.

Any ideas? Thanks

[ScottBuckel]

First one of the things I like about this forum is we sign with our real names.

Before I read Peter's books I split things by subject and it got very confusing.  Since I read Peter's book I realized that has the most simple system out there. I archive my raw files using Peter's bucket system although my modification is to add and remove hard drives instead of burning DVD's (this will be changing very soon and I will be going back to DVD's).  For all of those scenarios you list you can do using catalog sets or collections depending on the software you use.

I went to Ireland earlier this year with a friend, I imported the images with a keyword of Ireland, so if I want to see the entire group I search for the keyword Ireland.

I have been photographing a local water fall and mountain park for the past two years on at least a monthly basis and I am adding the images to a collection after each shoot.  If I want to review my progress on this project I can review the collection.

I have collections for all of the pets and for friends and family as well.

I will also use the appropriate IPTC fields for people and places as well.

My recommendation keep your system simple as you will be able to maintain your images in a consistent manner.

HTH,

Scott

[Mattia Panciroli]

Thanks for the answer Scott. As you can see I updated my nickname..

Scott, I use to use keywords, metadata fields, collections and smart collections. I thiink I've reached a good workflow, thanks to Peter Krogh's The DAM Book and many other readings.

I carefully read the chapter about naming folders and files and I see that Peter names folder with some mnemonic name, without dates. But Peter doesn't mention if he structure this folders with subfolders.

Even if I can organize my different scenarios with keywords and collections, I have to store the photos on disk too, so: how? Without dates the job is quite easy, but I would keep dates while naming folders. They helps me to mantain a timeline, searching  photos outside Lr.

Scott, how do you organize folders inside you RAW_XXX folders?

[ScottBuckel]

Mattia -

I do use subfolders that are organized by date and sometimes they will have a little more info like:  2010-05-05 Downtown LA, but it is usually just the date within the raw folder.  The key concept from Peter's system is to create buckets so that one readily archive the images so they can be easily recovered upon a disaster.

BTW we generally sign the bottom of the post in this forum see http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?topic=717.0

Scott

[billseymour]

Mattia-

I sometimes include a date range in folders/subfolders, but I make the date information secondary to the basic bucket structure:

Bucket001_upto_100203
Bucket002_upto_100428
Bucket003_upto_100713

I maintain the basic abstract and sequential bucket structure, but also can give myself a bit of extra date information.

Also: I always use the date structure: YY/MM/DD (so 100713= July 13, 2010), because in any situation where the date is part of sorting alphabetically, the YYMMDD structure generates a proper chronological order (year first, then numeric month, then day). You will note, however, that with a Bucket001_upto_100203 structure, the sorting is really done on the "Bucket001" "Bucket002" part of the file, so actually you could use any date structure that suited you without screwing up the Bucket sequence.

As far as subfolders within a bucket go, I pretty much do the same thing as with the buckets (although I don't generally put date info into the subfolders- just a personal preference). But I always include the Bucket number as part of the subfolder title. So:

Bucket001-upto_100203
   Sub001_A
   Sub001_B_date_info
   Sub001_C

So I can quickly see that a subfolder is from Bucket001, and I am looking at Subfolder 001_A (etc.)

Hope this is of some help. --Bill

[Mattia Panciroli]

Yes Bill, it helps.

About buckets: I'm still thinking on it. I'm just an amateur, and I don't have an high volume of shots, about 3000 shots per year. And I don't have the necessary time to organize all the photos so, I can't archive photos because I have an underdeveloped work to do. Furthermore, I think DVD size buckets are now inadequate due to the size of raw files and the the size of the folders. And BR size buckets are - for me - inadequate too, due to its cost and my low volume of shots.

So, until now, I store photos in HDs, with one online backup and an offline backup, without archive them.

As I said, I want to keep a chronological order of my folders and, without buckets, the only way is to name folders starting with dates. For n-day shots I thought about something like 201007 (July 2010), but Windows name sorting put the folder before any folder with a complete date (i.e. 20100329).

If any of you have ideas keep in mind my requisites and generally my case, I appreciate. Otherwise I think I have to change something starting from considering buckets and name differently folders.

Scott: talking about the water fall and the mountain park you photographed for about two years, how do you organized folders and subfolders? And what if photos of the same subject "fall" into different buckets?

Even if I totally adopt Peter's way I'd still have some doubts, because the scenarios described in my first post, are not explained in the book.


Thanks for your advises.

[billseymour]

Mattia-

Re "short dates":
I do a pretty simple thing to accomodate the Windows handling of 20100329 versus 201007:

Just "pad" the YYYMM date with dummy DD day information:

201007 becomes 201007xx, or 20100700, or 20100799

Now the formerly "short" date folders will line up with "long" (specific day) folders. You can fiddle with the DD being 'xx', '00', or '99' to exactly position the folder.

(This also works for files: I have many non-DAM correspondence files that start with date, and sometimes I have only a YYMM date. I pad this short date, and then the files line up properly in chronological order.

Re Buckets, or Folders (whatever size):
As I mentioned, you can also do the technique of having a Numeric (or Alpha) beginning of the folder name, followed by date information. As long as you (again) pad the Numeric prefix with leading zeroes to keep the prefix length matched up, you can use the Numeric prefix to order your folders, and use the suffix for any date info:

Folder001_July2007
Folder002_2010_ski_trip
Folder003_your_suffix_here

--Bill

[ScottBuckel]

Mattia -

The waterfall project files are in many different buckets for archive reasons.  What I do to find the images I use Lightroom collections and within the collection they are organized by date.

Scott

[Mattia Panciroli]

Mattia -

The waterfall project files are in many different buckets for archive reasons.  What I do to find the images I use Lightroom collections and within the collection they are organized by date.

Scott

Scott, can you show me how you called your waterfall project folders? I learnt the theory but I'm in search of practical examples..thank you

Mattia-

Re "short dates":
I do a pretty simple thing to accomodate the Windows handling of 20100329 versus 201007:

Just "pad" the YYYMM date with dummy DD day information:

201007 becomes 201007xx, or 20100700, or 20100799

Now the formerly "short" date folders will line up with "long" (specific day) folders. You can fiddle with the DD being 'xx', '00', or '99' to exactly position the folder.

(This also works for files: I have many non-DAM correspondence files that start with date, and sometimes I have only a YYMM date. I pad this short date, and then the files line up properly in chronological order.

Re Buckets, or Folders (whatever size):
As I mentioned, you can also do the technique of having a Numeric (or Alpha) beginning of the folder name, followed by date information. As long as you (again) pad the Numeric prefix with leading zeroes to keep the prefix length matched up, you can use the Numeric prefix to order your folders, and use the suffix for any date info:

Folder001_July2007
Folder002_2010_ski_trip
Folder003_your_suffix_here

--Bill

Thank you Bill, I already thought and tried padding dates with "xx" but it doesn't work. "00" works and I'll think on it. It works pretty well in case of a project within a month but there are (not so) limit cases that this pad is no longer suitable. An n-months project become something like "20100000" even if it starts on 20100529 and ends on 20100603.


Bill and Scott, what do you think about make one folder per day? Even if the subject is the same, even if this folders are stored into the same bucket? In this way there are many folders, but I keep a cronological order and I can organize well projects and shoot within Lr.

[ScottBuckel]

Mattia -

I ingest by date and create a folder with that date name like yesterday with the new waterfall photos they were in folder 2010-07-15 this folder will once my basic work is done I will convert to DNG and place in a DVD bucket and these files will be in a subfolder 2010-07-15 (DVD430-->2010-07-15). 

All of the derivatives will in a large folder and that structure looks something like  Derivatives-->2010.  For client work they will be archived to a derivatives DVD that will be on a shelf and a second copy will be sent off site.

HTH,

Scott

[Mattia Panciroli]

Ok, so you have a pure data-based structure without any kind of information. I think I'll create a folder per day, and more folders per day in case of different shoots, with date and a brief description.

[peterkrogh]

Mattia,
Sorry to take so long to get back to you.
As you see you can have many different schemes for folders.  But whatever you do, folders are a pretty limited organizational tool.  You can really only have one top-level organizational criteria.  It may be date, or it may be subject, or it may be how much you like the pictures.

But no matter what you choose, you will eventually find that metadata can help you make a structure around whatever you *don't* use for the folder construction.

To me it seems like a lot of work to make folders align with date or subject matter exactly.

Peter

[billseymour]

Mattia-
A couple of further thoughts re trying "a folder a day":

1. Subject matter: If you can get comfortable with using metadata to find your images, then there is really no need for finely tuned folders based on subject- you would use your metadata and searches to identify all "2009" & "house repairs" images, etc.

2. Date: I was very date-conscious initially when shifting to the DAM cataloging approach. But I found that my particular needs did not require precise tracking of dates. Further, the date of an image is always available as metadata. You might be more interested in precise dates than I am, but the point is that you already have that precise information in your image metadata, and you probably have the date included in a Filename (Mattia_YYMMDD_001...). So perhaps the need to also build a folder structure that is date-precise is a bit of overkill. (-which sort of echoes Peter's observation that such a structure is a lot of work to maintain.)

I remember a concept from the first DAM book (probably in the second version too, I imagine) saying essentially: Do everything you need to do, but not more than you need to do. If you can satisfy yourself that you have captured the required information in the normal course of DAM cataloging, you might find you don't need to do as much at the folder level.
--Bill