Starting the Buckets

[bavanor]

Reading through your book about the bucket strategy, I have decided to start my own buckets.  But, here is the question, where to start?  Would it be best to start with photos taken since the beginning of this year, 2006?  Or would it be better to go back through the archives and start from the beginning of the digital workflow?

Because I am starting this, I don't want to have to go back and do it again, so wish to decide now, where to start?  Any thoughts from people.

Aaron

[peterkrogh]

Aaron,
When I started dividing into buckets, I did start from the beginning and dumped all my data on CDs into DVD-sized buckets.  This would be a reasonable way to start, as would simply making an estimate of how many early buckets you need and starting to number the current work with enough room to put the earlier stuff in a prior sequence.
Peter

[bavanor]

That is what I was thinking too, but was curious how other people are handeling this.

aaron

[Doug Willis]

Peter,

I am also now nearly ready to start the buckets, I want to finish up a bit metadata entering, need to rename files and do some dng conversions.

However, one point about this bucket system which I need to just double check. When everything has been assigned to buckets, you must rely on the catalog software such as IVMP to "remap" your entire system and keep a list/index of where every image actually is sitting. It is only by having a catalog software like IVMP that you can know where the files actually are and that their integrity is ok. Virtual sets are not much help unless the location of the underlying physical file is known.

If you lose your software i.e IVMP, then you lose your list and means of finding anything or knowing where images are. You would have to resort to filename searches in Windows or searchlight on a Mac.

Unless you reinstall IVMP or something equal to "remap/rebuild" your index file, the buckets will be largely useless (except maybe dates in bucket names) to locate anything.

I am thinking about what I would have to do if someone handed a stack of DVDs with sequential bucket names and said, "everything is here". I guess I am stating the obvious, but sometimes I find to state the obvious helps make things and implications of actions clearer.

Regards

[peterkrogh]

Doug,
In my system as I have it configured, I can also find by a finder search, or a metadata search like spotlight, so, no, I am not entirely dependent on iView. 

In Bucket
RAW_234

are folders

Oberon_St
NCB_Headshots
Kittner_House

Also, since I entered bulk metadata when I first saw the images, I could run a spotlight query on Kittner, and the files would be found in two different ways (folder and keyword).

What iView does is to let me have a greater ability to filter and group the images (images for Kittner slideshow may have the best Kittner images from many buckets combined, cross-referenced by ratings, and then final selects by hand).

And, when you are ready to move on to the next software after iView, you just push the important information back into the files as keywords, or whatever the best embedded metadata tool is at the time. So I could put the phrase "Kittner Slideshow 2006" as a keyword into all files in this catalog set, and any keyword-reading software can see and use this information.

Clear?
Peter