The "other" photos - what to do?

[pvonk]

I'm curious - what others do when they receive photo files from family/friends that may be originals or may not be originals and may have edited file names (like "ourNewCar.jpg")?  Do you keep them in a completely different area on the hard drive or do you incorporate them in the DAM structure?  If so, how do you classify them?  Originals, derivatives, maybe some third category?

- Pierre

[peterkrogh]

Pierre,
In general, I have treated these images in the same way as all of my photos: they go in a camera original (RAW) bucket without particular regard to what they are mixed with, and they get sorted out by catalog software. In the past I have also put them inthe derivative buckets, but the concept of the Camera Original buckets is that it has one and only one copy of every image I want to keep, in as near to the original form as I can.

For the family point and shoot, I have started to collect these JPEG files into their own buckets, and stopped intermingling these with my RAW files.  There's no huge reason to do it, but there are several small reasons.  The most compelling of these is that I'm getting the feeling that I will probably convert some or all of these JPEG files to DNG before too long. 

Lightroom (as well as other instruction-set-based image editors) may make converting the JPEG files to a more extensible wrapper look like a good idea, and therefore keeping them segregated could be handy. 

Peter

[pvonk]

Many of these family pics are point-and-shoot, or in my daughter-in-law's case, jpgs from her raws, so these are derivatives - none are raws.  Others are scanned photos from old prints.  What I've done is create a "Legacy" folder for all these aside from the Working and Archive folders (a la DAM) that I'ved set up for my new raws.  In time I'll process these old files and eventually move them to Archive.  I think your idea of not intermingling the old files with the new raws is a good idea.

- Pierre

[purplemage]

My organization scheme includes "Scanned Photos", "Scanned Artwork" (my children's masterpieces primarily), and "Shared Photos".  This is a personal preference. I don't like to mix my sources I guess. I'm also getting darned picky about quality these days, and family members often send low res files that are lovely to look at on-screen, but don't print well. Scans are frequently done in batches and tend to require a lot of attention. Keeping them in separate folders simply makes sense for my needs.

I do organize these images within their respective categories in the same way I organize my other photos. I still archive the "originals" and store modified images separately. The concept is the same - keep a copy of each image in an archive so that it cannot be lost or damaged accidentally. All other rules apply as they would with my photographs and artwork.

One other note - as I have been organizing my photographs, I have started marking photos to share with others. My mom is thrilled to get photos of her grandkids on a regular basis, and I have found yet another benefit to keeping my images organized.

Linda