This is a big project... (just warning you).
I always do a first pass organization by projects. However, for my purposes (mostly family themed projects)... daily granualarity is way too fine. Instead, my projects are defined by the starting date of the themed event. Example might be:
2013-04-28 | Maui with friends
So even though we were there for two weeks, all the pictures are in that one project.
Then starts the organization:
- First, I will select the project and assign a geotag location for the entire set of pictures. My predefined location would be someplace on the island, with the scope of the geotag opened up to the whole island. When prompted, if I should overwrite geotag data on individual pictures... I say no. Now all the pictures have a location in Maui... either my default location, or an actual geotagged location (ex: from my iPhone GPS).
- Next, I'll go through and make an accept/reject pass... to get rid of the total crap.
- Next, I go through and assign tags. I have number of specialized "tagging pages" set up, so this is very fast to do.
- Next, I will make a pass through rating 1-4 stars. I reserve 5 stars for pictures that have additional editing. I might later make a 4* into a 5* if I feel that no editing/enhancement is necessary... but usually there is something to do.
- Next, I do the stacking (sometimes I do that before rating).
- Next I make smart albums. Selects, photos for slideshow, photos for books, etc.
- Finally, at some point, I will enhance pictures (generally with Nik Software) for these special projects (such as books).
Having said all of that, I'll give more detail on 10's of thousands of slides/negatives/prints that I have scanned.
When I go back in time, I have no idea what the actual date of the "event" might have been. Heck, I am lucky if I can pinpoint events to within a month or two... and futher back, even to within a year. However... it just does not matter. So my projects from all those scanned photos are in:
30s/40's/50's (pictures of my folks)
60's (my youth)
70's (my college years)
... then starting in 1976 (the year I was married and when I really started a photo collection)...
Folders for each year with:
YYYY-MM-DD | Event name
Now clearly... back in 1976 and for many years, we don't have a clue what the actual date is... but it really doesn't matter. I just use the above naming format for all projects because it is clean.. naturally sorts to chronological... and the vertical like makes a clean straight line down the directory separating the date and the event.
Regarding scanned projects... the other thing that we needed to (in addition to all the normal organization steps listed above)... was to adjust the time/date of the photo metadata, to replace the scanned date/time... to something that matched the event date of the project. That way, when you sort by date, they remain in order.
Hope this helped.
/Jim