Folder structure for photographs

[nicholasg]

I’m curious how other people organize their folders of photographs. I have a structure based on the year the photo was taken: -

2021
2022
2023

Then MM_Name of event or MM_Location of trip folders where the photos are stored.

The problem is with so many years it’s a bit of a pain to find a specific trip. I was thinking of moving to top-level structure of: -

Vacations
Family events
Music events
….

Then MM_Location or MM_name of event folders where the photos are stored.

Anyone have other suggestions?

Thanks!

Nicholas

 

[mollyc]

I do Year-->Month, but make use of keywords in Lightroom. My head works chronologically and I don't really shoot many events per se, just random stuff throughout the days. But for vacations, or kids' sporting events, etc., I will just keyword and then find them later that way.

Keywords may not work with your organizing program, though.

 

[_timo_redux_]

My top-level directory has "A primary photographic RAWs" (in addition to "B finished photographic files" and "C catalogs" and "D projects" and "E evaluation" and "F film scans" and "G GPX files".) Within folder "A" I do "YYYY MM DD" for everyday photographs. If an event happens, say with a lot of pictures or some place geographically away from home I'll start a new folder (and new "session" in Capture One) with "YYYY MM DD <place>" or, much less frequently, "YYYY MM DD <event>".

Before 2019 I was in Aperture, with everything keyworded nicely, and that was the best way to find photos. But I haven't been able to bring myself to keyword in the much-less robust Capture One world.

 

[Clix Pix]

I am another who has a self-organized hierarchical structure of Year/Month/Day. If there is some special event or trip the images from that are put into a separate folder included with the relevant year and month as well as specific day or time frame of the occasion (i.e., 2022 / 10 (October) / 07 October [Name of Artist(s) Concert]). I shoot pretty much daily and most of my images are not of people or events, but rather macros, closeups, abstracts and the wildlife which shares my surroundings (a natural environment in the midst of suburbia: a small lake which attracts many wild creatures) in my particular community.

Even though my files go back years I am able to recall with pretty good accuracy when I attended a specific event or when I shot a particular series of photos. Although DXO PhotoLab 6 does not offer a DAM per se, it does allow for the use of keywords, but I don't put them in as part of my image processing and editing routine, and don't really feel the need to do so. Even back in the days when I used Aperture (RIP) I didn't do the keywords thing. Basically, I refuse to use any software program's potentially limiting or proprietary Catalog or DAM.

Sometimes I will have images in more than one location; for instance, I will put an image into the Year/Month/Day folder, but I might also, if I think to do it at the time or later, will stick it into an additional, undated but relevant folder such as "Wildlife Around the Lake," with a further breakdown into categories (Backyard Birds, Water Birds, Squirrels, Other Creatures, etc.). I really to update that one of these days.....

 

[Jumpthesnark]

I have four main folders, and each describes the folders nested within them:

Lightroom By Date
Lightroom Exports
Folders Non-Lightroom
Raw Takes and Mid-Edit

Lightroom By Date contains folders that are archived work. They are completed shoots. The folders within, named and arranged by date*, contain images that have been renamed and searchable metadata has been added to them. Also within each folder is the related Lightroom catalog. I create a new LR catalog for each shoot, so the finished work is portable and easy to manage if I need to reopen a folder and work on the images again.

Lightroom Exports are folders containing whatever images I exported from a shoot. They have the same name as the associated Lightroom folder, but followed by the word EXPORTS and sometimes a client's name, publication, etc.

Folders Non-Lightroom are if I have exported TIFF or DNG or large Photoshop files, so I can then do further work with them outside of Lightroom, such as stacking astrophotography images, etc. Also they are for when I import a card and I only need to work one image in Photoshop. These are images that I have worked but they don't have LR catalogs.

Raw Takes and Mid-Edit is what it sounds like. It's my first stop after importing cards onto my Mac. It's essentially my "working" folder for all of my tasks before I get to Lightroom - editing, culling, sorting, renaming, adding metadata. If I import cards but I'm not editing them immediately, this is where the raw take goes. It's also where projects go if I'm working on a shoot that will take multiple days.

*My naming convention for individual images and for the folders they go into is as follows:

If I shot photos today (Jan. 25, 2023) of a rodeo, I would create a folder on my Mac named 230125-Rodeo and I'd import my raw take into it. I start with 23 not 2023 because the "20" is redundant. All of my folders and images this century would start with "20..." so what's the point? All I need is 23 (year) 01 (month) 25 (date) and Rodeo (the subject).

The following is done in Photo Mechanic, but the same would apply to Adobe Bridge and any other software that is used for sorting, editing, culling and managing metadata. I import my images into the 230125-Rodeo folder and then I rename them to match the folder. I sort them sequentially by time taken. And I have made sure my cameras all have the time and date set correctly, that way, as I'm doing my edit, photos from different cameras appear in sequence at the time they were taken.

When I rename my images sequentially, I do not start with 001. I start with 100. I want to keep the lowest numbers available for later.

I rename all the images in the order they were shot, so they become 230125-Rodeo_100, 230125-Rodeo_101, 230125-Rodeo_102, etc. After renaming, I do my edit. Some images will be deleted. Some images will be tagged for the second edit. I go through the entire take, tagging all the images I like. Then I start over again, editing just the tagged images this time. When I have decided on the best images, I add a star in Photo Mechanic. Stars can be read in Lightroom, so it's easy to go right to my best work later when I'm doing my post.

Remember that I initially renamed the entire take starting with 100. Now I re-rename just these best images starting with 001. That way, I always know that the images I thought were the best are the ones with the lowest numbers, and they float to the top of a finder folder when sorted by name. I don't need to open an image in Preview or anything else to know that it's one of my favorites, just because of the filename.

So when I open my Lightroom By Date folder, I see a series of folders, each containing finished work, with the most recent folder at the top, followed by the second most recent, etc. If I sort that folder by date OR name, I get the same results. And since all of the images have searchable metadata, I know it's easy to open the main folder and simply search for "rodeo" or "horse" or "cowboy" or whatever, and the images with those keywords will appear in the search.

When I am ready to do my post, I open Lightroom and create a new catalog. It goes inside the 230125-Rodeo folder and I call it the same name. I do my work in LR, export the images to a new folder, send those images to wherever they need to go and then I copy all those folders to my main archive. After I've made multiple copies of those folders on different hard drives, I can erase them off my Mac.

This might be overkill for a lot of people, but it probably takes longer to describe it than to do it. And I have decades of work, so it's the way I've found that I can wrap my arms around a seriously huge archive of files, to do my work and then be able to find the image I want, quickly, often years later.

Hope that helped!

 

[someoldguy]

I , too , use year/month/day plus a keyword (like 20190919 Shoes). If I go off on a vacation for a few days ; I'll set up a folder for the trip ; say OREGON2008 ; and then place subfolders by date and location within that trip folder . I use Bridge (for as long as it's still free) to ingest images into my computer , and don't use any kind of markers or colors . Trying to keep stuff as simple as possible .

 

[tizeye]

I only use year as a master folder for my client work and list client jobs as subfolder within year. That way I can keep two years active (current and last year) and archive easily tag the entire year folder to archive of the active drive to a secured archive drive. For personal, it is by place or events. Frequent or related places or events will have their master folder with separate occasions in their own subfolder. I may have a master folder for State Parks, another for National Parks, and list visits to the various parks as separate subfolders. If multiple to the same place would have a month/year designation. Finally, within each folder there are two additional subfolders with the original RAW files in the primary folder, as they are processed, they are exported to a "full size (abbreviated "FS") folder" and or "2500px (or whatever size) folder". Also on export, file names for reduced sizes will include the pixel size in the file name, but the sequence number between the full size and reduced size will be the same. I got into that habit when delivering real estate photo to Realtors. MLS required 1500px and full size wouldn't even load into MLS (or even on this forum), and they knew, for example, that the kitchen photo they liked 123 Main 1500px - 15 was the same as 123 Main - 15.

 

[Ray2]

I get it. We travel around 4 months each year and have been enjoying photography for 60 years. It can be a challenge finding specific shots of that specific door somewhere in, I think, Italy.

Like you, I use folder for year, date/month within. One of the within folders contains photos that were “published”, typically via albums. In an LR I keep Collections of those published folders. Used to keep them in Aperture, then iPhoto, then Photos, then got tired of Apple marketing beanies constantly changing stuff and now keep it in LR. Additionally I keep a Keepers folder, half dozen genres within. Very few images but subects I enjoy and pics I consider good.

I do keyword - the 1/2 dozen genres + “Published”. I rate. Filtering metadata tends to get me what I’m looking for without pain. Oddly enough I tend to remember the cameras I used for memorable images. Another metadata filter.

 

[VampyricGentleman]

I’m still very much using what Windows Import creates and I doubt I will ever change
Top Folder > Year
Subfolder Year/Month/Day General Title which is the subject, location, event etc
File name: general title relevant number of zeros digit.filetype

 

[tcphoto1]

I'm a freelance Photographer and I create a new Session with the Clients name and date for each shoot. Once the shoot is finished, I will cull the images and give a star rating to each image. Once the selects are determined, I will edit and add them to the folder and backup on at least separate drives. I do the same thing for personal projects along with vacations and holidays. After 29 years of shooting, I've had only a couple issues finding specific images.

 

[robgendreau]

I use dated folders because I have to use something, and it makes it a tad easier to keep track of backups. I did fuss with names with events and so on until wiser people convinced me that was wasting my time, so some really old images are in such folders.

But I never rename files or add info to folders now, and instead use photo metadata for adding info to images. A lot easier to use, more robust, and that's what it was designed for. Keywords mostly. I geolocate too, so I don't have to add place names and such, being basically a lazy person, and since I do a lot of outdoors photography. All this means I can find anything going back a decade or more.

 

[stillcrazyman]

I use Year/Month/Day folders organized by location - as I tend to go to the same spots more than one time. If I find someplace new, I'll start a new folder.

 

[cSalmon]

I've been creating custom tag names and writing comments(Get Info) to help understand folders - such as "Backed up on Disk 2201 & 2202". (the 22 relates to the year I started using that drive)
This way I can easily see in the finder list if a folder of photos is backed up and where. With custom named tags I can have easy visual references to folders if I know I'm going to be pulling stuff from there and the custom name reminds me what the color means or I forget after a bit of time.

I also custom tag my select Raw files this way I always know my selects down the road - star ratings are associated with a specific Editor. If, when, I jump to a new piece of software I don't want to go through a folder of files looking for my previous selects.

As far as naming YYMMDD_"as much info as I can think of"_Raws(Layers)(Jpgs). I'm no longer trying to keep folder names simple I want info to hopefully prevent me from opening up wrong folders when searching. It's very easy to adjust the finder's column width if I want to read folder names.

I've also tried to create text hierarchy charts of folder names of my external hard drives so I can go through those without plugging in each drive ( sometimes I get busy and don't keep up on those spreadsheets) Select All, copy and paste into a text only format will give me a list of all the folders on a drive that can then been placed in a spreadsheet so I know what's on a drive without plugging it in.

 

[JamesMay82]

I also use I use Year/Month/Day folders but I'm just taking family photos and sadly we don't take lots of vacations so its easy to remember the years and months when we do go away.

I use Lightroom which organises my folders as Year/Month/Day folders and I also use apple photos which obviously has its files hidden within the package of the application.

The reason I keep both is a back up as I don't trust apple enough and I could easily see their packaged library getting corrupt.