Collecting and organizing

[sublevel4]

I am looking for recommendations of collecting and organizing a larger collection of photos.
In the process of building a redundant home server i have been reminded of the amount of photos i have and how disorganized they are. They come from cameras, phones. other computers, backups of old computers. Some saved by date, some by event, some have not organization to them at all.
I would like to have something scan and collect all the files and put them in some type of date structure. I would like to be able to do this on the server so that i can share with other computers. There is a little catch. We have a mixed os network, there are 3 macs, a windows pc, a linux pc, and then the redundant server plus a few Roku's that i would like to have access as well. The sharing is secondary to the scanning and organizing, the more automated this can be the better.

Thanks,
Dylan

 

[ricosuave]

My organization method is to save photos in folders by camera. I don't bother to do subfolders of years. I let Aperture take care of that. These are the steps I suggest for you IF YOU DONT HAVE APERTURE OR LIGHT ROOM:

1. Use HoudahSpot to find the JPGs and limit the search by 2000 photos.
2. Tag each photo by Camera_Date_Time.JPG using A Better Finder Rename (it likes to process 2000 or less at a time).
3. Organize each photo into into their corresponding folder using Big Mean Folder Machine. It can add them into subfolders by date as well.

Good Luck

 

[MCAsan]

Get Lightroom and plan how you want you folders and subfolders to be organized. Personally I do year and subfolders for each day of photos. I use keywords on import to provide more was to search. I also use an import preset that complies my copyright info and does basic adjustments I want done to all my images.

 

[ricosuave]

Get Lightroom and plan how you want you folders and subfolders to be organized. Personally I do year and subfolders for each day of photos. I use keywords on import to provide more was to search. I also use an import preset that complies my copyright info and does basic adjustments I want done to all my images.

Does Lightroom allow you to name the originals with the tags I specified?

 

[MCAsan]

Does Lightroom allow you to name the originals with the tags I specified?

The photo files should already have EXIF fields for date/time, camera, lens, location (if GPS equipped) populated by the camera when the image was made. Personally I don't see value in using Exif field contents part of the file name. You can use Exif fields, just like keywords, to search for images.

Do you the 30 day free trial of LR CC/6. http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-lightroom.html

 

[sublevel4]

Ahh yes I always forget about lightroom as it is not something i use everyday like photoshop and illustrator. So i do have access to Lightroom.

So i would use Lightroom to import all my photos and move them to one place and organize them into the defined structure in a new location on the server. Then all my other computers could access this directory for file browsing.

Thanks for the reminder and the great advice.

Dylan

 

[ChrisA]

So i would use Lightroom to import all my photos and move them to one place and organize them into the defined structure in a new location on the server. Then all my other computers could access this directory for file browsing.

No. Your other computers would use Lightroom to access the lightroom library. I would not go directly to the directory structure.

Your folders and file names would have some odd names that are not very readable and certainly NOT searchable. If you have more than a few thousand or so files, just give up in using folder structures and use the keywords and EXIF data to find images

 

[sublevel4]

Right now i have been collecting anything Photography in a Photo library folder. This folder i have just been putting folders of photos i find into one place. My thought process was that i could take and, using lightroom, sort them and put them all sorted by date into a new structure. But that may not be the best way. I have other devices that would access the images, more from a view perspective ex. showing visitors family photos via my media server. None of my other devices have lightroom they would just be accessing the collection in the directory.

 

[logista]

I use Ingestamatic to copy files from my cards and from folders. It will use EXIF data in file names, and put images in a folder structure of your choosing. So I have it put the camera name in the file name and then sort it into a year/month/day folder in my photo archive. Scans are a bit different: I use the existing filename and then add the dpi at the end, but still put it year/month/day in the scan archive.

It's a bit clunky, but you can make presets to handle different metadata needs. If you can't imagine needing to use it later, you'll be better off with Lightroom. It can handle filename changes on import, and will put images in date folders if you'd like. You can have LR move images to the new folder or only copy them (just in case you want to verify before deleting the old ones).

If you can be sure your other devices won't move or change the photos, you can use LR to organize however you'd like (and point the other devices to the photos' folders). But you must be sure to ONLY use LR to organize/move them. If they're moved or modified without LR knowing about it, LR will get mad at you and make your life miserable.