Organizing photos on pc

Bob Z

What software do you use to organize photos on your pc or mac? And how do you organize them? Is there any way to rename a load of photos at once? eg jims party1 jims party 2 eyc?

Ghost Train

Bob Z wrote: »

What software do you use to organize photos on your pc or mac? And how do you organize them? Is there any way to rename a load of photos at once? eg jims party1 jims party 2 eyc?

Usually just make a folder or import photos to folder,
eg. "2009-10-21 Sideshow Bobs Wedding" Copy that set of photos to it

www.Irfanview.com does batch renaming using number and text or whatever

Picasa is okay at managing photos or even the built in photo gallary in vista

PCPhoto

I just organise my folders by date..... inside I save as filename and date.

ie. Bernard Dunne Press Conference 20Aug pic1
saved in folder 20Aug2009.

All unedited files are put into the folder with the edited/saved ones :P

try to back up every 2 weeks.

Quackles

My process is still a work in progress.. I use lightroom, I tag photos as I'm importing them (by person name, location, organisation etc.). Lightroom imports them into date folders. I manually copy those folders onto a NAS with RAID 1 (Readynas duo) on to 1.5TB disks. I keep the more recent ones on the laptop, but leave older ones on the NAS and work on them over gigabit ethernet. I also keep a copy on an external USB drive, although I'm behind on that, and I'm going to keep that offsite. I never bother renaming the photos, as I use the tags to find the images, not the image name. I have to say, I'm lightroom's biggest fan.

PCPhoto

Quackles wrote: »

My process is still a work in progress.. I use lightroom, I tag photos as I'm importing them (by person name, location, organisation etc.). Lightroom imports them into date folders. I manually copy those folders onto a NAS with RAID 1 (Readynas duo) on to 1.5TB disks. I keep the more recent ones on the laptop, but leave older ones on the NAS and work on them over gigabit ethernet. I also keep a copy on an external USB drive, although I'm behind on that, and I'm going to keep that offsite. I never bother renaming the photos, as I use the tags to find the images, not the image name. I have to say, I'm lightroom's biggest fan.

must have a look at lightroom

and also upgrade my PS2

Quackles

PCPhoto wrote: »

must have a look at lightroom

and also upgrade my PS2

You'll never go back.. I could never get into post processing til I started using it, I adore it. I'm still clueless with regards to photoshop. If one of my photos needs serious work, I make my husband do it. Isn't that what he's for? But for wb adjustments, level adjustments, sharpening, exposure adjustments etc, lightroom rocks my socks. And no, I don't get paid for this advertisement!

AnCatDubh

Quackles wrote: »

I make my husband do it. Isn't that what he's for?

Reminds me of someone

bren2002

I use picasa to view and find photos quickly, but I can't help but feel there is a better method.

I have Photoshop elements 6, but haven't really been able to get the organiser working properly.

ozzirt

I have ACDSee 10, and I am quite impressed with it's ability to organize and sort photos plus you can add descriptions etc.

One thing you must remember though is to also use this program to move your photos when sorting otherwise you will lose the comments. Unfortunately i have never found one program with all of the things i like, so I'm still doing some functions like auto adjustments with Corel Paintshop Pro Photo X2.

decsramble

I used photoshop elements 6 and then moved to lightroom. At the moment I keep the photos in folders named by date and then just tag every photo when I pull it into the library but I'm beginning to think thats a bad idea, I'm completely dependent on lightroom to allow me to find photos. It works well at the moment and I can find photos in seconds but if anything happens to lightroom or my catalog and the numerous backups then I'm in trouble

Ballyman

Another option is XnView which is free.

I have a root folder called Originals. In this folder then are other folders named YYYYMMDD - Event Name (eg. 20090821 - FEI Nations Cup) Inside of this folder then each file is named YYMMDD_XXX (eg. 090821_001 (001 increments to total amount of files))

I also have a root folder called Processed which then contains the same filders and file names as above but with processed files.

Quackles

AnCatDubh wrote: »

Reminds me of someone

Wait a minute.. Stephen? Is that you? Stop peeing about on boards and go fix my photo!

pixbyjohn

Bob Z wrote: »

What software do you use to organize photos on your pc or mac? And how do you organize them? Is there any way to rename a load of photos at once? eg jims party1 jims party 2 eyc?

Just select all, then right click and rename. Remember not to change the file extension name (.jpg or whatever). What will happen then is that all the files will have new name with a sequential number in brackets. Simple

Thoie

CKRename is the most powerful and useful free renaming tool I've ever come across - particularly useful for sequential naming, but also has wildcard/expression replacements. For example, say you've renamed everything to JimsParty1, 2, 3 and then for reason want to change them all to James_Party_1, or 001_James, it does it in a flash. It also lets you preview the name change you're about to make, so you can see if you're about to do something stupid before renaming 500 files

My folder setup is fairly basic. I have my camera set to RAW + Fine, so for each photo on the camera I have a RAW and a jpg.

Each time I download to the computer (usually each day I shoot, but sometimes not if I've been away) I create a folder called, for example, 070529 Geocaching - that one contains photos from a Geocaching trip on May 29th 2007.

Everything on my camera gets dumped into that folder. I then run a tiny batch file that creates a subfolder called RAW, and dumps all the RAWs in there.

I use the jpgs to see what I want to delete immediately, and have two other subfolders in there called ToEdit and Edited. I'm using Vista, so with the default picture view folder I can batch tag the files in the EXIF data.

As I go through the pictures I do one of two things (purely dependant on my mood at the time)
1. I copy (not move) the RAW ones I want to edit into the ToEdit folder
2. I add a rating into the Exif data by pressing a star at the bottom of the screen (again using Vista default picture view folder). Then I sort by rating, delete everything that's 1 star, copy all 5 stars to ToEdit, and then consider the others - 2 stars will probably get deleted, 4 will probably get edited. I try to avoid 3 stars as that's just sitting on the fence too much.

Tallon

I use adobe bridge, Imports and renames them into seperate folders

GhostInTheRuins

Mine's a bit of a mess actually. Pics are just transferred into a folder with the date of transfer as the folder name. Lately I've been going through some of the old ones and putting proper info on the folder name. I really need a new system.

Anouilh

Pictomio is worth trying... freeware...

http://blog.brothersoft.com/2009/04/29/pictomio-cool-3d-image-organizer/