How do you manage your photography?

[Xaero]

What does everyone here use to process and store their photography once it is off camera?

Since moving over to mac 2 years ago I gave up my own folder based system on windows (events, family, photos for pleasure and random followed by year, then month and then everything in that month by date) and embraced the mac way by letting iPhoto take control. (Old photos were kept on a external drive and I haven't set it up for easy access with the mac as they've never been imported into iPhoto).

Now though my 250Gb hard drive is getting close to full and I'm wondering what do to now.

I have a 1Tb NAS drive which contains a backup of my iPhoto library. But ideally I want my photos off my computer now and onto the NAS drive (although I'm not sure where to back them up in case that goes bad).

I just read a new article on dpreview.com about importing using lightroom which is apparently good at handling collections no matter how you done it and it inspired me to ask how others manage.

I intend to get a new computer soon (the retina mac pro) and because that uses SSD it's expensive to get more storage inside the computer so I want an external storage solution.

I do 2 types of photography, one for pleasure and the other just family/personal snaps. So a solution to keep them separate would be best too as it's annoying at the moment iPhoto mixing them together.

[markmullen]

I use Media Pro to keep track of them, my workflow is this;

1. Import with Capture One Pro, a new session for each set of photos, with them all in a new folder, folder titled Location Event Month Year, photos named Folder Name Image Name. Each year I start a new folder
2. Initial selections
3. Editing in CO
4. Editing in PS
5. Save PSD if complex editing.
6. Save as TIFF for archive
7. Add final TIFFs to Media Pro catalogue.
8. As I run out of space on my Macbook Pro I move images to an external hard drive, in addition to backups.

With Media Pro you can keep photos on external drives and still search through the indexes for them.

[DibblyDobbler]

Probably not the most helpful answer but I don't actually keep anything now other than what I upload to Flickr - you can get back a decent high res copy from there so I just don't see the point in build up masses and masses of files locally that I'll probably never look at!

[Speed addicted]

I manage them really badly.
Everything gets put in a dated folder (unless it's something like a wedding) and dumped onto two external drives after being on the computer for at least one trip offshore.
I leave them on while I'm offshore as I have loads of spare time out here and can trawl through images I didn't think were worth it the first time round.

I keep everything!

[baz7175]

Any day that I shoot something, it gets it's own folder in that years folder, makes it damn easy to find it whether in Windows explorer, lightroom, or whether editing in PS, uploading etc...

Everything added new is automatically backed up onto an external drive, and I plan to make a second backup (drive already in place but still to be populated)purely incase of losing one or more of the main drives.

I use Lightroom to pull in all the main folders, but essentially the cataloging is already done due to my windows naming structure, and using lightroom I then add the keywords etc to make the archive searchable (such as I want to show only those photos tagged with "sunrise" for example).

Once I've gone through and edited the photos I want to upload to Flickr, my own site or wherever else I have these colour coded using Lightrooms colour tagging system, and export to a folder called "reworked" inside the main parent folder with all the original images.

These reworked images then get resized down if need be to upload to the specific site/location and renamed (usually done via batch processing in PS).

The system can be seen below (should be able to clicky to see fullsize):-

http://bazpics.com/miscimages/PhotoCatalogSetupLar...

[Xaero]

Thanks all, seems like the retro way of having my own folder system works well as a background management.

Might have to invest in LR soon and get all my photos off iPhoto (which doesn't recognise my raw files which have to be kept separate anyway). Sounds like a time consuming job.

[binliner]

1. Import from card reader to lightroom, photos are put in dated folders on a 2TB external HD and basic keywords added on import
2. Flag the good shots delete the rubbish, process raw files in lightroom, if anything needs to be edited in PS I open it as a 16bit tiff edit it then store the tiff in lightroom along with the raw file then keyword everything and label the best shots so I can find them quicker later
3. Any jpegs I need for websites etc I export from lightroom then delete once they've been uploaded
4. Everything is backed up automatically onto another 2TB drive using apple time machine

[Simpo Two]

Xaero said:

Thanks all, seems like the retro way of having my own folder system works well as a background management.

Works for me too. Folders as required and an external HD. I see no need for software to 'keep' them in.

[Famous Graham]

Lightroom, but it's only organised by date anyway. I'm reasonably ruthless about deleting stuff that doesn't pass muster on import, so it's not unmanageable

[DibblyDobbler]

All you guys that are storing loads of stuff - what do you actually ever do with it ?

Just curious as I seem to be the odd man out here which implies I am getting it wrong!

[markmullen]

DibblyDobbler said:

All you guys that are storing loads of stuff - what do you actually ever do with it ?

Sell it, print it, exhibit it, enter it in competitions, reprocess it if I'm bored when travelling.

[DibblyDobbler]

markmullen said:

Sell it, print it, exhibit it, enter it in competitions, reprocess it if I'm bored when travelling.

Thanks Mark. None of these apply to the guff I am producing so I can rest easy

[markmullen]

DibblyDobbler said:

Thanks Mark. None of these apply to the guff I am producing so I can rest easy

You're too hard on yourself, you do some great stuff. Get it out there.

[einsign]

www.smugmug.com

[DibblyDobbler]

markmullen said:

DibblyDobbler said:

Thanks Mark. None of these apply to the guff I am producing so I can rest easy

You're too hard on yourself, you do some great stuff. Get it out there.

Well that's very kind of you Mark but the stuff I produce isn't even good enough to stand out on the 'Random' thread never mind the wider marketplace!

It's just a bit of fun for me and as Clint says - 'A Man's got to know his limitations'

[Xaero]

DibblyDobbler said:

All you guys that are storing loads of stuff - what do you actually ever do with it ?

Just curious as I seem to be the odd man out here which implies I am getting it wrong!

Most of my photography has been travel, and I occasionally need to write articles about where I've been from a while ago so it's good to go back and dig out an appriopriate photo to go with what I'm writing about, hence why I keep it.

That and memories.

I don't quite have the wall space to print a load out but hopefully I do in the future and it would be nice to go back and pick my best out for that too.

[binliner]

DibblyDobbler said:

All you guys that are storing loads of stuff - what do you actually ever do with it ?

Just curious as I seem to be the odd man out here which implies I am getting it wrong!

There's no right or wrong just whatever suits you.

I upload stuff to my website, flickr, stock libraries, enter competitions and print some stuff for photography club competitions, exhibitions etc,

[davidd]

I import Raw via lightroom into a folder that is dated by month and year. I am pretty ruthless with stuff that I don't like so I do delete a lot at this stage.

I then output jpds into a mirrored folder structure and copy the jpg files into the same structure on smugmug.

the local files are backed up to an external drive every few days...

It is easier than it sounds!

[Xaero]

A long shot maybe, but does anyone know if there is a quick way to get my photo collection off iPhoto? Into conventional folders I mean.

[trashbat]

I go with the format:

Drive:\Camera\NNN_Description

e.g.

E:\D300\071_Simply_Italia_Beaulieu

where NNN is a sequential number. Then I manage that in Lightroom using the directory folder structure. It keeps things sortable, the date is easily derived from the photos, and most importantly when I want to find something I remember trips, not dates or precise locations.