Organizing is always a hot topic around the scrapbooking world but today I want to focus on one specific aspect of scrapbook organization: photos.
As I’ve been working my way through Stacy Julian’s Finding Photo Freedom class over at Big Picture Classes, I’ve been thinking a lot about photo organizing, scrapbooking and how the two work together.
Here is what I have realized:
1) Having unorganized photos limits my scrapbooking creativity
As much as I hate the thought of spending valuable scrapbooking time tagging and organizing photos, I’m quickly realizing that being able to find photos to go with my stories is key to getting those stories scrapped.
While a simple keyword search for “red button” may work for my digital scrapbooking supplies, it’s a whole lot harder to find a photo of say “Adam” in a sea of generic photo names like IMG_10234.
If I want to be able to find my photos in a more inspiring way, I need to take the time to make it happen. My creativity will thank me.
2) Simplicity is key
The key to any organizing system: easy maintenance over time. If the system or software is too complicated to maintain, I’m not going to stick with it.
3) I need a better system for tracking ideas
The more time I spend with my photos, the more ideas I have…and the more ideas I forget. I need to figure out a way to keep track of all the story and project ideas so when I sit down to scrapbook I can actually remember them.
It’s Time for a Poll
So where do you stand on the photo organizing home front? Have you whipped your photos into tip-top shape? Or are you drowning in a sea of I-take-WAY-too-many-photos?
I’d love to hear what you have to say and to make things nice and easy, I even whipped up this handy little poll:
[poll id=”2″]
I’d love to hear more about why you voted the way you did, so feel free to comment away with more details.
Aperture photo from Apple.
I signed up for Finding Photo Freedom as a LOM alum, and I haven’t even logged into the classroom yet. The idea of getting all my photos organized is both tempting and terrifying, lol. I REALLY need to set up a solid keyword/tagging system in LR, I know that I do. But knowing and implementing are such different things, lol.
Tempting but terrifying is a great way to describe it. I know how awesome it’d be to have them all organized and tagged but the “holy crap, I’ve taken over 20,000 photos in the last 5 years” enormity of the project scares me, haha. Maybe we just need some kind of 15 minute a day photo challenge to get us all motivated…
Yep, like I said in my comment yesterday I’m a bit fanatical about organizing my photos. I don’t worry about the scrapbook supplies- just the photos. I want to be able to find that set of photos from maybe 5 years ago (or more, since I’ve been digital for 9 years now) that I instantly thought of when I saw a particular scrap kit I need to work with. I have 5 kids, collect photos from other family members on occasion (heritage and current when I can get them), and take thousands of dance production photos for our dance studio. If I wasn’t organized on this front I would never be able to find anything. ACDsee is my program of choice. It handles the huge amount of photos I have with ease and I can usually find what I want quickly, if I’ve got it tagged properly. I get behind on the tagging sometimes, but usually an hour or so of trying to find something will convince me to get caught up on that task pretty quickly.
I’m mostly a one kit scrapper, and on the occasions that I need something not in the kit I’m working with I use a great free search program called Agent Ransack. It will search for a text string anywhere in the file name, and it is fast too. It will even search inside word and text documents for the phrase you are looking for if you want. Most designers are pretty descriptive in their file names now, not all but most, so this works pretty well for me 95% of the time. I do have a few misc folders of embellishments I commonly use like stitches and date elements that I can go to when I need a little bit to finish off a page, but that is only for a select few types of items.
oh, and I should probably mention that always rename my photos to something specific about them now after I get them off the camera card. It’s quick and easy to rename them in bulk in both LR (highlight all of the photos, then hit the F2 key in the library mode on Windows) and ACDsee, and that has been my ‘fall-back’ search method on several occasions when I couldn’t find something because it wasn’t tagged the way I thought (or not at all if I’m behind LOL).
I kind of wish I had renamed my files differently in the beginning because going back and renaming 20,000+ photos and then backing them up again would be a major undertaking. If I decide to switch over to Aperture though, I’ll have to do something different anyway since the way I name my files on import now isn’t an option in Aperture. So I may just start naming my photos differently going forward (something more specific) and then leave the rest as is.
How do you name your photos? Do you just do some kind of name of the event? What about random everyday photos?
Date is always first for me 2011_0101_ that format is one of the default options for date in LR, I believe. I organize my photos on the HD and disc backups by date in folders. Then, I usually add the name of the kid(s) in the picture, and then some description of the event or whatever is happening in the photo. Then they are numbered sequentially. I add or leave out parts as appropriate, but date is always there. When I take the photos off of the camera card I usually use something generic like ‘misc’, especially if I’m doing more than one date and/or event at a time. Plus, it reminds me I need to rename them when I see that LOL
Here’s an example of a photo from the other day: 2011_0701-SqueakSodaShoppe-0067
I took all of the kids to a ‘new to us’ fun place across town and since it was something we did together I didn’t worry about people’s names, just adding the name of the soda shoppe.
the names can get long sometimes, but I’d rather them be descriptive for searching purposes. If it is a totally random event or thing, I usually just use the kids’ name or whatever it a photo of. There are files named rose or flower or concrete if that is all that is in the photo.
That makes a lot of sense. I download my photos into photos by day and year so I don’t worry as much about the date (especially since I can find it in the metadata) but naming photos with specific names definitely seems to be a common thread among all of you who are organized. Thanks for all the info!
Fanatical is good though! You can be our photo Obi-Wan Kenobi, haha.
my photos are a MESS! i am also doing the photo freedom class – but am a few weeks behind 🙁 i am 90% sure i’m going to buy aperture too … i actually don’t know what i’m waiting for! LOL! i am my own worst enemy i think – i do a lot of research, but never take final action b/c i’m always wanting the ‘perfect’ solution …
I’m behind in the class too, partly because I can’t decide whether I want to switch to Aperture or not, but since my trial ends tomorrow, a decision will have to be made soon. I’m definitely leaning towards buying it right now but we shall see. And YES, I know that hunt for the perfect solution trap all too well. The answer is there is no perfect solution so you should just go with what’s best. But it’s so hard!
Like I commented earlier, I’m super organized photo wise. A bit OCD if I’m honest! I’m still scanning in boxes and boxes of them! I have photos to scan in from 2009 and back. BUT, 2010 is scanned, backed up, burned onto CD by month and in a box with it’s Scrapbook copied onto CD too.
My photos are named by month/day/year. I scan each event as soon as it’s over. I have a main folder for each year. Within each year I can sort by month, which I do for scrapping, and it’s broken down by month/day and from there I know what “event” is what. Even if that event is named Random June 2011. I try to be specific. Like, El Baking March 2011, things like that. I can also sort by the event itself, as I put the photos into a sub folder named after said event. Does that make any sense lol?
If I was super dooper over the top organized I could tag them with people’s names or whatever else but what I do now works really well for me.
Woohoo for being super organized! That definitely makes sense. I have my photos organized by year and day so I at least have that going for me but I think the key is naming your photos something specific and searchable. I didn’t do that and I can tell you it was a mistake. IMG_12345 is NOT helpful, LOL.
My answer is very different today than a week ago, lol! I spent several hours reorganizing all our photos the other day, and now I need to go do some detailed cleanup and things.
I have my photos sorted in two main categories: Photos by year, and Specialty photos.
Photos by year is pretty clear. I have a folder for each year, then a folder for every month, and then a folder for every day I took photos(sometimes two folders to keep the size down). I keep the folder name very basic(I.e. photos from today would be labeled as 2011_07_13_newoffice) but self explanatory.
Specialty photos are photos I get from other people, or taken for a specific event. I have folders for each family member(including extended family), and then ones like weddings, birthdays, family photo sessions, vacations.
Photos are only in one location. I shortcut special event photos into the photo by year folder as well. The only photos in duplicate locations are the ones that are in the folder *send to grandparents* and those get uploaded to walgreens and sent to the various appropriate locations around the country for them, then deleted from that location.
Oh wow, yay for progress! That’s awesome! Your organization sounds a lot like how I wanted to set mine up but I couldn’t figure out an easy way to do it how I wanted in Lightroom. Using folders and shortcuts is smart though!
It was all about doing something that was easy. I didn’t want to have to use any external programs, because I wanted it compatible across all our computers and any computers we might use(i.e. when my mom comes to visit, she tends to copy most my photos). I’m loving it so far, and its helped me find soo many of the photos I’ve been wanting to scrap but haven’t been able to dig out of the old system.
That’s a really good point. I can technically see all my RAW photos in the file folders but the format is useless to anyone but me. I tend to be bad about sending photos to my family because it’s a pain to have to find, edit, export, etc so most of the photos get lost in the abyss that is my computer, haha. I know Adam doesn’t like that he can easily browse or copy photos since he has no idea how to use Lightroom. It’s definitely something to keep in mind for sure!
I actually feel like my photos are pretty well organized. Our system is a hybrid of DH and my old systems.
2011/2011-07 (Jul)/07_04 Independence Day
Year folder > Month folder > Export folder with date and short description
The export folders are just all of the photos we dragged onto the computer that day.
I generally remember the year and the season of pictures, so it doesn’t take too long to go through Windows Live Photo Gallery (which allows you to scroll through thumbnails of multiple folders at once) and find the pictures I’m looking for.
Now, I’m far from having all of my photos edited because pregnancy sapped my computer mojo, but I’m doing pretty well since DD was born. Also, having our screen saver set to random slideshow has inspired me to actually delete all of the bogus photos that I had such a hard time deleting. I now take the 30 similar pictures, delete 15, and then have DH help me delete 5-7 more. I still keep similar pictures because the kids are so different in all of them, but I really don’t need 30, and 7-10 is much more manageable. Plus, the more pictures I delete, the easier it is to pick out which pictures to scrap. 😉
I feel like this needs to become an anthem for all scrapbookers who take WAY too many photos:
That’s super smart to have your DH help you delete more of the photos. I imagine he comes in with a bit more of an impartial eye than you probably do. I know Adam would, haha.
I’ve loved reading all these responses…..I’ve finally found a system that works for me and am 50% through getting it implemented. Along with organizing the photos was a huge push to organize all the my layouts and start figuring out what layouts I need to complete photobooks….AND more importantly how to organize my photobooks for the future. As for deleting, I finally feel free enough to do it. I do not need 35 photos of Ben riding his bike down the road. I now know what I’m looking for in a photo and in most cases I understand how I will want to scrap it…so I’m ok with getting rid of the ones I know I won’t use. I still keep a good 20 of those 35…but hey, its some progress!!
Oh yes, photobooks would definitely complicate things which is why I use D-Ring albums instead, haha. Way to go for being 50% done though. That’s awesome!
Lynette – I use D-rings for their school memory books (and put layouts in there that are related to school). I did one photobook and I liked the way it looked (I didn’t think i would, but it wasn’t too bad). The one thing I like about d-rings vs photobooks is the natural border around the photo with the d-ring….sometimes the photobook can look kind of “messy”…..next time I’m going to shrink my layouts to 11×11 and add a 1/2 inch black border all around each layout before I put it in the PB to see if it cuts down on the visual craziness!!
I think the craziness of a photobook would bother me too, haha. I’d always thought if I were to go that route, I’d add a nice, clean white border around all the pages to ground them. A black border could work too!
hmm, white is a good idea, too….hmmm….I will see what ends up looking better next time I get one printed. Most of my LO’s are “darker” (boy colors) so white might be a better choice – more of a “separation” as opposed to black which would just blend in. Just don’t know….since printing is sort of “new” to me, I’m open to any and all suggestions!! My thought is that whatever I do is better than having everything just sit on my hard drive….and honestly, my boys aren’t tough critics…if it is a photo of them, they could care less what else is surrounding it!! Ha!!).
I voted out of control, mostly because of the sheer volume of photos I have (plus my need to have the photos taken by friends or relatives the same day – in case they have better photos or different perspectives or photos of me!) and my inability to delete. I keep telling myself to delete but … I had one experience in the past that I found I was missing some photos that were really important because I could track the photo numbers. I’m afraid if I delete I’ll lose that check and balance. My current system is too detailed for the numbers of photos and time I have to devote to keywording so it often gets left undone and I wade through my folders in lightroom. I need to simplify.
I’ve come to realize over time that simplifying is key to organization. If it’s too complicated, I’m never going to stick with it. Deleting is definitely hard. If you’re worried about missing photos, you could always wait to deleted until after a month (depending on how often you upload photos). That way you can be sure you aren’t missing any. Plus I’ve found putting distance between myself and when the photos were taken helps since I’m able to see them with a non-biased eye now that they aren’t fresh and in the moment.
Hmm, my system is pretty simple and folder based. The last three years with me starting to photograph a lot more, I have a folder for each year. And in it subfolders for every “photo event” plus a few mixed folder with daily topics I have only few or single shots from.
It might not work forever, but I usually remember photos quite well, so I can find what I need. It also works for my scrapping, as I’m a scrapper that would pick a certain day/event/photo to document and then go from there. I don’t normally go: “Oh! A swing kit, I need a photo with a swing!”
It’s more that I see a kit and think: “That would be great for the photos from this and that day.” Often when I buy a kit with certain photos in mind, I remember this information when I look at the kit. So I guess I’m a very memory based scrapper?
Anyway, my systems works for now.
Woohoo for having a system that works! That’s awesome!
Ok so this was started back in July but hey I just seen it 🙂
My current system is like the majority say yearly folders with monthly subfolders, I first when transferring all my photos into my “Nikon Transfers” folder & “my iPhone Transfers” folder & my fiancé “Trez’s iPhone Transfers” then comes the fun task of remaining them by the basic IMG_000 in date order (the fun of a camera phones just to make life difficult!) haha
After that’s done from my monthly folders I copy & paste all the photos that are of my oldest daughter by herself or all of any photos that have just her in them & put them into her own folder. Mainly because it’s so easy to find a photo of my daughter by just going into HER folder. I did the same with my new born & then had a separate folder for duplicating photos for ‘places we go’ with sub-folders ‘zoo’, ‘aquarium’ etc.
I have folders for my partner & I & a folder for us together in photos.
It sounds a whole lot more complicated now is written it down but it’s easy to do if I stay on top of it each week.
My yearly folders get burnt to 2 disks once a month (re-writable), one of which I keep in my home & another at my mum’s place (i see my mum once a week so its no hassle getting the discs) The named folders I back up every year such as “Jessica 2010” (all photos that have me pictured in them)
My yearly/monthly folders are because I do project life & find it easy to get to my photos that way.
I also tag every photos with many different tags most of which are people, event/place, date & a tag for everyone’s name eg if the photo is of 3 of us I put a tag for individual names & “Jessica, Trez & Melodee”
As long as I do it once a week on the same day it’s state a good routine & works 🙂
Apart from that all my photos are backed up onto my portable harddrive as well which is permanently next to my computer.
I’m still debating whether to delete the name folders & place we go, people we love, because I have them all tagged but sometimes it’s easier to go into folders instead of search tags
Any suggestions?
Wow, thanks so much for sharing your system! Sounds like it’s really working for you! As far as tags vs folders, I think the nice thing about tags is you can tag one photo with multiple tags and save space over copying to multiple folders. So I would probably go with tags over the folders for the people/places, etc since it serves the same purpose but doesn’t take up extra space.