Organizing vacation and family photos

[GreatToBeGrammy]

I am trying to set up my new computer and organize all my photos. I've seen some great information while browsing through this site and wondered how others organize all their photos and which program you use. Please be specific and list such things as folder and file names and whether you list them by date, subject, etc. I really want to get this right on this computer because my other one is a mess!

 

Also, I want to set up some kind of system to easily download my photos into a specific area when I have to empty my memory stick in a hurry and organize the files at a later time. Any ideas on this?

 

Thanks,

Grammy

 

 

Thanks,

Grammy

[pierces]

I am trying to set up my new computer and organize all my photos. I've seen some great information while browsing through this site and wondered how others organize all their photos and which program you use. Please be specific and list such things as folder and file names and whether you list them by date, subject, etc. I really want to get this right on this computer because my other one is a mess!

 

Also, I want to set up some kind of system to easily download my photos into a specific area when I have to empty my memory stick in a hurry and organize the files at a later time. Any ideas on this?

 

Thanks,

Grammy

 

 

I wrote an article with an overview of how I organize my approximately 60,000 images in response to a few other posts like this. Take a look and see if it helps:

 

http://www.pptphoto.com/ArticlePages/OrganizeOrDie.htm

 

Good luck!

 

Dave

[GreatToBeGrammy]

Dave,

That is a great article on organizing, I'll benefit from it greatly! Another question for you...

Do you create the folders in Picasa or do you create them on the hard drive under My Pictures as described in the article? I started setting up folders in Picasa before loading my photos in, and realized that I might need those on the hard drive instead.

Please advise.

Grammy

[pierces]

Dave,

That is a great article on organizing, I'll benefit from it greatly! Another question for you...

Do you create the folders in Picasa or do you create them on the hard drive under My Pictures as described in the article? I started setting up folders in Picasa before loading my photos in, and realized that I might need those on the hard drive instead.

Please advise.

Grammy

 

If you create a folder in Picasa, it make an actual folder on your hard drive. If you make a collection of folders, it is a "virtual folder" that holds pointers to your real folders. If you right-click on a picture or a folder one of the choices is "locate on disk". It will open the folder in Windows Explorer for you.

 

Truth is, it doesn't really mattter. My folder structure is left over from before Picasa when I used the folders and sub-folders to aid in searches. With Picasa, all your folders could be under My Pictures and all of the organization could be done with collections inside Picasa. I just maintain the folder structures in case of the unlikely event that I find something better than Picasa in the future and need to reorganiize.

 

Dave

[GreatToBeGrammy]

Thanks for responding, Dave. So, I should make my folders and subfolders from c drive - my documents - my pictures -then folder and subfolder names. After that is set up, open Picasa2 and import my photos and I will have the option from there to save the photos to the preset folders and subfolders on the hard drive. Is this correct?

 

Also, I will be saving all the original files to begin with. Afterwards, I plan to use a program to fix red eyes and edit the photos. Do I then "save as" the original photo name adding edit to the end such as christmas2007.001edit.jpg ?

 

Thanks for any clarification and information you can share.

Grammy

[pierces]

Thanks for responding, Dave. So, I should make my folders and subfolders from c drive - my documents - my pictures -then folder and subfolder names. After that is set up, open Picasa2 and import my photos and I will have the option from there to save the photos to the preset folders and subfolders on the hard drive. Is this correct?

 

That is the idea. Keep in mind that if you "move to new folder" it will create the folder for you. No need to create the folder first.

 

Also, I will be saving all the original files to begin with. Afterwards, I plan to use a program to fix red eyes and edit the photos. Do I then "save as" the original photo name adding edit to the end such as christmas2007.001edit.jpg ?

 

Thanks for any clarification and information you can share.

Grammy

 

I usually just as an "a" to the end of the file name for basic edits and save a named file to a Prints folder if I have done major post processing. You should also be aware that if you use Picasa's built-in editing tools for red-eye removal, etc., Picasa automatically saves a copy of the original in a sub-folder when you click the "apply changes" button.

 

Take a look at the article on batch-renaming on my site. It may help as well.

 

Dave