On Oct 5, 2010, at 1:54 AM, Bob W wrote: > > in general you'll find things easier if you keep everything in one folder > and use keywords and collections to organise things within LR. . . > > Bob
Eric - by now you have heard two somewhat opposing views on folder/file organization for your photos when working with LR. Option A - create some small or large folder hierarchy by subject matter. [Often said to be a useful backup strategy in case LR goes wonky on you, and you want to be able to find your flower or model or automotive or whatever category of images on your hard drive.] Option B - throw everything into one folder and do your organization within LR using keywords plus special collections for particular interests. Option C - a common mixed strategy. As you import into LR, let it create subfolders by date. If LR ever goes wonky or you need to track things down within your OS for some other reason, if you can remember that the flower image you are looking for was taken in July or August 2010, your search won't be impossibly large. I agree with Godfrey, Bob W. and others; I personally have found that the Option B or Option C approach is far superior. I use the date subfolder approach, and have one higher-level folder for each year. Using a keyword hierarchy within LR to tag and locate images is far less busywork than using the folder-category approach, both when importing the images and when working with them. LR is designed to serve as a database organization tool for your images; use it that way. Yes, I suppose that there is some small chance that LR may someday go wonky on you. I would not give that more than a passing thought. I've used LR since version 1.0 or 1.1 and have seen no reason for such concerns. The only other reason I can see for the organize-folders-by-category approach is for convenience if/when you ever switch to a different LR-like program. But even then, as part of doing the switch, you could easily let LR create a folder structure for you. E.g., sort/select by keyword, create a new folder, move selected images to the new folder, repeat as needed until all images have been re-distributed into a folder hierarchy. stan -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
