Thanks for the advice, Larry!
I've always imported my RAW files into directories with a YYYY-MM-DD
naming convention, and can usually find what I'm looking for fairly
quickly by narrowing down the date. Of course, it helps that the
majority of my shots are nature photography, or are usually taken at
events of some kind, where I have a pretty good idea of when they were
taken at the outset. From there, I do my basic editing and then export
them into a separate "EXPORTS" directory with sub-directories following
the same naming convention so that I can find them quickly once I've
determined which file I'm looking for once I've identified the original
RAW file. I've always left the original file names as-is out of the
camera and appended a number to it to give each exported file a unique
name (-001 then -002 then -003 for each different edit I do to the file)
and then stick an RS800 or RS1024, etc. onto the end for the various
resized versions I might create for web posting purposes.
It's a pretty clunky naming convention, but it helps me to identify
which camera I shot with (my K-x is just the straight camera-assigned
number, my K20D as WJG prepended to the camera file name, and the K100D
photos I can usually identify fairly easily by the file size), but I've
somehow always managed to make it work.
I figure using the Keywording will help me to narrow down my searches
fairly quickly. Of course, my library isn't anywhere nearly as large as
those of other PDML'ers, since I haven't been shooting nearly as long
and tend not to shoot quite as often as others, and I tend to hit the
shutter button a lot less frequently than I used to. A typical photowalk
usually produces 100-150 shots altogether. The biker rally I attended
last month ended up giving me about 200 shots over the two nights I
attended.
I'll probably need to do things differently in the future, if I start
putting in a lot more time with the camera than I have over the past
year, which has been relatively paltry, unfortunately.
Thanks again. I'll give some thought to how I might better organize my
work with a different directory structure and/or file naming convention.
-- Walt
On 9/25/2012 7:33 PM, Larry Colen wrote:
Congratulations.
See if you can pick up an inexpensive used copy of Scott Kelby's LR book. His
humor gets a little tiresome at times, but it's a good basic primer.
People who only work in lightroom like to let its database keep track of
everything. I disagree with that approach because sometimes I need to find
files from outside of lightroom, and sometimes I want to generate jpegs in a
logical tree format. I store files into each directory in the hierarchy:
Year
month
shoot
subdirs based on the shoot.
When I read the raw files into lightroom I actually load them under the year,
and when I'm done processing them, I move the shoot directory inot the month.
This way I can easily see which shoots I still need to process photos from. I
also actually split the years up into Jan-June and July through August.
So, for example, the files I'm uploading right now will go into:
/Volumes /activedrive/photo/2012b/120925_felton
when I'm done processing them I'll have
/Volumes /activedrive/photo/2012b/1209/120925_felton/farmers_market
/Volumes /activedrive/photo/2012b/1209/120925_felton/ford_pickup
If you bracket shots, it's good to tag them as such, in case you ever go back
to HDR process them.
I also find that I like to do a multi-pass rating system on my photos.
I have on several occasions wished that I'd done a better job of tagging my
photos, but I at least try to get a high level tag by subject:
musicians, flowers, aikido, landscape etc. So by having a rough idea of date
and subject I greatly narrow down my search. Even if I don't have each
musician in the band tagged in all of their photos, I can usually find the
proper directory within a few minutes.
On Sep 25, 2012, at 3:38 PM, Walt wrote:
Hi all!
Finally, after years of using Picasa, IrfanView and a few Photoshop plugins, I
finally decided to break down and get some decent image editing software for my
new setup. It's definitely going to take a while to get comfortable with it.
I've checked out a few of the tutorial videos at the Adobe website, which were
reasonably helpful, and wonder if anyone can suggest some others that would be
worth taking a look at.
Any suggestions, tips, and/or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
-- Walt
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