Walt, keywording can be a pain for those who don't have inclinations toward obsessive compulsive behavior. But one of the beauties of LR is that you can keyword on import. So you have 100 or 500 or 1000 images of a biker rally. On import, assign keywords to those images, something creative like Biker, Rally, Outback KN, etc. If/when you need to find something, this will at least help narrow the search. Also, when you are going through those images that evening, presumably you are going to assign a rating to each image, like my system e.g. with 0=not worth rating, 1= maybe I'll work on this one a bit, 2=looks good right out of the camera, 3=looks very good right out of the camera. 4 and 5 I reserve for the ones I've worked on that I may want to print, display, or otherwise share. Figure out a rating system that works for you. It is quick and easy to rate as you do your quick pass through. Then select only the subset that have at least a 1 rating, and spend any effort doing detailed keywording only on those selected images. YMMV, you'll develop your own processing approach, but LR supports this sort of workflow that leaves few excuses for not being able to tag and retrieve images.
stan On Sep 25, 2012, at 10:36 PM, Walt wrote: > 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 >>> >>> -- >>> 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. >> -- >> Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est >> >> >> >> >> > > > -- > 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. -- 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.
