The Digital Photography Show #79: How to Organize Your Photos and All About the Shootsac
The Digital Photography Show #79: How to Organize Your Photos and All About the Shootsac (36Mb, 52 mins)
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January 1, 2008: Welcome to the seventy-ninth episode of The Digital Photography Show!
A few weeks ago, listener Georgina wrote in to ask us how to organize her digital photos. Here’s part of what she had to say:
Up until now, I’ve been just shoving all my original digital files into folders by month/year and having additional subfolders for any
images I decide to process further before uploading/using them. This has worked well up to now…However, now I’m getting to the point where the sheer number of photographs (47GB!) I have is making this system rather impractical -
my memory isn’t THAT good. I do really need a better system of organising my photos, but am really at sea where to start or what to
look for.
On today’s show, Michael and I put on our Superman capes (but not the tights, thank goodness!) and tell Georgina how we keep our pictures organized and findable.
I also play an interview with Keats Elliot from Shootsac that I taped back in November at PhotoPlus Expo. We had so much audio from that trip that we haven’t gotten to it all yet, but if you have a DSLR and some additional lenses, you should know about Shootsac. Its a super-light and stylish way for the active shooter to carry your lenses. If you’re really fashion-forward, you can even customize your Shootsac to match your personality - or even your outfit!
If you’d like to win a Shootsac, listen to the show, and send us the answer that completes the phrase “Can a camera bag really change the way you ____?” Send us your answer at TheDigitalPhotographyShow@gmail.com by January 30th, when we will randomly pick a correct entry.
If you’ve gotten a new digital camera for the holidays, or if you’ve received a new software program that you want to know how to use, check out xTrain, a great web-based learning resource. They have a ton of online videos that will teach you how to do pretty much everything with your camera - and your computer - that you might ever want to do. And exclusively for our listeners, they offer a 15% off discount on any xTrain course or membership plan by using the code DPS on the page you’ll find here.
We’re in the second week of our latest photo contest, “Spotlight on Giving.†You can see all the terrific entries on our show photo album www.dps.phanfare.com. The prize will be a wonderful Wacom tablet. Thanks, Wacom!
Here are the rules for DPS Photo Contest #7:
Title: A Spotlight on Giving
Theme: A subject demonstrating the act of giving.
Technique: Add a vignette to your image. A vignette can draw the viewers eye to the subject of your photo.
You can achieve a vignette by:
- Darkening around the subject, highlighting it. This works because the eye is generally drawn to the lightest object in a photo. (You can also do a reverse vignette, which lightens the area around your subject, although it’s rarely done, and rarely done well).
- Adding a selective blur around the subject, so it’s the sharpest thing in your photo.
- Email jpg images to dpscontest@gmail.com.
- The image must be in jpg format, and no more than 800 pixels on its widest side.
- You may only enter three photographs.
- If more than three photographs are entered, the first three received shall be entered.
- The photo must be one that you created.
- Please include the original exif info within the image.
- Rename the image file with the photographers first and last name (so we know its yours).
- If you are inclined to title your image (titles are optional):
- Append the title after the photographers name of the image file name.
- Example file name: MichaelStein_ElbowStuckInEar.jpg
- Only one image per entrant can be eligible as a finalist.
- Please provide us permission to post the image on our Phanfare site.
- Photos will be accepted through Friday, 19 January, 2008.
Enjoy Being Creative!
If you want to buy DXO Optics Pro, remember the 20% discount they are only offering to listeners of this show. Try the program for free, and when you’re ready to buy, use the code DXODPS.
We’d love to hear what you thought of the show either here on the blog or at TheDigitalPhotographyShow@gmail.com.
We also appreciate the sponsorship of Wacom (www.wacom.com) and Lensbabies (www.lensbabies.com), two great products for when you want to get creative with your photography.
Wanna participate in the show?
- Send us an email at TheDigitalPhotographyShow@gmail.com.
- Leave a comment at www.TheDigitalPhotographyShow.com
- Call in a voice mail to US 301-637-7767
- Join the listener-run (thanks Laurel and Frank!) Flickr group Friends of The Digital Photography Show at http://flickr.com/groups/thedps.
Thanks for joining us here and hope you enjoy this week’s show. Now, go out, picture giving and put a spotlight on it!
Scott
January 5th, 2008 at 1:19 am
During the show you seemed surprised that Lightroom tags would show up in the Windows Vista Gallery. I don’t have Lightroom, so I can’t test this theory, but I would suspect that the tags are being placed in the file attributes supported by the Windows operating system. For several generations of Windows now there has been a attrribute called Keywords available. It looks like they have renamed this attribute to Tags in the Vista world. I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple supported the same file attributes since this is the similar to the way EXIF data is supported. I hope this help.
January 5th, 2008 at 4:06 am
Replying to your question about iPhoto and Lightroom and keywords the answer is yes. iPhoto does recognize keywords that have been added to your photo from Lightroom.
January 5th, 2008 at 4:07 am
The podcast got cut off at about 46mins.
I had a bad experience with file organizing. Like Michael Stein did, I consolidated my photos to a new 1tb hard drive (I got about 450gb worth of photos) but instead of copying the files to the new hard drive, I “moved” it into the new hard drive. It turns out, some of the files moved got corrupted, making the drive crash every time it finds a corrupted file! To make the story short, I ended up fixing it for 2 straight days (still haven’t finished a few) and losing some photos (I don’t even know what photos I lost).
January 5th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Did anyone else have the show unceremoniously cut off at about 46 minutes in? Scott was in the middle of the interview with the woman from Shootsac, and BAM! End of the file.
Tim
January 5th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Hi Tim - I got that problem as well. Not sure why though…
I was really enjoying that interview too!
January 5th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
To Tim: Yes, my podcaat cut off too.
To Scott / Michael / all: the portion Photoshop Elements that used to be the standalone Photoshop Album does a great job of tagging photos, too.
January 6th, 2008 at 2:41 am
Here’s a great article over at Epic Edits all about organizing your photos. Check it out at:
http://blog.epicedits.com/2008/01/04/organize-getting-to-grips-with-image-management/
January 7th, 2008 at 3:07 am
My downloaded also ended abruptly.
I would also like to thank the listener who recommended such product. I have been using a diaper bag as a shooting bag, with some success. This shootersac looks like a better option.
Also, Photoshop elements works well for the cataloging and more than basic editing features. Recently, it has been bundled with a video editing software for $150. Sometimes, Adobe provides an upgrade discount for upgrading from elements to full version. It may be a good option for some people.
Keep up the wonderful information.
January 8th, 2008 at 5:20 am
Just wanted to say how much I appreciate your dedication posting during a holiday week. Shows real commitment to your listeners. Really useful topic as well. A great project for winter - especially for the fatally disorganised like myself.
Thank you
January 8th, 2008 at 11:48 am
Mine cut off too - sent y’all an email about it.
January 8th, 2008 at 1:55 pm
HI guys:
Great shows! Just to add to comments already here that the show did end in the middle of interview the end. So I guess many of us would not know how to enter the Shootsac contest.
keep up the good work!
January 9th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Thanks for the show, I am quite a new listener, but I am enjoying your insights.
I have thought quite a lot about organizing my photos as well. Even though I only own a digital camera for 6 months now, I have about 15k photos (11k have been digitized over the years from my old film camera).
I tended not to be happy about a system that uses dates at the top level. My folder structure starts with one level classifying my pictures into classes like “family”, “friends”, “work”, “travel” and “special events”. In subfolders, I use date based naming like “2005-04 marriage Ton and Mary” and “2004-01-15 kids at zoo”
I am using a great, free, program to organize all the JPG images (not doing RAW yet…). It is called “JBROUT”. It is based on tagging using tags inside the JPG file, and the program has very good search capabilities based on a mix of tags, folders, and date/time.
The program is cross platform. I am using it on Linux, but there is also a version for Windows. Its home page is at: http://jbrout.python-hosting.com/
January 9th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
A big thank you for covering my question - it was so very useful! Ironically, someone else recommended the DAM book to me recently too, so going to hunt out a copy. I am also going to resolve to relax a little about it and not let the organisation become more important than the photography! That was an extremely good point.
The shootsac sounds a great idea too. Looking forward to hearing the full interview (like others, the podcast cut off in the middle for me) and hopefully entering the contest.
Happy New Year to you both!
January 9th, 2008 at 11:55 pm
Great show as always. Thanks for doing it and I’m looking forward to hearing the end of this episode.
About file naming - I rename all of my pictures to the following format:
yymmdd-hhmmss*.jpg (or a raw format)
After the seconds is a counter if I’m shooting multiple frames per second. I’ll add a letter suffix if I need to keep an edit and an original (although I also archive all my originals into an archive directory tree). One advantage of this is that the photo printing service that I use prints the file name onto the back of the picture. This is handy for my wife, who scrapbooks the photos and always used to ask me what the date is for the pictures. She can now look at the printed date and immediately figure out what was going on even if the context of the picture does not make it obvious.
January 10th, 2008 at 1:45 am
Georgina:
1. I’m not an expert in file management, but I’ve done some research into this very important topic and have come to the following working solution:
a. bottomline–> the expert on this topic is the author of the DAM book (you can easily find it on amazon, he has his own website with a bunch of workflows / tips)–> thus at least check this guy’s website out. furthermore, i heard a recent podcast with him (i forgot where)–> even with lightroom being around (which is not a robust file management program), the author still recommended using iview media pro (now know as microsoft expressions… or something like that) because it’s so much more powerful.
2. This is what I do (FYI: I have at least 3 TB worth of data):
a. I work on my photos, which are located on my cpu. As with most folks, I organize my photos via date (ex: 01.2008 New Year’s Weekend).
b. I could get very detailed in my workflow–> but it would get too boring to read. Suffice it to say–> at some point I keyword my important shots in iview media etc…
c. The huge advantage of iviewmedia (at least for me) is that even though I have 99% of my photos “off line” (ie on DVD & / or external HD)–> as I’m browsing through my 15,000 image catalog–> if I click on any image, iview media will have a “path” which describes where the original image is located. Perhaps lightroom is able to do this now, but in the early versions of lightroom it did not have this capability, which is one of the reasons I didn’t get it.
3. Anyway, hope this gets you started on the right course. And by the way, the more you get into photography, the bigger this issue will become–> thus a very good question to ask at this point.
Take care. Harry
January 10th, 2008 at 4:50 am
Exporting his best pictures for use in photoframes, iPods, etc. need not be a chore for Michael Stein. Select all the pictures (maybe into a collection) and then export the lot as jpegs to a new directory and resize at the same time. (Under Export/Image Settings). Lightroom does it all again.
January 11th, 2008 at 3:09 am
I’m interested in hearing more about the shootsac. I need something a little more dressy to carry my lenses when out and about. Does it protect the lenses? Is it comfortable to carry?
January 11th, 2008 at 5:21 am
If I were truly organized it would not be a chore. I am very organized in that all my images are stored by directory structure of YYYY/MM/DD. The problem is that they are spread out on three external drives. My plan is to get a 1tb drive to house all the files for general use (vs backups). From that drive I can find all my photos and then start to organize with LR, or Microsoft Expression Media. This will be the big chore. Once I have photos IDs and put into collections, the export for ipods and frames will be the piece of cake. The other part of this equation is that I will be tempted to reprocess the photos to improve them as my tools and skills have improved much over the last nine years.
–Michael
January 11th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
Aperture does a great job for me managing my photos (currently over 6000 in the active library. Hmmmm… I thought I had more!). I first import from the card into iPhoto (because my wife doesn’t care to use Aperture), which puts the originals into folders based on date and keeps the original file names. I then go to Aperture and “import local files” and choose the “last roll” from the iPhoto library, choose to reference the files (which leaves the originals in their current location) and name the versions with simple serial numbers. I then sort them into overarching projects based on theme, and then albums within the projects for specific subjects/shoots.
The beauty of it is that a given photo can exist in several projects and/or albums at one time while still only storing one actual image file on the disk, so if a photo fits more than one category, I can plunk it into as many projects/albums as I need to.
Tim
January 11th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
OK, I was wrong about how iPhoto organizes originals… It puts them into “Rolls” instead of organizing them by date. Whoops.
Tim
January 12th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Not that everyone shouldn’t listen to the show (cause it was a great one) but if you read the blog, you can find the question there on how to win the Shootsac…wait, why am I telling you all this, that will just decrease my chances.
January 13th, 2008 at 7:53 am
Michael, have you already started researching what 1 TB drive you might get? My situation is quite similar to yours. Recently, I moved some folders of images to another drive to gain space on my startup drive. Even though I tried to carefully use Lightroom to export everything correctly the application kind of went berserk when I opened up the relocated data base. It was frantically searching and updating images. I ended up with a really crazy set of folders (in LR) that I never created. Also the pictures in my LR catalog itself were renamed bizarrely. LR seemed to be almost randomly (to me anyway) choosing folders within my system and applying the folder names to my pictures. Crazy and a little scary. Fortunately I had everything backed up and just threw away all of the corrupted images and databases. So, I want to do as you are thinking and just buy a super massive drive and hopefully not have to worry about it for a while. I appreciate the thoughtfulness you seem to put into buying gear so I’d love to hear if you have discovered any drives (I’m also on a Mac) that look promising. thanks
January 13th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Hi Stacie,
Think of the ShootSac as external pockets with a bit of padding. The ideal use is for photographing an event, such as a wedding, that you want to have your flash and an extra lens handy while you are moving around. It is soft and flexible so it is much less cumbersome than a hard bag. It doesn’t have zippers and such so it really to use while you’re shooting, not travelling. It doesn’t replace a camera bag. Nobody will know you have camera equipment in it. It comes with a black cover, so you do not have to order a patterned cover. The covers velcro on and off. Hope this helps.
Leslie
January 16th, 2008 at 9:43 am
Lightroom is adding the tags to the IPTC captions and keywords, (these should be portable across applications, if your software is adding proprietary tags the stay away).
“Exifer for Windows” is a good freeware viewer.
http://www.friedemann-schmidt.com/software/exifer/
there are others listed on this wiki page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTC
Personally i use Picasa for organizing my pictures and file them in in event/trip folders, picasa sorts them by date for me.
January 16th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
In response to Harry Shin’s previous post–the podcast with Peter Krogh (author of the DAM book) is available through iTunes on the O’Reilly “Inside Digital Media podcast”.
January 19th, 2008 at 12:54 am
Matt,
The 1tb drive I bought was from LaCie, it is called something like: Lacie d2 Quadra. This is the model which contains a single drive. They also have one called the “big” drive which has two 500gb drives adjacent to each other. The double 500gb options do not appeal to me because they are much larger and two drives mean double the risk of failure. On the downside the single drive option is more expensive.
I currently have all my images on one HD. It adds up to just over 500gb. I am not loading it all up in LR as I have read that large catalogs slow things down. I am starting by creating separate catalogs for each calendar year (since 2000). It’s a start…
–Michael