Photography How do you organize your photos

[Xernicus]

I'm wondering what your workflow is when it comes to sorting and naming photos.

I used to have a system that worked well, but since it's since been over encumbered not only by the sheer number of photos that I've taken (more than 10x increase this past year 2014-2015), but also when I "made" my system, it was when I was shooting in JPEG. It was never designed to have more than one or (maybe two) versions of a file.

Now I end up with at least three files.

1 RAW file (plus sidecar) in my 'Camera Backup' folder- which is current copy of my SD card (copied to HD after shoots)
1 TIFF file which is the processed photo out of Adobe Camera RAW. This is just correcting exposure, color space, etc.
1 TIFF file which contains further editing in Photoshop, such as tonal and curve corrections, cropping, etc.

Because I know that I need to get these photos organized (I can't even tell you what I've edited, and what's only been touched by ACR) for the majority of my files), I created a new directory, and am looking to start a framework of folders with locations and dates.



So here I have my file fresh out of ACR, then the copy from after I applied some Highlight corrections and an Unsharp Mask, followed by another copy which is with a crop.

I don't care whether this photo name is IMG_1234 or "Snap Pea Serenade". But having three versions of a file in one folder is a bit extreme, as is having a nest of directories with the Location, then another folder with the date, and another folder for the "Edited" and "Final" versions...

Library software has never been my "thing", after I discovered what a mess it made out of my directories when I was establishing my music collection, but I am willing to give it another go. I have all of the Canon EOS software, including ZoomBrowser and ImageBrowser EX- but I've heard some pretty mixed reports about all of Canon's Utilities. Bridge is something I could consider using, but it's never seemed very intuitive to me. Plus Bridge CC likes to keep crashing on me for whatever reason.

Anyways, I'm interested in seeing what you guys do to keep the monster mess of photo editing and cataloging down and under control. I look forward to seeing your solutions!

[daredevil]

I keep it simple:

 

My camera writes in 2 SD cards at same time. I use one for RAW and one for JPG. I create folders based on date on my hard drive and inside it 2 folders i..e RAW and JPG. 

 

Edited pics go in main folder.

 

Ex:

 

-Main Folder A

--Edited Pics 

--All Pics

   ---Date wise

       ----RAW

       ----JPEG

 

In light room i keep syncing All pics folder and that's being it. I am not hardcore editor so I only use lightroom. I plan to use photoshop in near future but not seeing me using it this year.

[Xernicus]

Somehow I always seem to forget about keeping it simple.

I'll have to give your setup a try and see how it works out; it seems like it would fit me pretty well.

My camera does support RAW+JPG, but only writes to one SD card. Easy enough to sort by file extension though. I've been meaning to start writing JPG's again for the sake of having a preview on my camera with some post processing already done.

In all honesty, Lightroom with having Camera Raw, brings the quite a few of the hardcore editing tools from Photoshop over. It's not everything you could ever want... but it's certainly not the barebone "Elements" either. For only $150, I should probably just ditch this whole CC subscription based crap.

[daredevil]

The only reason, I use JPG is for:

 

1. 100 bust shot, while I am doing bird's pics in crop mode.

2. For someone else. They keep JPG and i keep RAW.