How To Manage Your Photos - Photo Management Tutorial
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
- The most requested topic that I get is to do a tutorial on 'how to manage your photos'. I finally caved and put together the most boring video I've ever created but you asked for it and here it is.
As a landscape photographer and filmmaker I amass a shocking amount of footage and raw FILES. It all has to be organized so that I can make a safety copy AND find what I need when I need it.
This simple, rudimentary method of handling your files won't win any awards but it works for me and I reckon it could work for you too.
Grab a coffee, get cozy and basque in the safe dullness of this lame video.
Thanks for watching
Gavin - Fototripper
#landscapephotography #filemanagement #photoediting
All my top-level folders begin with year-month-day and then place or purpose or subject etc. (e.g., "2024-09-25_Gavin-Portrait"). I may steal some ideas from this video to improve organization and search capabilities.
I do the exact same mirroring copies on two external hardrives.
That is the way to get the folders sorted properly and have an understandable structure.
That unmade bed in the background is triggering my ex-army OCD 😮😊
Maybe she's tied up in bed.🤨
What? I made the bed to the absolute best of my ability. If you'd seen it before you'd be fully triggered ;)
My husband tells me i should delete all the crap photos, but if i did, I'd have nothing left! I'm definitely a hoarder too.
I print out all my images, then photocopy the print to make back-ups before deleting the RAW files.
😂
Never considered that strategy. Wouldn't surprise me if all the paper, printing and copying was more expensive than just buying extra drives.
I do the same except I print each picture really small so I can fit more on each page. Saves paper. Then I delete the raw files.
@@andrewroland what how does this even make sense u keep no raw files but a photocopy version
I like the style of your videos, although one suggestion; have you considered dropping the overuse of the "MacBook Pro" phrase? If the brand and model isn't relevant, why not just call it a computer or a laptop? You haven't mentioned the brand and model of your drone even once, and it was perfectly fine...
I guess it's not intentional, but it just sounds weirdly dissonant and unnecessarily pretentious, in your otherwise very relaxed and fun tone of the videos.
Sorry for picking on words, but just imagine saying ten times in one video "Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid Sport Turismo" instead of just a "car" or even "Porshe" if the brand really matters that much in the context.
Weird linguistic rant over. Thanks for making good content.
Always good to see how other people handle certain tasks … always something to take away from that. Keep going …😊
I download the sd card to my MacBook, cull through the images and delete the crappers. I then remove the sd card and label it. That SD card the goes in my safe, never to be deleted.
Heaton got a free Hasselblad…..I’ll leave it there
😂😂😂😂
You will pay for this ...
😂 that’s just cruel 🤣
A little tip regarding SD cards etc, when out in the field and using multiple SD cards that day, when I swap one out and use another one, I put that used card UPSIDE down in my case that holds the fresh cards so as not to ruin that original one by mistake.
Or just flip the write protect tab!!!
When it comes to the transfer speed -one note from my side: the USB-C connector doesn't guarantee for any transfer speeds. There are USB-C cables that transfer at USB2 speeds, USB3 speeds, Thunderbolt 3 or 4 speeds... the list goes on and on.
good point. I've tested loads of drives and cables over the years using Black Magic to measure them. It's surprising the crappy cables that some manufacturers include with their drives
I just woke up what did I miss..?? dont u have no vlogs that are edit ready for u tube...? damn sponsors wanting a weekly video lol... oh bugger it this will do lol.....ha ha jokes...
You should upgrade your SSD in your MacBook😂. Or go with an ASUS Pro ART new laptop
Hi Gavin, great video again, thank you.... I do the same as you and store in a similar way. All I do different is delete the real crap ones, ( a lot) just think I'm never going to look at them again so in the bin, they go.....Thanx again Gavin. Colin Devon UK.
With a tiny shell script you could have the computer prompt you for day number and description, then create the folder trees automatically. Beyond that much more could be done (e.g., automatically insert the current year-month-day into the folder name, etc.) but even that tiny help could be, well... helpful. LOL
this is my preferred method too. i wrote a little rust cli program that asks me some questions and creates folders and sub folders to my desired organization of: subject/date/ingress (the dumping ground for all my imported photos), subject/date/egress/web|print and subject/date/processed
I'm too thick for that.
@@jacobbb-t7i Sounds like something that should be shared here :) It would benefit everyone.
@@krimke881 The thing is, it would be pretty specific to a given computer. The same basic details would change between computers but it would still be tied to specific drive / volume / folder names, etc. Given correct information it should be reasonably simple to write or adapt. But making it generic enough to distribute and behave properly on its own, in unknown circumstances would turn it into "software" and the complexity would go up astronomically. Plus there's the fact that I can write Linux (AT&T style unix) scripts, but I'm not familiar with BSD unix nor certainly what Apple has done to it for more than two decades. 🙂
@@fototripperstudio like my coworker liked to say, "Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then!" LOL 🤣
I’ve been doing this lark professionally and amateur since the 80’s, encompassing wet film, video and digital, it’s always useful to hear what other people are doing with their filing systems, even if it’s exactly the same as yours because you get that warm fuzzy feeling that you’re on the right track.
As always your instructionals are great, I love the comedy setups you inject into your other videos, but in my opinion the instructionals have a really good balance of humour and seriousness that gets the point across (takes me back to the instructors at the school of photography).
It would be great to have some more instances of Amanda going “full Canadian” as I can’t understand her, nor can google translate, and I love a challenge! How on earth do you cope?
it's a struggle
You growing that beard for Christmas??? Santa Gavin!!! Great vid.
it gets dealt with in a future video with some...nose waxing...
I'm amazed that for once, I do pretty much the same thing. My home office is a mess, but my image files are pristine.
Bravo Mario!
Incase you didn't know, he has a "MacBook Pro"😃
If you leave your external hdd’s in a drawer, how do you find the right HDD that contains the photo you want? How do you label your hdd’s?
I'm just living the pain of reorganizing my files after years of multiple catalogues, laptops, external drives, backups all over the place. What a huge pain!! My suggestion is decide on a system then write your logic down (I use One Note) so that when you come back to things after some time you don't lose sight of your strategy! Hope you are enjoying the great weather! I'm just down the road in Calgary!
You use a very similar structure to what I do…a couple of minor differences. I too don’t delete anything and probably should…I’m often reminded of this whenever I am nearly to capacity. 🤷🏻♂️📸😎
Thanks Gavin , that was great!, We all can use information like that. Very helpful.
Too late, I can’t copy you I already pretty much do the same thing and yes hard drives full of ALL of my Raw files😅
Good organization, but a lot of the stuff you are doing manually can be done automatically. I use Rapid Photo Downloader, which automatically builds folder names any way I want them; in my case, that's including the date, "job code" (location/event/subject/whatever), and camera model. It can send the image files to multiple destinations at once. It doesn't run on Mac, so it doesn't help you, Gavin, but it might help others here.
interesting stuff.
I've got every raw file I've ever shot since 2010 saved on 2 hard drives. I like to re-look at stuff whenever Adobe release a new functionality or my processing skills improve
Hey Gavin …..thanks so much for that big help for a LR novice😊
I use Bridge uploader. In that, I can create a folder for location and date. Then I rename files, location, date, device, then number. Example: Lakes1-1-24/Lakes 1-1-24 Drone 1. Or, Lakes1-1-24/Lakes 1-1-24 Z8 1. and if I need to find a file, I do a search. I type in lakes, newest to oldest, then find the date. I have 2 backup drives.
Glad i only have 1 device. Thanks sharing ur method on this boring subject. I use one folder with year, day and subject. I have also made a main folder then sub folders, again year, where it is.
Thank you - most helpful. I use Photo Mechanic and review all my images there. I only import the ones I like into Lightroom. It's so much better for my hard drive storage. I let the non keepers sit for a few weeks before I delete them, just in case i change my mind.
I use a file sync program to make sure I have duplicates from my main drive to my backup, plus if I've made any changes they are also highlighted, so I can confirm to backup
All my photos are organised by date. Top-level folder for 2024, then a month folder "09-Sept", then each shoot is titled with the date and location "2024-09-26 Location". Rather than renaming images, I use colour labels and stacks in Lightroom to indicate groups that go together for focus or exposure brackets.
I'm pretty much of a hoarder too but on my initial culling I'll delete the totally out focus images. I'll backup the rest on external hard drives and use Idrive which is a supposedly encrypted cloud storage for my final edited shots for my personal albums of favorites which helps keep storage fees to a minimum. We heat with wood so if my house burns down I'll still have the most prized images safe.
Thanks for that run-through of your method. Entertaining as always (although I was half expecting Amanda to appear and 'accidentally' delete some files). I won't have nearly as many photos as you, but I too am a bit of a photo hoarder. The only ones I delete are the obvious mistakes where I have taken a photo of my thumb or foot! You, as a professional, will obviously not make those silly mistakes. 😇 I do keep all my sd cards as an emergency back-up. Thanks again - a new Fototripper video is always worth settling down to with a brew and biscuits!
You do realise to create sub folders on a Mac you can just highlight the files you want to move, right click (or command click) and choose new folder containing "x" files. The sub folder is immediately created with the highlighted items enclosed and the "new folder" name is even highlighted ready to edit the folder name. Also when duplicating your folder structure just duplicate the parent folder and rename it rather than creating a new folder, naming it, drilling down into it and the pasting the empty folders.
Thanks Gavin, that was refreshing to see you have a common sense approach to storing. Something I can do easily without big investment. You mentioned your big computer at home. Could you tell us what you have and a breakdown of its specification. This was always a plan I had to one day order a PC for home.
You probably can’t do this in Bridge, but I use Apple’s built in tags feature to quickly label pics. That way you just need to label different tags once, so I just have tags like “Ambient light”, Panorama, HDR etc. I then just right click files/photos and choose the tag to add. You can tag a bunch of files in one hit.
Interesting timing. I have just completely re-arranged my image storage categories. I was arranging everything by date, but if I wanted to recover an image of XYZ then I had to remember the date - and sometimes it was a year or two back - which is not good for my old fart memory. So now I am trying more descriptive categories, eg: Overseas Trips\Country\City. Or wildlife\animal type. And then I have an export folder in each for the edited images. It is all part of the photography adventure. I do back up, but I need to implement a better more streamlined option. Thanks for the reminder. 👍👍
Hi Gavin, nice vid and I follow pretty much the same routine for sub dividing folders on a daily/location basis. One neat trick is, if using Adobe Bridge prior to transferring is to use the Metadata function in bridge. Select the file/s you are transferring from the computer to there relative folders and even at a basic level enter keywords. Bridge will then write the tags so after transferring onto the PC/storage device, you can easily find the files in the search option for those specific files, the more keywords, the higher the odds of finding specific files for editing/viewing. Do not add keywords using the MAC system, they are not recognised in the PC and unless you edit on a Mac that info will be lost. If done using Bridge it matters not, once written it stays and can be referenced by any system. You can also create templates in Bridge to add at any time in the future, name, address, copyright info etc and simply paste it in to any other file in the future rather than have to repeat the same process over and over again. Keywords obviously vary but you can also include common words and then add to them at a later time. 🙂
get yourself a NAS box for Home Gavin
I use a very similar system for my video files. I have a folder with subfolders under it labelled something like Dummy Project and just Duplicate it when starting a new one. My photo storage varies a bit, but uses an essentially similar workflow. I am also guilty of hoarding substandard images, so I sometimes go on a late night binge with a glass of something strong at hand to loosen my inhibitions about deleting photos. Cheers! ps only moderately distracted by the shag-pile Window surrounds...
Thanks Gavin great help for me wish I woulda did that long time ago .
Love the elevator music playing in background .
Keep on rollin with a smile📸
Scott
Not boring at all! Glad to meet another photographybhoarder! I like your folder structure. Only thing I would do different, is put the year before the location- to make them sort chronicalogically. Cheers!
I save all my photos for at least 1 year and then I go back through them . I still have over 40 hard drives. Lol .😂😂😂😂
Never enter an item of data more than once. Keep a copy of your folder hierarchy with no files in the tree on the desktop. Then you can just copy the empty folder structure again and again and never have to retype the names.
If you are more ambitious, look at scripting on the Mac for things like renaming 100 files in one go.
Difficult to concentrate on what you are saying with a unicorn round your neck :)
That's was a really good vid, it is similar to how I back mine up, how ever I did learn some nice little tricks or tips cheers
Great explanation, the methods sound.
One additional suggestion. Carry multiple memory cards. After backing up to your laptop harddrive, and then onto your external. Swap out the days memory card to a hard storage case. This gives you, three copies, store them in different areas of the van, car, hotel room. Not in the same bag.
When you get home, transfer to your desktop (if you have one).
Have one copy stored off-site.
Also do a check of the files to confirm they are not corrupted after the copying process.
When you are 'sure' you have three distinct copies, then, and only then, reformat your memory cards.
Hey Gavin! Appreciate the video!
I’m curious about your export process.
I’m currently exporting to a folder within the picture directory which is just the date the pictures were taken. This works for the first day or so then I completely lose track of what pics are from which days and every single day has an Edit folder with files to go through. This really rears its ugly head when someone wants a print from a long past date as I don’t always post pictures the day they’re taken.
I suppose with your method here that you could probably do what I’m doing. Since you’re labeling things it may make finding them easier.
what about the cloud? although you would probably get charged for high storage space and also you'd need mobile hotspot or something.
I cull my photos first using the X and P keys using the auto advance command. Its faster than right clicking and selecting a star or stars. X marks the photo as "to be discarded or not to be used" and P flags the photo as a keeper, for the time being. I can then go thru the Flagged photos and rate them later as needed.
Seems quite manual. I do all mine through LrC
My process is to delete the crap pictures, learned the hard lesson. Copy to external drive from my mac, work on them in LR/PS then save/copy edited ones to main computer. Time machine back up to local external hard drive plus time machine to additional 2 NAS drives. this way its automated and there are 3 copies to restore from should the worst happen.
'shatbook' 😁
I would back up to external drive each day or more often if high importance. If your camera/cards get nicked after day one, it's not all lost.
I do exactly the same as you when I am traveling. Every days I backup my photos on an external hard drive in sub folders by day, with the name of the location. It work well that way.
Great video! 🐉🌷🍓😀👍🇫🇮!!!
I won’t keep a crappy photograph for love nor money.
I suppose this doesn't apply to Gaving, because of his fast internal camera storage, but for the rest of us mere mortals I doubt any camera can transfer files faster than an internal SD card reader on a computer or even better an external card reader. I know some folks will never take the card out of the camera to avoid having any damage happen to it, however I do take it out and put it in my Prograde card reader which is fast as heck. Obviously two things matter here: 1) the max speed of any given card with which it can spit those files out and 2) how fast is the port to where the card reader is connected to. In this scenario if you are using your fastest ports for the extarnal nvme/SSD and card reader, the limiting factor will be the card itself and it won't matter if you copy directly to the external or internal drive.
sure wish i would have started doing this 15 years ago
I use the same method, including hoarding all the images.
The basics can be a pain but, well explained 😎
Very helpful!!
Useful tips
Delete your emails lol
Shatbook😂
👍 thank you
Thank you Gavin for these tips. I like to think of myself as “organized” but even I learned something watching this. Now, what I would LOVE to learn from you next, perhaps as a follow up to this vid, is your Light Room Import process, if you do that of course. I’m starting to run down a rabbit hole of TH-cam trying to learn ways of doing this in a fashion so that images don’t get lost or broken within Light Room. Trying to determine if catalogs and storage are the same, or different or Lord only knows what else is a hoot, but getting your take on it would be even hootier :). Thanks again kind sir, keep up the great work, we all appreciate it.
I don't use LR and have seen too many disasters from my students to make me want to even try using LR to organize my images, hence this simple but disaster free method.
Cool video
If the MacBook has an SD card slot, could you not use it, if the cameras use SD cards? It should be faster. And I always use Bridge’s Photo Downloader utility, as with it you can add metadata like copyright to every image as you import them. Or rename the files. It’ll also save copies to a second location as it imports, then delete the files from the card (if you wish) automatically after import. Saves a lot of work managing files manually.
I use the internal 1TB drive for the Hassy.
Great explanation. Very similar to the method I use. I do have a question though. Do you ever key word photos? I'm still trying to come up with a way to find certain subjects fast. Say.. I'm looking for a picture of a tropical sunset. I know I have dozens of them... but trying to remember where and when can be a pain. I tried doing it in Bridge, but I can't seem to make it work when I go back to find them. Maybe it's something I'm just doing wrong. LOL.. there are days I hate Adobe.
For that I just use Excite foto 2024. It does it automatically. Link in descrippy.
Hi, are you having any compatibility issues using ExFAT file system on your ext. SSD regarding windows and Mac ?
Anything to keep in mind when doing so ? Any hints
nope. no issues ever.
This was fun to watch and the import and organization workflow seems pragmatic. I hate Adobe’s file management system. I typically use Lightroom to import and “organize” my photos. The problem I have is I create backups of my image directories outside of Lightroom. When I change the folder name in Lightroom, and then back up my directory of images I end up with a copy of the original folder with a new name. I also move my Lightroom folders, over 6 months old to an Archive folder on an external drive, making it even harder to find duplicates. If I delete a file on the local disk using Lightroom, it does not get deleted on the backup drive. My question is, do up you ind an o these issues with Bridge?
There's none of that nonsense with Bridge. No database, nothing.
I'm just an amateur, but I basically also keep all the files. I have day job and my free time is limited. I rather buy some extra drives and save the time going through all the images now. I can always do that when I'm retired if I feel like it (not too likely as drives get cheaper all the time).
I trash the obvious missfires then grade the rest zero to 3 stars. 4 and 5 reserved for 'nearly right' and 'Good-un'. Sometimes it doesn't happen due to time constraints so will keep them all until I do have time.
I used to use a program Called registax for my planetary photos
It would allow you to set a point that it would only pick out the images that were at or above that level then stack them into a single image
I wonder if they make a similar program for still photos
A point? that level? please elaborate
have you read the 50,000 emails yet lol
Now 50,270!
Showing of them guns son 💪
The guns re getting dilapidated but will receive upgrades soon.
on windows there is a brilliant program called "bulk rename utility". very useful, try that out. you can basically change file names: adding, removing prefix, inserting date, changing index numbers and so on on mass and not one by one. I usually replace the "DSC" or whatever random letters are used by the camera to save the files on SD with a 3-letter code of the location (e.g. first 3 consonants of the name, I use the vowels when I run out of consonants). an example: Vancouver would be "VNC", you can have file file named for example "VNC_2024_index" or whatever order you prefer. I always keep the original camera index so I have unique names, to me the index it's just an ID and the rest of the name are descriptors.
On a Mac you can use Name Changer which works basically the same. Or select the items, then Control-click one of them. In the shortcut menu, choose Rename. In the pop-up menu below Rename Finder Items, choose to replace text in the names, add text to the names, or change the name format.
You're right. I used to use that a LOT back in my music producer days and it saved me from months of manual file renaming. Brilliant program.
You need to keep in mind bit-rot or the SSD equivalent on those forgotten drives, Gavin 👍
bit-rot?
@@fototripperstudio The propensity for magnetic media and SSDs to lose their charge or magnetism over time. Copying the files around avoids this. Good NAS devices do this automatically. Cheers.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation
Very useful suggestions for people who don't have a good management system or those who want to change it. I personally struggle with moving a catalogue and related photos on my laptop to my main catalogue on my desktop at home. This would make for a good future video. Also do you maintain one large catalogue or multiple smaller ones?? thx
Just dozens on separate SSD drives.
Thanks 😊
and i think what people will really get from this is, what's in the Brent folder. would be funny to have amanda sneak onto the laptop and about to click on the brent folder and you get there a second too late and the truth of the folder is revealed. and hilarity ensues!
hahaha I shoulda thought of that
@@fototripperstudio future video :)
I keep all my files (some 350,000) on 3 separate external hard drives.
"shatbook" 😂