Filing System for Digital Photos

[Christopher13]

Living withing the age of digital photography, I am finding an ever increasing backlog of SD cards and photo folders in my virtual and physical inboxes.
I remain stumped for a solution to easily organize the photos and back them all up safely so a computer failure will not result in years of lost family memories.
I am thinking there is somehow a solution with Google's Picasa, but haven't completely worked it out yet.
Criteria - simple to use, quick to use, easy to review, retains resolution, and can be easily backed up to external media.
Are there any suggestions on what application works well to file and backup photos? What filing system is working well for you folks to manage your digital photos?

[mcogilvie]

I am only a casual photographer, and find myself using my phone camera much more than my nifty camera, so my opinion is not worth much to a serious amateur, let alone a professional. But iPhoto gives you a lot of organizing tools.

[kelstarrising]

I just posted a podcast I did with someone who is an expert in organizing and storing photos, Victoria Bampton. You might want to listen to hear her helpful tips.

https://secure.davidco.com/connect/f...ew.php?t=13950 (21 min)

[Christopher13]

Thanks so much Kelly, I will check it out.

I just posted a podcast I did with someone who is an expert in organizing and storing photos, Victoria Bampton. You might want to listen to hear her helpful tips.

https://secure.davidco.com/connect/f...ew.php?t=13950 (21 min)

[Oogiem]

Are there any suggestions on what application works well to file and backup photos? What filing system is working well for you folks to manage your digital photos?

I use Adobe Lightroom, and ham working on thousands of my own digital photos. separate catalogs for hundreds of scanned historical photos and also scanning a backlog of my own running into the thousands of old slides, negatives and prints.

Powerful, hard to learn on occasion but very good once you get it.

Buy Victoria Bampton's book, very useful!

[ellobogrande]

I use a simple file-folder structure under My Pictures to store photos.

\My Pictures

\Photos

\<year> e.g. 2012

\<mm-dd - collection Name> e.g. 10-01 - Sunset Photos

\pxxxxxxxx.jpg

Each year I back up the current year's photos to CD/DVD and take a copy offsite. I test the backups annually as well. I back up current year photos to Mozy.

[TesTeq]

I use a simple file-folder structure under My Pictures to store photos.

\My Pictures

\Photos

\<year> e.g. 2012

\<mm-dd - collection Name> e.g. 10-01 - Sunset Photos

\pxxxxxxxx.jpg

Is pxxxxxxxx.jpg the original file name created by a camera?

What about the metadata - for example names of people on the picture?

[manuelhe]

I use a simple file-folder structure under My Pictures to store photos.

\My Pictures

\Photos

\<year> e.g. 2012

\<mm-dd - collection Name> e.g. 10-01 - Sunset Photos

\pxxxxxxxx.jpg

Each year I back up the current year's photos to CD/DVD and take a copy offsite. I test the backups annually as well. I back up current year photos to Mozy.

I use picasa with this method. I find that the face recognition and tagging features really helps me sort out my photos. Most of my photography falls under the Family and Frienship area of focus.

I also use 3rd party backups. Google and Amazon have 5 gig free storage. but there are paid ones that give you much more.

[artsinaction]

Thanks, everybody, for the great suggestions for our digital photo storage challenge! I'll let you know what we finally decide to use and how it works out. You guys are fab-u-lous!

Dena

[Oogiem]

I should note that my Lightroom catalog is the metadata part and that I store the picture files in a folder by year then in a folder by day taken within that year.

To me there are 2 parts, the actual files themselves and the metadata that describes them.

A third storage for me is that I print out many of my pictures and make physical scrapbooks. That allows me to write the stories the pictures illustrate, something that is missing form the Lightroom data.

I'm hoping to explore a bit more with digital scrapbooking but I enjoy cutting the paper and laying out the pages physically so not sure I want to go digital.