Filing System for Digital Photos

[hacker]

I'll make a couple of very simple suggestions which will save no end of issues
[...]

Do not reinvent the wheel here, use an app (such as the one I recommended above) that does all of this for you.

[artsinaction]

Christopher, you've touched a really, well, touchy spot. (Yeah, there was a better way to say that... so let me try again)

Our household has three people, three copies of Aperture, one copy of Lightroom, two digital cameras, two photo-filled phones, four photo-filled iPads and three desktop computers with, yes, lots of photos. The challenge is finding one repository for all and one slick, streamlined system for getting images off of each device and onto a centralized network. Everyone (me, too) feels sort of possessive of their own photos and, at the same time, we also want to view everybody else's photos, so much frustration ensues.

Does anyone have any experience with multiple users funneling photos into one big bucket of an application?

Thanks again for posting that question, Christopher!

Dena

[Oogiem]

Does anyone have any experience with multiple users funneling photos into one big bucket of an application?

In our house we have a private server set up that is our backup server and also has a folder on it called Camera pix. Within that I keep all my digital pictures in a folder called Oogie Pix and within that by year and within that by day. I only have 2 devices for pictures, my camera and my phone. My husband has a folder for each of his cameras and within those he puts pictures in folders by quarter "Q1 2012" etc. One of the Lightroom catalogs I am working on is an index/catalog of all the pictures on our server. I am the only user who add photos to the Lightroom app but it does contain all of our photos.

You might be able to set it up so that each person adds their photos to the Lightroom app from a single computer and just make sure 2 people don't try to add pictures at the same time.

[hacker]

Our household has three people, three copies of Aperture, one copy of Lightroom, two digital cameras, two photo-filled phones, four photo-filled iPads and three desktop computers with, yes, lots of photos.

So far you've described a pretty normal "technical" household. Some (like myself) have even more dispersion than you describe.

In any case, here's a solution, baked into an app you probably already have/use:

https://www.dropbox.com/help/289/en

[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