How to Organize
There are many articles on the web that talk about how to organize your photos. Now I want to tell step by step about my way of doing this, a way that never failed me when I was looking for something inside a huge archi’ve of 100GB.
1. The first root directories I have are the name of the cameras used to take the pictures:
Canon
Nikon
Whatever else comes to me in hand
Not ones I’ve been asked what camera did I used – how could I know that if all my files were in the same folder?
2. Second then, there are directories that look like this: year_month_day_place. Most of the time, the place is more important, but I like to keep tracking my progress and compare older photos to new ones. Sometimes I come back to the same place and have different folders of the same place.
3. These directories are split into 3 other directories: original, photoshoped, web
4. The files in the photoshoped directory are photoshoped at full size and can be printed, while the files in web directory, have approximative 900 pixels wide and 190kb – the strongest requirements for one of the forums where I put them. Also, these files are watermarked.
5. A totally different category is a directory called stock. Here I put my pictures that I shoot specially for stock websites.
6. As for the program I use… well, I like picasa because it’s fast, but, other softwares have other advantages. I often need to see the exif data of image: it’s not just a requirement in many contests, but also helps to see the effects of certain camera settings.
NOTE: If a directory contains too many files, It will load the thumbs very slow. I keep about a maximum 2BG pictures in one folder
How to Back-up
As for the back-up, I make two back-ups:
ONE: on dvd-s
TWO: on an external hard drive (currently 500GB)
