Introduction to Organizing Your Digital Files

There is no single method for managing and organizing digital files.  You will have to ultimately settle on a solution that works for your situation.  This course will emphasize some of the more fundamental elements to a successful management strategy.  Without some system in place photos are likely to be lost forever.

A good system will make photos easily accessible and will protect them from loss.  This will require regular maintenance which will be minimized if the system is set up well. 

Types of loss:

To protect against loss requires making duplicate copies which will be stored in different ways according to the type of loss being addressed.  We will focus mostly on creating the original or master copy.  Once an organized master archive is created backing it up becomes a rather simple task.  Without a good master archive backing up your files will never be a sure thing.

Files Need Unique Names

The single most useful strategy I’ve discovered for managing files is to make certain that each photo in your collection is named uniquely.  The only practical naming scheme I’ve found for maintaining unique and useful names involves beginning the file name with the date the photo was taken – and in a specific format.  Always begin dates with the full 4 digit year first, then month, then day followed by a serialized number.

For example: 

There are differing opinions on the best way to format a file name.  You will find strong advocates and detractors for each of the above examples, but for purposes of this course they are all good since they result in a clearly unique name for your photo.  Understand the pros and cons of how you format a name, and then stick with one system. 

If you don't know how to evaluate a format for a file name try this:  YYYY_MM_DD_XXXX.ext  where:

An example of the above format is 2010_01_25_0001.jpg.  This method of formatting provides clear readability with each element visually separated by an underscore character.  Historically the underscore character is recommended for this purpose rather than using spaces or hyphens and will be more universally accepted.  It can be helpful to not use spaces even though your file system may support them since many internet standards don't support spaces.

I normally don't do anything different than above when I rename files, but you can, if it seems helpful, add more descriptive text following the main name as follows:

2010_01_25_0001_Baby_in_the_rose_garden.jpg

Adding additional descriptive information won't affect how the file name sorts since it will still sort first by date then by serialized number.

Your camera will give each image a name based on the features in your camera.  Some cameras allow you to set the format of the file name to use, but many simply default to a rather cryptic name that gets recycled.  Eventually your camera will likely re-use a file name so that you now have two photos with the same name.  To deal with this you must rename your images at the time you download them from the camera.

Files Sort Chronologically

The second critical point to understand in managing files is that your files for the foreseeable future will reside on a computer based medium and will be accessed with a computer operating system.  The operating system, be it Windows, Macintosh, Linux or anything else, will utilize a file system.  All file systems I’ve seen will automatically sort files and directories in an alphanumeric manner.

By creating a file name beginning with the 4 digit year first, month second, day third followed by a serialized number your files will always sort in a chronological manner making it very simple to locate a file if you know the name or can remember approximately what timeframe the photo was taken.

How file systems sort files is why it’s important to stick with one method of naming your files so that they will always sort as expected.

Don’t Depend On Proprietary Software For File Management

The next really important thing to know is to avoid relying on proprietary solutions for organizing photos.

Many cameras and printers come packaged with software that promises to make managing and printing your photos a snap.  Don’t believe it.  Such software may actually offer some easy to use features, but they almost all use an inaccessible internal database to keep track of your photos.  If you ever need to switch to different software all your descriptions that you’ve entered into these databases will be impossible to migrate to new software.  Be assured that there will come a day when you will want to switch.

Software that manages photos can offer some very attractive capabilities.  One feature that is quite nice is to associate key words with each photo so that you can later search for photos by the keywords rather than just by the file name.  The problem is that it is a lot of work to enter keywords and the software is nearly guaranteed to be obsolete all too soon.

Adobe Lightroom is one such software that is possibly an exception to the rule.  First, Lightroom works nicely with a file system based organization so you can maintain your basic organization independent of Lightroom and enjoy the extended capabilities of Lightroom at the same time.  Second, Lightroom is a serious application developed by and for professional photographers which means it’s likely to remain available and supported for a long time.  Presently, Lightroom costs about $300 which is its primary detractor for non-professional users.

Use A File Based Organization First

If your files are maintained well in a file system you will be able to use multiple software packages at will without compromising your organizational efforts.

Keep Original Digital Photos As Master Copies

The original digital image created by your camera or scanner should be saved in its highest quality form.   Never edit your original images directly.  Make all your edits on copies or by using software which provides for non-destructive editing.  Regard your original images like traditional negatives.  Any edited versions of your images will be more analogous to traditional prints.

As well as keeping your original images in their highest quality form, make sure to set your camera or scanner to capture images at the highest quality setting available for that device.  If you ever deviate from this rule, do so with a specific and justified rationale and then don’t forget to reset your camera back to the highest quality setting for the next time you use it.

The only reasons to use a lower quality setting are to conserve storage capacity or to reduce the amount of time it takes the camera to process the image and be ready for the next shot.  There are legitimate situations where this can be important such as sports photography where you need to be able to take multiple shots in rapid sequence.  However, for most situations this will not be an issue and you will benefit from having a higher quality original.

If your camera provides an option for capturing images in RAW format, use it.  RAW is not a graphic format itselft but rather an actual copy of the information as captured by your camera's sensor.  Using software on the computer the RAW data can be converted to any other format such as JPG.   RAW allows significantly more latitude to adjust settings such as exposure after the image is captured than any format such as JPG.

Avoid Duplicate Copies of Images in Your Master Archive

A chronological based filing system will avoid duplicate copies.  Other schemes tend to invite duplication.

Some schemes for managing images are based on organizing by subject.  A limitation to subject based organization lies with the fact that many photos have multiple subjects.  It is necessary to attempt to identify the main subject to continue with a subject based organization, but this will inevitably be impossible.  Take a family photo, for example, which has multiple people in the image.  Is the subject the occasion, the whole family, the parents, the grandparents or any one individual?  Is a landscape photo of a mountain classified as a "Mountain" shot or is it classified by the country where the mountain exists?

Subject based organization can be highly valuable, but should be accomplished separate from your file based chronological archive.  Some type of database with a cross reference between subjects and original images will allow multiple subjects to be associated with a single original image.

A database can be as simple as a list of image names or as sophisticated as specialized software such as Adobe Lightroom.  This course recommends maintaining a file based chronological archive separate from a database.  With a relatively small archive you will be able to locate your images well enough without a database.  By appending descriptive information following the first part of the image name containing the chronological description you will be able to locate your images by file name fairly easily.

If you find that your strategy for maintaining your master archive leads to duplication, then there is room for improvement.

Take the Time to Provide Full Descriptions in the File Name the First Time

Make sure the internal date and time in your camera is set correctly.  This information will be recorded with your image and will be a permanent part of your records.  If the date is not accurate it will lead to confusion later.

The general process of creating your archive begins by taking the photo with your camera.  The next step is to download those images from your camera to a computer.  The point at which the most discipline is required is immediately following the downloading step.  At this point it is important to rename your files immediately - or at least by the end of the day if you have to download more than once on a given day.

Create a folder for the day and download all your images from the day to that folder.  Using file renaming software, rename all the files conforming to your master archive naming system.  Make sure the name you give to this new folder begins with the date for the day the images were taken followed by some type of description that will help you recall the contents of the folder.  It is not usually necessary to append anything to the image file names as the folder name will usually apply to all the images.

Sometimes you will find that when you take a lot of photos your camera's internal naming system recycles names and you will either end up with duplicate names or images taken later in the day will sort ahead of earlier images.  Pay attention to this possibility.  It may be necessary to rename your images in batches to get them in the correct chronological order.

You can sometimes add a bit of subject based organization to your file based chronological system by using multiple folders if there are sufficiently distinct situations for which you have images on any given day.  For example, if you drive in the morning to attend a wedding in the afternoon you may take pictures of your journey or other things not related to the wedding.  The wedding will be a collection on its own.  You can create two folders: "2010-01-01 Drive to cousins house", AND "2010-01-01 Cousin Jack Wedding".  After ensuring that all your images for the day are named correctly you can place them in folders according to subject.  Using multiple folders for different subjects on a given day like this will not result in duplication but will add useful readability to your folder list.

Provide as complete a description for your folders and images initially as possible and then plan to avoid changing those names.  If you use software like Adobe Lightroom to access your archive and later rename your folders or image names outside of that software, the software will be unable to locate the original image.  You will have to manually rename or re-associate references to the new names to continue using your software on those images.  Doing so can be tedious, so it's better to provide fully descriptive names initially and then leave them alone.