In part two of this blog I’d like to show you our file system on the hard disk, how we keyword our images and how we use collections and smart collections in Lightroom to organize our photos.
A simple but effective file system
Most people try to replicate a file system they are familiar with from the office: there is a filing cabinet with a number of folders that contain (printed) documents. If they are looking for a certain document they walk to the filing cabinet, reach for a folder ( that is named, let’s say “Invoices 2020”), open the folder and browse trough the content. If they don’t find the document they are looking for, they try “Invoices 2019” (well, time is flying … ) and so on.
Let’s assume that you only take photographs when you are on vacation. Then your filing system on the hard drive may have a top level folder called “Images” and below that you’d have many folders in alphabetical order, for example:
Argentina 2020
Botsuana 2019
Costa Rica 2018
Costa Rica 2009
…
…
Zimbabwe 2001
If you are looking for a specific image, let’s say that gorgeous sunset in Costa Rica in, oh, was that in 2009 or 2018? You’ll have to go through two folders and in the end it turns out that the image you are looking for was taken in Botsuana. You get the picture (pun intended).
In the olden days this was the only way to find a certain picture. Of course all the negatives where stored in appropriately labeled folders and the slides were stored in labeled boxes. But now we can use the computer to find an image. What took us many minutes or sometimes hours the computer does in a fraction of a second.
The simplest filing system on a computer hard disk would be a single folder that contained all images. Unfortunately computers can’t handle large numbers of files in a single folder effectively (I’m talking of thousands of files here). Therefore we limit the number of files in one folder to a few hundred at most. Since we intend to let the computer do the searching for a certain image we don’t care about the names of the folders. And we don’t even care for the content of the folders. We file our images according to a system that is sometimes called “chaotic storage”. In our case this means, that a single folder can contain images of completely different shootings, ie. it could contain portraits, stills, landscapes and so on. Accordingly our file system looks like this:
> Images
>> 2019
>>> 001
>>> 002
>>> ….
>>> 049
>> 2020
>>> 001
>>> 002
>>> ….
>>> 056
>> 2021
>>> 001
As soon as a folder contains one or two hundred images, a new folder is created and filled with the next shots. The problem with this approach is that after a while only the computer “knows” in which folder a specific image is stored. In order to avoid having to go through dozens of folders to find a specific image the files must be tagged with keywords. If this has been done thoroughly, the computer can find any image in a matter of seconds even when the archive contains several hundred thousand images.
Note: If you don’t feel comfortable with the chaotic storage concept use your conventional filing system. The computer doesn’t mind. But you should keyword your images nevertheless!
Keywording
Keywords are the key (again, pun intended) to finding images (or, for that matter, any other files) on the hard drive. Here is a short guide to keywording:
If you answer the following questions you have a good basis for your keywords:
- WHAT can be seen in the image?
- WHERE was the image taken?
- WHO is in the image (if persons are visible)?
- What else is noteworthy
Note, that the time the image was taken is not part of the keywords. That information is contained in the EXIF-Data of the file anyway.
For privat use about 10 to 15 keywords should suffice. However, more don’t hurt. Here is an example:
WHAT: boathouse, boats, canoes, lake, water, landscape
WHERE: Maligne Lake, Jasper Nationalpark, Alberta, Canada
WHO: –
Noteworthy: blue sky, sunny, sunshine, outdoor
Note, that there sometimes is redundant information, e.g. sunny and sunshine. This can be helpful because sometimes you may search for sunshine and on other occasions for sunny.
Collections and Smart Collections
Collections and Smart Collections are part of Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Bridge. Both are very helpful tools to organize images. Let’s assume you want to create a photo book with your best landscape images that you have taken over the years. Naturally, these images will be distributed over various folders. Without collections you normally would create a new folder and copy the selected landscape images into that folder. The result is, that these images exist two times on your hard drive. In a collection however, there is only a reference to the image in it’s original folder, i.e. it is not neccessary to create a second ( or third or fourth) copy of the image.
Smart Collections go one step further. All images that have a certain property that can be defined by the photographer are automatically collected in that smart collection. This property can be a keyword. All images that contain the keyword landscape, for example, would be in the appropriate smart collection without any further action.
From a collection or a smart collection the images can then be exported in a format and size that is appropriate for a photo book. Once the book is printed there is no more need to keep those images as the original files are still on the hard drive and could be exported again if needed. This keeps the number of files on the hard drive at a minimum.
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