Photo organization

jonritter

Senior Member
I am moving from using my IPad Pro as my primary machine back to a MacBook Pro. I’m curious how everyone organizes their photos? Currently I have an external drive with basically years with sub folders. I was leaning toward using LR Classic and really keeping the main folders generic, but relying on keywords for sorting. Just curious what everyone else does. Currently I have around 200 gigs of photos I will be working with.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Lightroom Classic for me. I organize by year and then high level subject and add keywords (current year is always by year/month/day folders and then reorganized at the beginning of the following year). I have a Master catalog that holds everything (most of it backed up to external drives and backed up) and a working catalog that will hold the most recent 1-2 months work where I can process them, delete the crap, and do the necessary. Then once a month I'll move the photos to the external drive, go to the Master catalog, and then use Import From Catalog to pull in what I just moved. Once there I'll remove (don't delete as it will remove the image from the drive) them from the working catalog. Seems like more work than necessary for most folks, but it keeps the catalog I'm active in more nimble with the other containing more of what my "catalog" of images is.

I also shoot Infrared and Drone work and I keep that work in a separate catalog.
 

Dangerspouse

Senior Member
I use Lightroom Classic as well.

Not to hijack the thread, but does any other Lightroom user here use the "Smart Collections" feature? I never knew what that was until recently, after seeing the tab there all this time. Seems like an easier way to organize pictures, rather than trying to remember keywords (or scroll through the list of folders). Just curious if it is.
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Not to hijack the thread, but does any other Lightroom user here use the "Smart Collections" feature?

Smart Collections? Not really as I will generally use the Metadata filters at the top to find what I'm looking for within a particular folder structer whereas Smart Collections apply that filtering across the entire library. The "Without Keyword" one is handy to identify things that I should put something on.

But I do use Collections to track images that have been shared to contest/challenge sites so I know whether or not I have used it already. I've thought about creating some in my Master Catalog so that all of a certain type across years are together.
 

jonritter

Senior Member
I have a probably dumb question. Still getting familiar with LR. When backing up photos what process do you use? I’m planning on using time machine and storing the images on my primary drive and then doing a secondary to time machine manual back up to an external hard drive. Is there a better/easier way?
 

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
I have a probably dumb question. Still getting familiar with LR. When backing up photos what process do you use? I’m planning on using time machine and storing the images on my primary drive and then doing a secondary to time machine manual back up to an external hard drive. Is there a better/easier way?

I manually move my main catalog images onto an external USB drive. I then use a piece of software called FreeFileSync (that's literally free and works on MacOS and Windows) to compare what's changed on the main drive with a pair of mirrored backups (that's 12 TB in total) and adjust the backups to match the master. This identifies not just what is new and moves it over but also what has changed been changed (edited) and fixes that. I can also run it so it identifies and files on the backup that are no longer on the master and either restore those files or delete them on the backups as well. Really useful piece of software even if you had to for it.

For laptop backups I've given up on Time Machine and use something called CarbonCopyCloner which can create a bootable backup of your hard drive. In other words, if something goes bad in the boot process of your Mac you can boot from the backup drive and have everything. I'd heard it recommended from a couple guys who have been using Apple computers for decades and it's saved their butts multiple times, and made moving to a new machine a piece of cake.
 

Fred Kingston

Senior Member
For laptop backups I've given up on Time Machine and use something called CarbonCopyCloner which can create a bootable backup of your hard drive. In other words, if something goes bad in the boot process of your Mac you can boot from the backup drive and have everything. I'd heard it recommended from a couple guys who have been using Apple computers for decades and it's saved their butts multiple times, and made moving to a new machine a piece of cake.

I'll second Carbon Copy Cloner... I've been using it for years on a Mac system with a 1/2 dozen drives...
 

DonFriman

New member
If you want to take pictures that have a “wow” factor built into them, the Rule of Thirds is the secret composition you need to take advantage of! To use the rule of thirds, imagine four lines, two lying horizontally across the image and two vertical creating nine even squares. Some images will look best with the focal point in the center square, but it takes a long time. You can simply take a picture and use culling software for photos. Culling process will be reduced from multiple hours to under an hour to select final edits from thousands of images. Try it and tell me how did it work.
 
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