what is your iPOS (iPhoto Organization Strategy) ?

progmacprogmac
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Sorry, felt like using an acronym. So what IS your iPOS? I've been an iPhoto user for as long as i've had a digital camera, but i just can't seem to get my photos organized in a coherent fashion.



I don't make that many albums, because i'm not sure how to classify them. If i made an album for every thing i've ever taken pictures for, i'd have dozens, maybe a hundred albums.



also, i've started using keywords more, but i'm not sure what make good keywords. should i have one for me, another for my wife, and another for pictures with only my wife AND me? one for each member of the family, or a family one in general? i know this stuff varies tremendously based on taste, so i'm still working on my keyword strategy.



and then there are the rolls, which can be named. does anyone organize based on rolls? i would, but often i'll have 50 pictures from one event with 5 random pics at the begin.



oh, and naming and commenting pictures! i can never decide how long to make a photo title, which photos to title, or what to put into the comments. i don't want a million pictures titled, "danielle and i"



plus, it seems like with digital cameras, we take many more pictures than we need. so sometimes i'll have four pictures of the same thing, and many just bland pictures cluttering up my library. lately i've been putting similar type pictures in my trash and then occassionally backing up my trash into a folder outside of iPhoto and then emptying my trash.



so what's your iPOS?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    boemaneboemane Posts: 311member
    Well, I have the same problem. Having over 9000 photos in my iphoto library from 2002, its a problem of organising the photos.



    Lately I have started using keywords, and I have about two dosen keywords like nature, night, city, architecture, macro, botanical, people, holiday, etc



    I started out naming photos and adding comments but its just too tedious when I come back from a 3-week holiday with 1000 pictures. No kidding, thats how much its escalated for me. Last holiday I had about 200 shots from the australian rainforest, abour 500 underwater shots from the great barrier reef (and islands), heaps of sunset/sunrise photos (who am i kidding here.. theres no sunrise photos ), etc, etc. On top of that, I had about 5 rolls of "standard" film as well.



    I was unaware that you could name the rolls, which seems like an excellent way to categorise the photos. But then again, as one of my 256 MB cards hold around 150 photos, these photos are one roll, right ?



    Also, my holiday photos have escallated after I bought an iPod photo with the camera connector. Why ? Because I seriously have unlimited space now. I can store a LOT of 5 MP photos on the remaining 30 GB



    Another discovery that I've made is that I have started taking more non-digital photos after I started with digital photography. I usually take the regular shots with my digital camera, but use my Pentax SLR for those "special" shots, and I am really starting to like taking "analog" photos on slide film, as it gives a way better color-representation in my opinion.



    I did a fun comparisson a few months ago with the number of photos in iPhoto year-over-year:



    2001: 43 (camera bought for christmas)

    2002: 1493

    2003: 2688

    2004: 1934

    2005: 3188



    Keeping up with this years photo-manic shooting, I'll end up with almost 4800 photos this year alone. Keeping it all organized is going to become hell. I though it was bad enough adding keywords to 9000 photos a few months ago. Its going to be HELL in a few years if I need to categorise my photos in some way or another (by then I'll probably top 15 000 judging by the current frenzy)...
  • Reply 2 of 7
    regreg Posts: 832member
    I use albums and keywords. The only time I use comments are to name people in the pictures. The albums have location names in them and the pictures already have date and time stamps. For the 2004 and 2005 I have 5612 pictures so far using a litttle over 17 GB. I back up monthly and archive yearly so I don't run out of space. This way in January I will remove 2004 form the library and have room for 2006. I really didn't start taking lots of pictures till I got my canon 10D. Then the quality of the pictures was enough to enjoy the results of digital picture taking. When the 20D came out I got one of those because it fixed the one big problem the 10D had, time of start up. Now with quick start up I get those eye catching shots I might have missed before.



    What I would like to see is a better way to have slideshows with music exported for emails.



    reg
  • Reply 3 of 7
    progmacprogmac Posts: 1,850member
    what kind of info do y'all put in the photo title? i can't decide if i should put events (so & so's bday party 1, 2, 3, 4 etc) and then people's names in the comments or the other way around. personal preference, i guess. does changing the title affect the filename, or is it totally seperate?
  • Reply 4 of 7
    regreg Posts: 832member
    I leave the picture title the same as it was coming out of the camera, IMG_1234 or what ever. It makes things easier to findwhen looking for it or before going to photoshop. All photos that are adjusted go to a new folder that is in pictures but not in iPhoto library. The reason for this is because I sometimes use raw images and canon's software. Those pictures have a descriptive title and are in named folders, RP B-day 2005 or SN Wedding 2005 with what was happening. Many times pictures will have the same title but that is okay for me. I have made it a habit to do this usually within a week of taking the pictures. If you don't the task can be overwhelming.



    reg
  • Reply 5 of 7
    dutch peardutch pear Posts: 588member
    The thing with picture organisation is the following IMO:



    * Metadata based organisation is cool (where and when is the picture taken, who or what is in it, etcetera)



    but:



    * manually entering metadata for hundreds or thousands of pics sucks!!!



    That's why I believe hardware and software need to 'grow up' and do the meta-data entering for us. Specifically, what I would like are two things. The first is built-in gps in affordable cameras that adds coordinates into the Exif, so I can search by location or automatically trace my vacation in software like google's earth/maps. The second is automatic facial recognition software that can learn to recognize the faces of common people in my pictures and automatically put this info in Exif.

    Make metadata automatic and make it simple. I say go Apple, Go!!!



    edit: see this Ricoh camera
  • Reply 6 of 7
    nofeernofeer Posts: 2,427member
    i name by "roll" or import date. by albums, my photos each have the date on them anyway, so i name albums by event and date christmas 05 easter 05 etc, destination of trips etc maybe another way would be like gmail by labels and have a search option. i also put the best of each season on my website. but trying to find a particular picture of my family would be tough. everything is season, event grouped.
  • Reply 7 of 7
    toxotestoxotes Posts: 102member
    I would love to see these come to fruition. It would save so much time!



    Back to the original question, I only have about 2,000 photos, but I use keywords. I have a keyword for every person who I think I might ever want to find pictures of, then I just assign them to each picture right after I bring them in. I also have keywords for places.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by dutch pear

    The thing with picture organisation is the following IMO:



    * Metadata based organisation is cool (where and when is the picture taken, who or what is in it, etcetera)



    but:



    * manually entering metadata for hundreds or thousands of pics sucks!!!



    That's why I believe hardware and software need to 'grow up' and do the meta-data entering for us. Specifically, what I would like are two things. The first is built-in gps in affordable cameras that adds coordinates into the Exif, so I can search by location or automatically trace my vacation in software like google's earth/maps. The second is automatic facial recognition software that can learn to recognize the faces of common people in my pictures and automatically put this info in Exif.

    Make metadata automatic and make it simple. I say go Apple, Go!!!



    edit: see this Ricoh camera



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