here is how I work:

Outside of LR, I copy the photos from my card to a folder, using a date-based structure (YYYY – YYMMDD Event/Location). At the end of the year, I back up this folder to an external drive and burn it on DVD (for the regular back-ups I am using Time Machine).

I then import (add) the photos into LR. I am working in the folder structure right after import to add the metadata (location – country/state/city etc) and keywords (event, person, location – type or general description) as well as for the first sorting.

Afterwards, I nearly always use the metadata/keyword approach, as for me this is the most powerful part of LR. Besides the default presets, I have created several custom presets for patterns I use regularly.

Cheers
maywind

So it goes chronologically and I see quickly what the images there about. 080517 – 17th May, 2008, so it sorted correctly also in the file managers.

If I was on 2-days event, I usually put them in one folder, But sometimes divide in two folders if I was on two events during a day. With “_nik” I marked that those pictures were taken by Nik

PS: I am really fan of your videos and LR itself. That’s my first comment on killertips!

aloha brady

The other side of the coin is that software does change. Adobe has abandoned software before. (Adobe Type Manager, GoLive, etc) I used to be a big user of Canto’s Cumulus. Stopped using it and now my keyword hierarchies that I had built in to that software are useless to me.

I’m just now starting in Lightroom, so I am trying to decide which method to go with. I’m loathe to leave behind the date folder structure as I said, there can be big problems with named folder structures and creation date corruption.

My question is, is there a way to have that metadata attribute drill down all the Folders in the stack? It seems that to get a date attribute I have to be in the exact folder the photos are in, which is really not useful to me at all since my problem is I have no idea which folder (among the 500) a particular photo is in.

But to who would I be more organised? -To my pc yes, to myself, no!

Tha’ts why I would like to say to people to the other side of the fence as you called it, that we need semantic folder naming to organize our pictures. Something short that makes meaning to us,not just our pc!

Exactly like the web is moving towards semantic and user centered mark up, just like software and our current technology is made with semantic and human an machine readable coding, etc. etc….

For example I am working with certain token organising folders and photos renaming {City}{YYYY}-Event_Img#
that is:
1) The CITY I was at,
2) the YEAR or the full date
(perhaps I have visited in Athens a good few times during the year!?) &

3) EVENT
(on what occasion,was I out there with a theme in mind, what was my purpose of having that Canon beast with me all the way?)

4)and last but not least when it comes to file names of each IMAGE, yes I need a NUMBER# to know how many I have shot that day)

I think when this discussion comes up there’s the assumption that LR will be the last photo processing software I will ever use. Before LR I had used a half dozen different programs to process my photos. If another program came along better than LR, there is no guarantee I would be able to transfer the database organization from LR into that program.

With a Year Month Day file system on my hard drive that basic organization will always be transferable. I’m not recommending that’s how everyone should do it rather you should view how you organize on your hard drive separate from what software you use.

In a recent shoot, my camera had reset to default date and time without my knowing until I got back to my computer, so suddenly I had a heap of January 1, 2004s (Lightroom, bless its heart, at least acknowledges this as an “Unknown Date”), but at some point I’ve got to keep them separate. I was a major proponent of the One Big Folder approach, but at some point you’ve got to break that folder down to its smaller components. By reorganizing and then allowing Lightroom to create its own date-based folders on import, I can keep everything separate, and if I ever need to break catalogs apart for storage, I don’t have to dig very hard.