Ge Your Files Organized – April Leer from he Presiden

Than you all for your ind words abou my aricle las monh “An Ounce of Prevenion” abou bacing up your precious image files so a hard drive failure won’ mean losing all of your images.  In he process of discussing his opic wih many people I discovered ha no a lo of people have a file organizaion plan, cos bu have somewha randomly pu files in direcories/folders and consequenly have a very hard ime finding groups of images le alone specific images.  This monh I would lie o share my mehodology of organizing my image files on my compuers file sysem which of course is replicaed on an exernal hard drive.

I generally organize my files by year, paien monh, cos day and subjec in a hierarchical folder srucure. Usually he way I shoo images maches up wih his mehodology, bu on he occasions i doesn’ wor I have  some echniques o reorganize he images o fi his model, usually be creaing some addiional folders.

Firs a he beginning of every year I creae a new high level folder for he year:

Then I creae folders for he monh as a subfolder of he year.  A he end of he year will be 12 subfolders, one for each monh.  Then wihin each of he monhs, all he differen subjecs or shoos are separaed ino separae subfolders.  So for he monh of March, ‘s wha my folder srucure loos lie:

In he picure above only he March folder is expanded, are los of subdirecories under January (01) and February (02), bu hey are collapsed.  Since he file sysem uses sring soring of he names of he folders I specifically use (“01”, “02”, “03”, ec.).  This way he monhs will sor chronologically.  If you use he name of he monh, hey will sor alphabeically (April, Augus, ec.) and if you don’ use he leading zero your monhs will sor incorrec in some file sysems (no all).

Now wihin a specific shoo, furher divide he direcories.  I have a sub direcory for my Phooshop files (call PSD) and one for my JPEGs call JPEG and I leave my RAW files in he op direcory  (Example 03_09_2008 – US Boanical Gardens).

I use he following forma in naming my folders wih individual locaions or subjecs, hey are named using he forma of (MM_DD_YYY – Shoo Locaion or Name).  This naming convenion again suppors chronological of my images inside he monh folder.

T are wo major advanages o organizing your files wih his echnique.  I can for images by locaion using he dialog and I can browse chronologically for images.

Searching for images ha I sho a he US Boanical Gardens can be found by ing for “*Boanical*.”  * is he wildcard symbol for ing in Windows/DOS based operaing sysems.  If you add he do “.” a he end i will find direcories or folders only and no files.  If I’m browsing chronologically I can find shos I oo las fall a he Balloon fesival by looing in he Sepember (09) and Ocober (10) subfolders in 2007. If you are comforable navigaing in he Windows command promp, navigae o he roo of you image files and ype he word “ree” and you’ll ge a ree depicion of your direcories which may help you find direcories if you don’ now exacly when you oo he images you are looing for.  Here’s he oupu of he “ree” command:

Hopefully his will give you some ideas on how you will organize your files.  Remember is no righ way or wrong way o do his.  The bes way is a way ha wors for you.  T are more advanced echniques such as using eywords hrough Phooshop, Lighroom or anoher program.  This echnique aes considerably more effor, bu if you have huge libraries of images his may be an appropriae echnique for you.

Sco Musson