Digital Asset Management (warning: a bit long...)

[Richard G.]

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to locate pictures in my ever expanding photo’s folder on the PC, so been thinking about how best to introduce some kind of digital asset management software into my workflow.

Choices seem to be a simple DAM program that does little else, but at least does the DAM well. Or something like Lightroom where, for a large proportion of pictures, I’d hopefully need no other application from camera to storage.

Just wondering what other people are doing/using?

I’ve tried the demo version of Lightroom, but find it does unexpected things at times, which is probably mostly down to the fact that I don’t know how to use it properly, but I’m not sure I really want to have to spend lots of time reading books or watching videos to work out how to use it. It’s not that I struggle with IT, having been in the industry for 20+ years, but like much Adobe software, it’s not very intuitive is it! So is it worth the effort of learning how to use it properly?

I also fell into the habit, at an early stage, of cataloguing by camera and then by date, but I think this is part of the issue I now have in remembering when I took a certain picture, so also interested how people catalog their pictures? What's your folder structure look like? Do you find it works well for you? What are the shortcomings?

So anyone got any DAM lessons learned that they’d like to share? Anyone really using keywording and find it works for them? Any recommendations or experiences with particular applications, good or bad?

Lots of questions I know.... sorry about that..

[Badllarma]

I find before I even look at software it's about data management and setting up your folders to work for you.

First I create my main folder/directory Photography, this is NEVER on a C drive for starters and certainly never in "My Pictures"
In Photography I have blah blah business, and Personal, I run a business that also includes photography so that why I do that split straight away.

Now from there it depends on how much you take if you shooting 100's or even 1000's a month then the next folder would be Year and then month then in that month I will create a directory (lets say I went out today) Woods 30_01_2009 then RAW then within that folder I have Processed 30_01_2009 this is where I would put any files I like well enough to consider ready for any post work or final printing etc.

So so far it would look at little like this

D>Photography>Personal>2009>January>Woods 30_01_2009>RAW>Processed 30_01_2009

And so in Lightroom my key wording would be

Personal, 2009, January, Subject & date, subject A, subject B etc etc etc......


And that's how I do it. It may not be right, it may not be wrong but it works ok for me. For commercial jobs we have job numbers, invoice numbers etc as well.

If I need any image I never really search in Lightroom anyway I just jump into the directories as I could been needing it for any number of reasons and see it's a waist of time opening applications I don't need open.

Oh and then if you wish tie your subject to the date do it via Outlooks calender (other commercial calendar software is available).
Thats my take on it anyway

Like I say i'm sure there are 1000's of ways of doing it but that works for me

[ron1863]

I catalogue mine very simply.
I have folders for birds, animals, people, places, Landscapes etc. I then have subfolders in each with place, species etc. and date. This works best for me as I can easily find a bird, place, scene etc. I keep them on a seperate hard drive and regularly back up on DVD.
Each to their own but whatever works for you.

[pressld2]

Originally Posted by Badllarma

It may not be right, it may not be wrong but it works ok for me.

There is no right or wrong for this - just what works for you and what you feel comfortable with.

I'm using Lightroom (still at version 1.4) and can see a lot of similarities between my structure and what Badllarma is doing.

First my folder structure. Just like Badllarma it's not on the C drive and certainly not in "My Pictures". I have a top level folder called "Nikon DSLR Photos" under which are various folders for finished images depending on what they were for, e.g. there's a folder for jpeg images uploaded to WAB. There is also a folder structure for raw images. This start with "All Photos" then has the year followed by the month (prefixed with a number so that the months are shown in order) then the day. So the photos I took today are in

E:\Nikon DSLR Photos\All Photos\2009\01 January\20090130\

When I've finished editing and am sure I won't be deleting any more I rename the raws to 20090130-001...999. That way I can be certain that no two photos will ever have the same file name. This screen grab shows what my folder structure looks like in Lightroom...



I also keyword my photos but try to keep this as simple as possible, just the species name for wildlife images. However I have organised keywords into a hierarchy too...



This means that I can very quickly find all birds, or all birds of prey, or all falcons, or just the kestrels. It also means that if I keyword a photo with just the single word "kestrel" it will automatically be included in "falcon", "birds of prey" and "bird" - I don't have to add those keywords.

Lightroom includes a metadata browser too...



It maintains this automatically from the EXIF data so you don't need to worry about it.

Dave P.

[GerryNick2]

I also use Lightroom and like Dave P make full use of keywords which are arranged in a hierarchy. Have 20,000 images in the catalogue and can locate any photo in seconds.

Gerry

[jennyb]

I am going to keep an eye on this thread. I think I am going to get into an awful mess with my photos because I have a problem hitting the delete key. I tend to keep photos which are not very good but useful for id purposes (like views from a different angle, etc).

Like Richard I struggle with Adobe software (actually I hate it with a vengeance), so I keep all my photos in a folder structure (flowers, trees, animals, birds, insects, etc) sub-divided as necessary. When I take photos, I initially store them in a date folder and when I have processed them, transfer them into the categorised folders. This is one of the places where I am going wrong because I still have folders from 2007 that I have not transferred yet.

Also, now that I am shooting RAW, I find it a real nuisance that I cannot view thumbnails. I downloaded a Windows add-on to try to achieve this, but it did not work. I read somewhere that it does not work for RAWs from a 40d. I don't know if that is correct.

Anyway, I hope to get some useful tips from this thread before I drown in photos! Sounds like I might have to bite the bullet and use Lightroom.

Jenny

[pressld2]

I'm quite fond of Lightroom. I was one of the people who bought the premium version of RawShooter so got the first version of Lightroom free when Adobe took over that software house. At first I didn't like it much but that was mainly because I wasn't used to it. The other problem I had was that it was pretty slow. When I switched cameras from the D70 to the D300 and the size of my raw files doubled it became painfully slow. Since then I have upgraded my PC and Lightroom's speed is now fine.

As well as the facilities mentioned in my previous thread you can also colour code images and set star ratings from 0 to 5. I make some use of these features for flagging images that have been uploaded to an agency or that I think are suitable for submission. You can also create named collections of images and once again you can organise these into hierarchies. For example I have recently submitted some pictures to RSPB Images (still waiting to hear back from them) so I have set up a collection called "RSPB Images" and within that a sub-collection called "Submitted". At some point in the future there will probably be further sub-collections called "Accepted" (I hope!) and "Rejected".

I do very little image editing in Paintshop Pro these days. Pretty much just converting to jpeg and resizing for upload. And I don't know why I'm still using it for that as Lightroom can output jpegs at any size you like. One thing that Lightroom (at least v1.4) can't do which surprises me is output in CMYK. RSPB Images want CMYK submissions and so did Outdoor Photography when I entered their fungi competition.

My main reason for not upgrading to version 2 is the price. Adobe are, as usual, charging significantly more in the UK and Europe than they are in the US or Japan. I know I'm not the only person refusing to be gouged like this so maybe they'll learn their lesson one day (but don't hold your breath!). But apart from that, Practical Photography have been running a series of articles called "Getting Started in Lightroom 2" and I've seen very little in there that I would want to do and that isn't already available in Lightroom 1.

Dave P.

[NJP87]

Originally Posted by ron1863

I catalogue mine very simply.
I have folders for birds, animals, people, places, Landscapes etc. I then have subfolders in each with place, species etc. and date. This works best for me as I can easily find a bird, place, scene etc. I keep them on a seperate hard drive and regularly back up on DVD.
Each to their own but whatever works for you.

I do pretty much the same, i have a main folder, and then folder for portraits, wildlife etc.

I keyword all pics with date, species, location etc.

I am using lightroom and find it does a great job.

[Hobjob]

Originally Posted by jennyb

Like Richard I struggle with Adobe software (actually I hate it with a vengeance), so I keep all my photos in a folder structure (flowers, trees, animals, birds, insects, etc) sub-divided as necessary. When I take photos, I initially store them in a date folder and when I have processed them, transfer them into the categorised folders. This is one of the places where I am going wrong because I still have folders from 2007 that I have not transferred yet.

Jenny

Thats nothing!
I've got photos in the 2005 year directory structure that are
not yet sorted!!

But I do it very similarly to the above
but
I rename all my files to give a place and date (and file under
species for natural world).

[MeadsMan]

I completely understand what JennyB is saying.Perhaps a bit of a side step,but on a similar path,but I think my P.C is beginning to complain about a lack of memory space due to the amount of photos I have stored on it.So far,all my photos are backed up on an external hard drive.However once I delete them from my P.C,they will no longer be backed up as such,as will only have the one copy on the External drive,unless I have allready stored them onto DVD aswell.I feel I have come to the point where I must tidy up,and get rid of all those not quite sharp images,that me or anybody else for that matter would not be over thrilled with.Strange how so many of us are reluctant to hit the delete button ....it`s not just me is it ? Anyway to the point.Keeping in mind that most digital images,in particular RAW files,will need some sharpening,is then a sharp image down to personal judgement ? What about those images that look sharp at 50 percent,but not quite so great at 100 percent ? The closer or bigger an image is the sharper it must be right ? Move further away or reduce it`s size,and it will look sharper.So how can we decide what is a sharp image,is it just down to our own judgement