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If you are seriously
interested about photography, you will
soon end up with hundreds or thousands
of photos, and ordering and cataloguing
them become a necessity. There are
various good systems to organize your
images, and you have to choose the one
that fits better your way of work. A
simple and rational cataloguing strategy
can really improve your work, avoiding
waste of time and energy; personally, I
prefer to avoid file-cataloguing
programs, and I use a very simple system
of naming and folders.
The first
step is to make a selection from the
photos that you have taken during the
day or during the trip. Often I came
back home with hundreds of photos: after
downloading the from the cards to the
computer (I use a card reader, I never
use the USB cable attached to the
camera), I check the photos with Adobe
Bridge. Bridge is a very nice file
browser supplied with Photoshop; the
latest version has many useful features,
in particular, a "magnification" tool
that allows to check the detail of every
photo at 100% magnification, without
opening the file.
I immediately
delete the photos that are clearly
unusable (out of focus subject, blurred
photos, and other photos that can not be
recovered), and I make a selection
between similar photos: I often take
many similar photos of the same subject,
to select the best one when I'm back
home instead of taking just one shot in
the field. After this first selection, I
make a second selection, to eliminate
the photos that are so-so, or the photos
that are very similar to images that I
already have: this time, though, I don't
delete the photos, I just move them into
an "Archived RAW files" folder, where I
archive the RAWs of the photos that I
don't like too much, but I still want to
keep. It is likely that I'll never give
again a look to the photos stored into
this folder, but knowing that they won't
be deleted forever helps a lot to make
an "harsher" selection,
without being
too kind or emotional towards my photos.
When I've selected the photos, I
rename them according to my file
numbering; I use a very simple six-digit
code (e.g. "012685") and once I have
finished to rename the photos, I note
the name of the last image on a
"memorandum" text file, to avoid
duplicating the names next time that I
have new photos. With Adobe Bridge, it
is easy to rename large numbers of files:
select all the files that you want to
rename, then click on the menu
Tools>Batch Rename. I always recommend
to rename your photos with your own
naming scheme, instead of relying on the
numbering of the camera, that is far
from reliable, in particular if you use
various cameras. (I've the Canon 1Ds3
and a 7D, but I often try the cameras of
my friends, so I have taken photos with
nearly every Canon camera and with some Nikons).
Adobe Bridge is my
preferred file browser. I use it to select,
rename and order my photos.
I process the photo that I've selected
and I save them as TIFF, with the same
number of the RAW file, but with the
name of the subject. For example, if the
RAW file is "002269.cr2", the processed
file is "002269-aix_galericulata.tif",
or course here I wrote aix_galericulata,
but the name is the name of the subject.
The last step is to order the photo
inside a system of folders. I have six
main folders (Flora, Macro, Birds,
Wildlife, Landscapes, Various), and
every folder contains various
sub-folders about the different places:
for example, into the Wildlife folder I
have the sub-folders "Wildlife from
USA", "Wildlife from Italy", "Wildlife
from Tanzania", "Wildlife from Costa
Rica", etc. Into each sub-folder, I
store both the untouched RAW files and
the processed photos, saved as TIFF.
The TIFF file
format
I always shoot in RAW format, but I
save the post-processed files as 16-bit
Adobe RGB TIFF (of course I keep both
the RAW and the processed TIFF). The
TIFF is, in my opinion, the best format
to store image files; it is a widely
compatible format and when you save a
photo as uncompressed TIFF, you do not
lose any information. You can re-open
the file, edit it and re-save it as
TIFF, without any problem; JPEG images,
instead, accumulate artifacts every time
that you save them. Since TIFF files are
not compressed, they are very large: a
21
megapixels image creates a 120 megabytes
16-bit TIFF. The large size is
prohibitive for internet use, but it is
not a problem for hard disk storage: a
500 GB hard-disk costs about $140 and
it can store thousands of TIFF files.
Backup And
Storage
There are many ways to store your
files. Currently, my choice are external
hard disk drives, in 2.5" (portable)
format: I have three Transcend StoreJet
2.5" 500 GB (www.transcendusa.com). How do they
compare with other storage solutions?
External 3.5" drives offers bigger
sizes and lower prices, but they are
much larger (physically), and they need a lot of
electrical power (so they have two
cables, one for electricity and another
for data transfer), while portable
drives have only the USB cable, that is
used both for power and for data
transfer. Other than that, portable 2.5"
drives are a
bit more drop-resistant than 3.5" drives, even tough it
is always better to be careful when
using HDDs.
The Transcend StoreJet
2.5" 500 GB.
DVD or Blu-Ray are not an option for
me. I often update my archive - I don't
just "add a file after the last one", I
add files between other files...I have a
kind of tree structure where the photos
are ordered depending by the subject.
Doing so with HDDs is very easy, with blu-ray it would be impossible, unless I
keep making new backup copies. HDD are
much more practical!
Pen drives
(flash memory) are an interesting
option, and I believe in future they
will replace HDDs, but for now they
don't offer yet the sizes I need (the
biggest pen drive is the recently
announced Kingston 256 GB) and they are
much more expensive than HDDs. They are
much lighter and smaller, way more
resistant to drops, and they need way
less energy: I think it is just matter
of time, in 2-3 years we will see 500 GB
pen drives at affordable prices...
Storing your files in not enough:
there is always the risk that virus,
software problems or hardware failures
result in a corrupt disk. I highly
recommend to make a backup copy of your
files! I have all my photos and other
important files on the first HDD, and
the second HDD is an exact copy of the
first HDD. Once a week, I update the
second HDD with the latest version of
the content of the first HDD: in this
way, even in the worst case I would lose
no more than six days of work. I don't
use RAID systems, not backup software;
in my opinion they are not necessary, it
is enough to be precise and to remember
to copy the files to the backup drive
once a week. A last thing you have to
remember is that no storage solution is
eternal: the only way to ensure the "eternity"
of your files is to upgrade the support
where they are stored every two-three
years, or every time that you current
support becomes obsolete.
Do you have
comments or questions?
If you have comments or questions about
this article, feel free to ask in the
Juza
Nature Photography Discussion Forum!
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