Well explained that planning your folder structure from the beginning is a good idea. Personally, I create the top level folders but modify the metadata and batch rename in Adobe Bridge before I create the back up copies. I have created a one click batch metadata preset which includes copyright notices, website links and other details. Then I go back into metadata via File Info and add description and keywords to suit sets eg camera, drone, icebergs, Iceland, lake, year, month, focus stack2. You can search by keywords etc. Finally I Batch Rename files in Bridge to add prefix or suffix to the cameras file name eg 18-09-24 Botallack Mines (camera file name. CR2 in Canon case. This prevents duplication of camera filenames in the future if you go round the clock 9999.CR2 in your camera. Finally, I do the backups and rate and delete the rubbish. Ideally both originals and back up folders are identical although I do add the word ‘Copy’ to the individual backed up folders. Hope that all makes sense.
I'm just living the pain of reorganizing my files after years of multiple catalogues, laptops, external drives, backups all over the place. What a huge pain!! My suggestion is decide on a system then write your logic down (I use One Note) so that when you come back to things after some time you don't lose sight of your strategy! Hope you are enjoying the great weather! I'm just down the road in Calgary!
Thanks Gavin…confirmation of nothing else that I’m doing nothing wrong!…in my case I’ll have master folders by year then sub folders with yyyymmdd and the location or occasion. Then further folders for which camera was used, like you. And thanks for the comment on the duds…have always wondered about that! Cheers….
Great explanation, the methods sound. One additional suggestion. Carry multiple memory cards. After backing up to your laptop harddrive, and then onto your external. Swap out the days memory card to a hard storage case. This gives you, three copies, store them in different areas of the van, car, hotel room. Not in the same bag. When you get home, transfer to your desktop (if you have one). Have one copy stored off-site. Also do a check of the files to confirm they are not corrupted after the copying process. When you are 'sure' you have three distinct copies, then, and only then, reformat your memory cards.
Thanks Gavin ! Glad to know I’m not the only one where disk storage is the bane of my existence LOL! Some great tips there. I like your idea of copying the folder structure multiple times. I’m not a pro like yourself so I’m not downloading files on a regular basis so I find I can be a little inconsistent when it comes to naming.
I handle things in a similar manner, but I have a top level folder by year, and then a sub folder with year and month first, then trip. Having just come back from Iceland myself, my tree is: 2024 202409-Iceland Westfjords [additional sub folders if desired] I don’t typically track the day of the trip, just the locations. In the above case for the Westfjords, I might break it down to sub folders by more specific place. I like the year and month tree as it allows me to find the trip quite easily, and it also helps me remember where exactly we were to answer questions like: “what year were we in Morocco?” “Did we go to The Maldives in December of 2018 or January of 2019?”.
Not boring at all! Glad to meet another photographybhoarder! I like your folder structure. Only thing I would do different, is put the year before the location- to make them sort chronicalogically. Cheers!
Good organization, but a lot of the stuff you are doing manually can be done automatically. I use Rapid Photo Downloader, which automatically builds folder names any way I want them; in my case, that's including the date, "job code" (location/event/subject/whatever), and camera model. It can send the image files to multiple destinations at once. It doesn't run on Mac, so it doesn't help you, Gavin, but it might help others here.
Thank you Gavin for these tips. I like to think of myself as “organized” but even I learned something watching this. Now, what I would LOVE to learn from you next, perhaps as a follow up to this vid, is your Light Room Import process, if you do that of course. I’m starting to run down a rabbit hole of RUclips trying to learn ways of doing this in a fashion so that images don’t get lost or broken within Light Room. Trying to determine if catalogs and storage are the same, or different or Lord only knows what else is a hoot, but getting your take on it would be even hootier :). Thanks again kind sir, keep up the great work, we all appreciate it.
I don't use LR and have seen too many disasters from my students to make me want to even try using LR to organize my images, hence this simple but disaster free method.
Hi Gavin, nice vid and I follow pretty much the same routine for sub dividing folders on a daily/location basis. One neat trick is, if using Adobe Bridge prior to transferring is to use the Metadata function in bridge. Select the file/s you are transferring from the computer to there relative folders and even at a basic level enter keywords. Bridge will then write the tags so after transferring onto the PC/storage device, you can easily find the files in the search option for those specific files, the more keywords, the higher the odds of finding specific files for editing/viewing. Do not add keywords using the MAC system, they are not recognised in the PC and unless you edit on a Mac that info will be lost. If done using Bridge it matters not, once written it stays and can be referenced by any system. You can also create templates in Bridge to add at any time in the future, name, address, copyright info etc and simply paste it in to any other file in the future rather than have to repeat the same process over and over again. Keywords obviously vary but you can also include common words and then add to them at a later time. 🙂
Nice tutorial Gavin. I do It by the flowing folder structure Raw,Year, Month,Location,Device. Obviously some months will have very little in them it's just empty folders. All my image edits go into a master Edits folder and exports are done to a master exports folder for publication I mainly delete those not used but have been known to hoard certain shoots a couple of USB C SSD for times away from home and backed up to a Synology NAS and a bank of SSD's in caddy attached to my main PC, stopped using cloud storage as my NAS does that service. Video is the space killer though, especially time lapses.😊
I do my process on my iPad as I’m a hobbyist so shoot hundreds of photos a day and not thousands. All image files and directories start with year-month-day. I cull with any free time during the day as my iPad is always with me. Nice getting home from a trip with all culling and naming done. I either backup with camera card, external drive or both. Also, culling during the trip gives me great feedback on what I have good shots of and if my technique is working.
A little tip regarding SD cards etc, when out in the field and using multiple SD cards that day, when I swap one out and use another one, I put that used card UPSIDE down in my case that holds the fresh cards so as not to ruin that original one by mistake.
@@crcomments8509 Thanks, old habit from compact flash card days, being a sports photographer and always in a rush using several cards during a game for safety sake. I can see me forgetting I flipped it.
Thanks Gavin great help for me wish I woulda did that long time ago . Love the elevator music playing in background . Keep on rollin with a smile📸 Scott
Thank you - most helpful. I use Photo Mechanic and review all my images there. I only import the ones I like into Lightroom. It's so much better for my hard drive storage. I let the non keepers sit for a few weeks before I delete them, just in case i change my mind.
I import everything from my SD card, one unedited copy goes to an Archive drive and the second copy goes to a holding folder. I sort them, delete some, process others then export the completed work to another external drive. That way i have everything unedited and just the edited keepers. All kept files have keywords and smart collections
on windows there is a brilliant program called "bulk rename utility". very useful, try that out. you can basically change file names: adding, removing prefix, inserting date, changing index numbers and so on on mass and not one by one. I usually replace the "DSC" or whatever random letters are used by the camera to save the files on SD with a 3-letter code of the location (e.g. first 3 consonants of the name, I use the vowels when I run out of consonants). an example: Vancouver would be "VNC", you can have file file named for example "VNC_2024_index" or whatever order you prefer. I always keep the original camera index so I have unique names, to me the index it's just an ID and the rest of the name are descriptors.
On a Mac you can use Name Changer which works basically the same. Or select the items, then Control-click one of them. In the shortcut menu, choose Rename. In the pop-up menu below Rename Finder Items, choose to replace text in the names, add text to the names, or change the name format.
A very practical approach to managing image files. I also use the Bridge batch renaming feature to include the location or subject appended to the original file name. Has helped to quickly find a file using LRs data base.
I employ a fairly similar folder structure to the one shown here, with one small (but extremely helpful) addition: I append the root folder name with the 6-digit date in the format YYMMDD. So, I might have "241001 Basement" (who could resist checking out photos from THAT location, hey?). This way, everything sorts in Explorer (or Finder) chronologically. If the root folder contains pictures spanning multiple days, like if I went to London for a week (London, Ontario, obviously), I just use the date of the first day.
I’ve been doing this lark professionally and amateur since the 80’s, encompassing wet film, video and digital, it’s always useful to hear what other people are doing with their filing systems, even if it’s exactly the same as yours because you get that warm fuzzy feeling that you’re on the right track. As always your instructionals are great, I love the comedy setups you inject into your other videos, but in my opinion the instructionals have a really good balance of humour and seriousness that gets the point across (takes me back to the instructors at the school of photography). It would be great to have some more instances of Amanda going “full Canadian” as I can’t understand her, nor can google translate, and I love a challenge! How on earth do you cope?
For repetitive folder structures like this I make a generic one that I duplicate (cmd D) and rename the duplicates. For example: folder named _location, duplicate it, rename it, inside is a day folder duplicate or rename accordingly, and waiting inside of that is your camera, drone and osmo, all ready to go. The starting underscore keeps the folder at the top alphabetically.
Nice video thanks. I use a similar system and I think is a lot simpler and more time efficient. Firstly, I do like to use the date first in my master folder structure. With the date as 'YearMonthDay' and then folder description. eg '20241008 Sports job' This way the years and folders will always be in chronological order. Secondly, I use the fantastic PhotoMechanic software for doing all the captioning, culling etc. In the setup of PM you can specify what labels to use in the caption/filing. So I have caption, date, event and camera make. This way all images can be dumped in the one folder and then down track if searching, you can simply sort them by 'camera make' for instance and it will allow only view those images. Saves all the dramas of having to make up separate folders etc as you have shown here. Just thought I share my process anyway.
Thanks for that run-through of your method. Entertaining as always (although I was half expecting Amanda to appear and 'accidentally' delete some files). I won't have nearly as many photos as you, but I too am a bit of a photo hoarder. The only ones I delete are the obvious mistakes where I have taken a photo of my thumb or foot! You, as a professional, will obviously not make those silly mistakes. 😇 I do keep all my sd cards as an emergency back-up. Thanks again - a new Fototripper video is always worth settling down to with a brew and biscuits!
I do exactly the same as you when I am traveling. Every days I backup my photos on an external hard drive in sub folders by day, with the name of the location. It work well that way.
Glad i only have 1 device. Thanks sharing ur method on this boring subject. I use one folder with year, day and subject. I have also made a main folder then sub folders, again year, where it is.
You probably can’t do this in Bridge, but I use Apple’s built in tags feature to quickly label pics. That way you just need to label different tags once, so I just have tags like “Ambient light”, Panorama, HDR etc. I then just right click files/photos and choose the tag to add. You can tag a bunch of files in one hit.
Hi Gavin, great video again, thank you.... I do the same as you and store in a similar way. All I do different is delete the real crap ones, ( a lot) just think I'm never going to look at them again so in the bin, they go.....Thanx again Gavin. Colin Devon UK.
Thanks Gavin! Long time fan. I’m curious do you use Photoshop exclusively for editing or do you also LrC? I’m just setting up a new external SSD. I was trying to get a little more organized so this is helpful. Look forward to seeing more on this channel and your other channels too.
Cool tips Gavin. If I may add, I usually put the date first so I can organize by date and sometimes the sequence of days helps me organize it better. I can have all of 2024 photographs and select all folders easily. If I have location first it’s sorted alphabetically and I need to go through all folders one by one to copy for example. I also like to keep one Lightroom catalog per year and sometimes per trip if I have a lot of photographs and the catalog stays in the folder with the year or the trip. When o backup the files to the NAS or online the catalog gets backed up with it so I save a lot of time later. Also I have a 1TB online storage (onedrive offers you 1TB storage if you have office. In fact the Microsoft family office subscription give you 5 accounts with 1TB of space for each member and you get both Microsoft office and the online storage for 99 euros a year of something like that. were I keep my keepers. If anything goes wrong I have at least those on a virtual space where it’s much harder to loose anything.
I cull my photos first using the X and P keys using the auto advance command. Its faster than right clicking and selecting a star or stars. X marks the photo as "to be discarded or not to be used" and P flags the photo as a keeper, for the time being. I can then go thru the Flagged photos and rate them later as needed.
Your drive is probably much slower because it's formatted as exFat format. If you don't need to use that drive on a PC, I'd recommend formatting it in a Mac format. You'll find it's much faster and more reliable.
Thanks for the pointers. I do not put all my pictures onto the computer because I have read it can reduce the storage space, speed, and make the disk more prone to corruption if your constantly adding and deleting large amounts of data. It’s cheaper to replace an external hd than your MacBook is my logic.
Thanks Gavin, that was refreshing to see you have a common sense approach to storing. Something I can do easily without big investment. You mentioned your big computer at home. Could you tell us what you have and a breakdown of its specification. This was always a plan I had to one day order a PC for home.
Interesting timing. I have just completely re-arranged my image storage categories. I was arranging everything by date, but if I wanted to recover an image of XYZ then I had to remember the date - and sometimes it was a year or two back - which is not good for my old fart memory. So now I am trying more descriptive categories, eg: Overseas Trips\Country\City. Or wildlife\animal type. And then I have an export folder in each for the edited images. It is all part of the photography adventure. I do back up, but I need to implement a better more streamlined option. Thanks for the reminder. 👍👍
If you go back to the same location year after year organising by date at the top level is a real pain. Far better to organise by location with subfolders for each year (if you must). Remember all operating systems and Digital Asset Management (DAM) software (such as Adobe Bridge or Lightroom) have the ability to sort by date. Therefore, it’s somewhat redundant (and pointless) to put the date in the file name.
All my top-level folders begin with year-month-day and then place or purpose or subject etc. (e.g., "2024-09-25_Gavin-Portrait"). I may steal some ideas from this video to improve organization and search capabilities.
I do almost exactly the same eg 240910 Description. This is 2024 Sept 10th . This means when you sort your files by name they are automatically sorted by date. When travelling I take a Microsoft Surface Pro and 2 SSD and at the end of each day, I back up the cards to the 2 SSD.
Excellent video! I have organized my images the same way you do since I started shooting with a digital camera, except I haven't used bridge. I keep all of my images as well...lol...lost track of the number of hard drives I now have (I have to be over ten now)!
I use a file sync program to make sure I have duplicates from my main drive to my backup, plus if I've made any changes they are also highlighted, so I can confirm to backup
@@fototripperstudio The propensity for magnetic media and SSDs to lose their charge or magnetism over time. Copying the files around avoids this. Good NAS devices do this automatically. Cheers. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation
Is there really a good way to store digital files for the extremely long term? Data that was stored as recently as the 1990s is now often degraded and difficult to recover as old rotating drives fail. How long is a modern SSD good for before it degrades? A RAID set-up that you maintain for life? Redundant cloud storage providers in perpetuity? I really don't know the answer to this question. I try to make a nice photo book every year with the photos that I prize the most. I have old, well cared for books that still look as good as new.
I'm pretty much of a hoarder too but on my initial culling I'll delete the totally out focus images. I'll backup the rest on external hard drives and use Idrive which is a supposedly encrypted cloud storage for my final edited shots for my personal albums of favorites which helps keep storage fees to a minimum. We heat with wood so if my house burns down I'll still have the most prized images safe.
Nice, if your like me my wrists gets to close to the track pad which is sensitive to the close proximity of your hands and can confuses the keyboard commands, might help. So sort your wrists out! Thanks for the video, very helpful. 👍
Very interesting, thanks for your insight! Why are you not using Lightroom? The only reason I can think of, is if once one or more images are chosen, and everything is backed up you don't access them as often. I'm curious to know. Tks
Being a learning photographer (since more than 20 years ...) I don't keep all pictures, I discard the ones that are just mediocre, whether they're JPEGs or RAWs. It helps save space, and it recalls to myself, "Why did you even take this shit?"
i have never been able to make a file system, i have important letters slipped behind cup rack to remind me to read them everytime i make coffee, some of them have been there for a year...... and thats the best organised bit of my filing system.
I use Bridge uploader. In that, I can create a folder for location and date. Then I rename files, location, date, device, then number. Example: Lakes1-1-24/Lakes 1-1-24 Drone 1. Or, Lakes1-1-24/Lakes 1-1-24 Z8 1. and if I need to find a file, I do a search. I type in lakes, newest to oldest, then find the date. I have 2 backup drives.
Very useful suggestions for people who don't have a good management system or those who want to change it. I personally struggle with moving a catalogue and related photos on my laptop to my main catalogue on my desktop at home. This would make for a good future video. Also do you maintain one large catalogue or multiple smaller ones?? thx
All my photos are organised by date. Top-level folder for 2024, then a month folder "09-Sept", then each shoot is titled with the date and location "2024-09-26 Location". Rather than renaming images, I use colour labels and stacks in Lightroom to indicate groups that go together for focus or exposure brackets.
With a tiny shell script you could have the computer prompt you for day number and description, then create the folder trees automatically. Beyond that much more could be done (e.g., automatically insert the current year-month-day into the folder name, etc.) but even that tiny help could be, well... helpful. LOL
this is my preferred method too. i wrote a little rust cli program that asks me some questions and creates folders and sub folders to my desired organization of: subject/date/ingress (the dumping ground for all my imported photos), subject/date/egress/web|print and subject/date/processed
@@krimke881 The thing is, it would be pretty specific to a given computer. The same basic details would change between computers but it would still be tied to specific drive / volume / folder names, etc. Given correct information it should be reasonably simple to write or adapt. But making it generic enough to distribute and behave properly on its own, in unknown circumstances would turn it into "software" and the complexity would go up astronomically. Plus there's the fact that I can write Linux (AT&T style unix) scripts, but I'm not familiar with BSD unix nor certainly what Apple has done to it for more than two decades. 🙂
Huh… I do something similar. Main difference is I also scan the images onto the computer so that I have a hi-res back up just in case. Stored on a 3.5” floppy for easy, and compact, filing.
When it comes to the transfer speed -one note from my side: the USB-C connector doesn't guarantee for any transfer speeds. There are USB-C cables that transfer at USB2 speeds, USB3 speeds, Thunderbolt 3 or 4 speeds... the list goes on and on.
good point. I've tested loads of drives and cables over the years using Black Magic to measure them. It's surprising the crappy cables that some manufacturers include with their drives
USB-C is a standard for the physical shape of the plug/socket and the contacts. It’s not a speed standard. Some USB-C devices (including cables) will deliver power but some don’t. You really have to study the specs to buy the connecting cable and device that fits your needs. As a general rule USB-C will be faster than the older USB-A. Also beware of cheap cables which (a) might be slow and (b) might damage your computer and/or SSD.
You use a very similar structure to what I do…a couple of minor differences. I too don’t delete anything and probably should…I’m often reminded of this whenever I am nearly to capacity. 🤷🏻♂️📸😎
This is more or less how I would manage photos. My setup is smaller. Smartphone and one camera. This is how I manage them in Lightroom CC. I have folders by country like Estonia, Portugal and US. Under folders are albums of my trips. Like so "2024 07 Funchal" or "2021 08 Tallinn" and "2021 09 Tartu" This way each trip is sorted on their own albums chronologically by year+month+main location.
Great explanation. Very similar to the method I use. I do have a question though. Do you ever key word photos? I'm still trying to come up with a way to find certain subjects fast. Say.. I'm looking for a picture of a tropical sunset. I know I have dozens of them... but trying to remember where and when can be a pain. I tried doing it in Bridge, but I can't seem to make it work when I go back to find them. Maybe it's something I'm just doing wrong. LOL.. there are days I hate Adobe.
My process is to delete the crap pictures, learned the hard lesson. Copy to external drive from my mac, work on them in LR/PS then save/copy edited ones to main computer. Time machine back up to local external hard drive plus time machine to additional 2 NAS drives. this way its automated and there are 3 copies to restore from should the worst happen.
I'm just an amateur, but I basically also keep all the files. I have day job and my free time is limited. I rather buy some extra drives and save the time going through all the images now. I can always do that when I'm retired if I feel like it (not too likely as drives get cheaper all the time).
I trash the obvious missfires then grade the rest zero to 3 stars. 4 and 5 reserved for 'nearly right' and 'Good-un'. Sometimes it doesn't happen due to time constraints so will keep them all until I do have time.
This was fun to watch and the import and organization workflow seems pragmatic. I hate Adobe’s file management system. I typically use Lightroom to import and “organize” my photos. The problem I have is I create backups of my image directories outside of Lightroom. When I change the folder name in Lightroom, and then back up my directory of images I end up with a copy of the original folder with a new name. I also move my Lightroom folders, over 6 months old to an Archive folder on an external drive, making it even harder to find duplicates. If I delete a file on the local disk using Lightroom, it does not get deleted on the backup drive. My question is, do up you ind an o these issues with Bridge?
This was helpful. I've found it impossible to drag copy files from my Mac Pro laptop to another window or drive. It just starts to open the first image in whatever easy app it finds when I click on it to drag it to another location for copying. It does this regardless of holding down the option key or not. Have you noticed this same problem? I have a 2015 laptop with the USB ports and the card reader. It has 16gb of RAM. I have not been able to download Bridge for the laptop to install it, not sure why.
have you considered a NAS for your home as the "final storage location" instead of a bunch of external drives in a drawer? I am using a Synology NAS with 4 drives in a RAID array and then I back that unit up to a remote location. Also, you can access your files on the road as long as you have an internet connection. Or even upload them to your home NAS form the road as another backup copy.
interesting stuff. I've got every raw file I've ever shot since 2010 saved on 2 hard drives. I like to re-look at stuff whenever Adobe release a new functionality or my processing skills improve
Hey Gavin! Appreciate the video! I’m curious about your export process. I’m currently exporting to a folder within the picture directory which is just the date the pictures were taken. This works for the first day or so then I completely lose track of what pics are from which days and every single day has an Edit folder with files to go through. This really rears its ugly head when someone wants a print from a long past date as I don’t always post pictures the day they’re taken. I suppose with your method here that you could probably do what I’m doing. Since you’re labeling things it may make finding them easier.
I use a very similar system for my video files. I have a folder with subfolders under it labelled something like Dummy Project and just Duplicate it when starting a new one. My photo storage varies a bit, but uses an essentially similar workflow. I am also guilty of hoarding substandard images, so I sometimes go on a late night binge with a glass of something strong at hand to loosen my inhibitions about deleting photos. Cheers! ps only moderately distracted by the shag-pile Window surrounds...
You do realise to create sub folders on a Mac you can just highlight the files you want to move, right click (or command click) and choose new folder containing "x" files. The sub folder is immediately created with the highlighted items enclosed and the "new folder" name is even highlighted ready to edit the folder name. Also when duplicating your folder structure just duplicate the parent folder and rename it rather than creating a new folder, naming it, drilling down into it and the pasting the empty folders.
I suppose this doesn't apply to Gaving, because of his fast internal camera storage, but for the rest of us mere mortals I doubt any camera can transfer files faster than an internal SD card reader on a computer or even better an external card reader. I know some folks will never take the card out of the camera to avoid having any damage happen to it, however I do take it out and put it in my Prograde card reader which is fast as heck. Obviously two things matter here: 1) the max speed of any given card with which it can spit those files out and 2) how fast is the port to where the card reader is connected to. In this scenario if you are using your fastest ports for the extarnal nvme/SSD and card reader, the limiting factor will be the card itself and it won't matter if you copy directly to the external or internal drive.
I noticed you connect the camera to the computer rather than taking the SD card out and connecting that. Do you feel that it's detrimental to the card continuously taking it in and out?
I used to use a program Called registax for my planetary photos It would allow you to set a point that it would only pick out the images that were at or above that level then stack them into a single image I wonder if they make a similar program for still photos
I look at my files using XMP Viewer. I can add a rating from nothing 1 to 5 stars. I then copy all the files onto my hard drive. Import into Lightroom and the star rating is brought over. Then using LRC sorting on rating I use LRC to delete the RAW files that are not rated. Duade Paton has a video on how to set this up. Sorry to plug another channel. 😊
If the MacBook has an SD card slot, could you not use it, if the cameras use SD cards? It should be faster. And I always use Bridge’s Photo Downloader utility, as with it you can add metadata like copyright to every image as you import them. Or rename the files. It’ll also save copies to a second location as it imports, then delete the files from the card (if you wish) automatically after import. Saves a lot of work managing files manually.
Hi, are you having any compatibility issues using ExFAT file system on your ext. SSD regarding windows and Mac ? Anything to keep in mind when doing so ? Any hints
Quick question Gavin. You mention that the left ports are slower than the right. I have a Macbook pro M1 (16 version) and the specs state that all 3 USB-C ports are USB 4.0 (40 Gbps). Are there any differences between these 3 ports?! cheers.
Oh god I am the same I keep every file even out of focus shots. You never know one day software will make them in focus and sharp and well exposed.... or not.
I download the sd card to my MacBook, cull through the images and delete the crappers. I then remove the sd card and label it. That SD card the goes in my safe, never to be deleted.
Order my new book at: www.fototripper.com/stories-within-stories-landscape-photography-book/
Well explained that planning your folder structure from the beginning is a good idea.
Personally, I create the top level folders but modify the metadata and batch rename in Adobe Bridge before I create the back up copies. I have created a one click batch metadata preset which includes copyright notices, website links and other details. Then I go back into metadata via File Info and add description and keywords to suit sets eg camera, drone, icebergs, Iceland, lake, year, month, focus stack2. You can search by keywords etc.
Finally I Batch Rename files in Bridge to add prefix or suffix to the cameras file name eg 18-09-24 Botallack Mines (camera file name. CR2 in Canon case. This prevents duplication of camera filenames in the future if you go round the clock 9999.CR2 in your camera.
Finally, I do the backups and rate and delete the rubbish. Ideally both originals and back up folders are identical although I do add the word ‘Copy’ to the individual backed up folders.
Hope that all makes sense.
I'm just living the pain of reorganizing my files after years of multiple catalogues, laptops, external drives, backups all over the place. What a huge pain!! My suggestion is decide on a system then write your logic down (I use One Note) so that when you come back to things after some time you don't lose sight of your strategy! Hope you are enjoying the great weather! I'm just down the road in Calgary!
Thanks Gavin…confirmation of nothing else that I’m doing nothing wrong!…in my case I’ll have master folders by year then sub folders with yyyymmdd and the location or occasion. Then further folders for which camera was used, like you. And thanks for the comment on the duds…have always wondered about that! Cheers….
Great explanation, the methods sound.
One additional suggestion. Carry multiple memory cards. After backing up to your laptop harddrive, and then onto your external. Swap out the days memory card to a hard storage case. This gives you, three copies, store them in different areas of the van, car, hotel room. Not in the same bag.
When you get home, transfer to your desktop (if you have one).
Have one copy stored off-site.
Also do a check of the files to confirm they are not corrupted after the copying process.
When you are 'sure' you have three distinct copies, then, and only then, reformat your memory cards.
My husband tells me i should delete all the crap photos, but if i did, I'd have nothing left! I'm definitely a hoarder too.
😆😆
This comment is so underrated, honestly that's 99% of us! ❤
@@TheMak1985 I'm glad I'm not alone 😂
I delete many of my “also ran” photos. Keeping only the best and greatest.
Always good to see how other people handle certain tasks … always something to take away from that. Keep going …😊
Thanks Gavin ! Glad to know I’m not the only one where disk storage is the bane of my existence LOL! Some great tips there. I like your idea of copying the folder structure multiple times. I’m not a pro like yourself so I’m not downloading files on a regular basis so I find I can be a little inconsistent when it comes to naming.
I handle things in a similar manner, but I have a top level folder by year, and then a sub folder with year and month first, then trip. Having just come back from Iceland myself, my tree is:
2024
202409-Iceland
Westfjords
[additional sub folders if desired]
I don’t typically track the day of the trip, just the locations. In the above case for the Westfjords, I might break it down to sub folders by more specific place.
I like the year and month tree as it allows me to find the trip quite easily, and it also helps me remember where exactly we were to answer questions like: “what year were we in Morocco?” “Did we go to The Maldives in December of 2018 or January of 2019?”.
Thank you for the refresher coarse . I always feel the best filing tool is the delete button.
Not boring at all! Glad to meet another photographybhoarder! I like your folder structure. Only thing I would do different, is put the year before the location- to make them sort chronicalogically. Cheers!
Good organization, but a lot of the stuff you are doing manually can be done automatically. I use Rapid Photo Downloader, which automatically builds folder names any way I want them; in my case, that's including the date, "job code" (location/event/subject/whatever), and camera model. It can send the image files to multiple destinations at once. It doesn't run on Mac, so it doesn't help you, Gavin, but it might help others here.
Thank you Gavin for these tips. I like to think of myself as “organized” but even I learned something watching this. Now, what I would LOVE to learn from you next, perhaps as a follow up to this vid, is your Light Room Import process, if you do that of course. I’m starting to run down a rabbit hole of RUclips trying to learn ways of doing this in a fashion so that images don’t get lost or broken within Light Room. Trying to determine if catalogs and storage are the same, or different or Lord only knows what else is a hoot, but getting your take on it would be even hootier :). Thanks again kind sir, keep up the great work, we all appreciate it.
I don't use LR and have seen too many disasters from my students to make me want to even try using LR to organize my images, hence this simple but disaster free method.
Hi Gavin, nice vid and I follow pretty much the same routine for sub dividing folders on a daily/location basis. One neat trick is, if using Adobe Bridge prior to transferring is to use the Metadata function in bridge. Select the file/s you are transferring from the computer to there relative folders and even at a basic level enter keywords. Bridge will then write the tags so after transferring onto the PC/storage device, you can easily find the files in the search option for those specific files, the more keywords, the higher the odds of finding specific files for editing/viewing. Do not add keywords using the MAC system, they are not recognised in the PC and unless you edit on a Mac that info will be lost. If done using Bridge it matters not, once written it stays and can be referenced by any system. You can also create templates in Bridge to add at any time in the future, name, address, copyright info etc and simply paste it in to any other file in the future rather than have to repeat the same process over and over again. Keywords obviously vary but you can also include common words and then add to them at a later time. 🙂
Nice tutorial Gavin.
I do It by the flowing folder structure Raw,Year, Month,Location,Device. Obviously some months will have very little in them it's just empty folders. All my image edits go into a master Edits folder and exports are done to a master exports folder for publication
I mainly delete those not used but have been known to hoard certain shoots a couple of USB C SSD for times away from home and backed up to a Synology NAS and a bank of SSD's in caddy attached to my main PC, stopped using cloud storage as my NAS does that service.
Video is the space killer though, especially time lapses.😊
Excellent, you make a very good teacher 🙂
I do my process on my iPad as I’m a hobbyist so shoot hundreds of photos a day and not thousands. All image files and directories start with year-month-day. I cull with any free time during the day as my iPad is always with me. Nice getting home from a trip with all culling and naming done. I either backup with camera card, external drive or both. Also, culling during the trip gives me great feedback on what I have good shots of and if my technique is working.
A little tip regarding SD cards etc, when out in the field and using multiple SD cards that day, when I swap one out and use another one, I put that used card UPSIDE down in my case that holds the fresh cards so as not to ruin that original one by mistake.
Or just flip the write protect tab!!!
@@crcomments8509 Thanks, old habit from compact flash card days, being a sports photographer and always in a rush using several cards during a game for safety sake. I can see me forgetting I flipped it.
I'm amazed that for once, I do pretty much the same thing. My home office is a mess, but my image files are pristine.
Bravo Mario!
Thanks Gavin , that was great!, We all can use information like that. Very helpful.
Thanks Gavin great help for me wish I woulda did that long time ago .
Love the elevator music playing in background .
Keep on rollin with a smile📸
Scott
Thank you - most helpful. I use Photo Mechanic and review all my images there. I only import the ones I like into Lightroom. It's so much better for my hard drive storage. I let the non keepers sit for a few weeks before I delete them, just in case i change my mind.
I import everything from my SD card, one unedited copy goes to an Archive drive and the second copy goes to a holding folder. I sort them, delete some, process others then export the completed work to another external drive. That way i have everything unedited and just the edited keepers. All kept files have keywords and smart collections
on windows there is a brilliant program called "bulk rename utility". very useful, try that out. you can basically change file names: adding, removing prefix, inserting date, changing index numbers and so on on mass and not one by one. I usually replace the "DSC" or whatever random letters are used by the camera to save the files on SD with a 3-letter code of the location (e.g. first 3 consonants of the name, I use the vowels when I run out of consonants). an example: Vancouver would be "VNC", you can have file file named for example "VNC_2024_index" or whatever order you prefer. I always keep the original camera index so I have unique names, to me the index it's just an ID and the rest of the name are descriptors.
On a Mac you can use Name Changer which works basically the same. Or select the items, then Control-click one of them. In the shortcut menu, choose Rename. In the pop-up menu below Rename Finder Items, choose to replace text in the names, add text to the names, or change the name format.
You're right. I used to use that a LOT back in my music producer days and it saved me from months of manual file renaming. Brilliant program.
A very practical approach to managing image files. I also use the Bridge batch renaming feature to include the location or subject appended to the original file name. Has helped to quickly find a file using LRs data base.
I employ a fairly similar folder structure to the one shown here, with one small (but extremely helpful) addition: I append the root folder name with the 6-digit date in the format YYMMDD. So, I might have "241001 Basement" (who could resist checking out photos from THAT location, hey?). This way, everything sorts in Explorer (or Finder) chronologically. If the root folder contains pictures spanning multiple days, like if I went to London for a week (London, Ontario, obviously), I just use the date of the first day.
I’ve been doing this lark professionally and amateur since the 80’s, encompassing wet film, video and digital, it’s always useful to hear what other people are doing with their filing systems, even if it’s exactly the same as yours because you get that warm fuzzy feeling that you’re on the right track.
As always your instructionals are great, I love the comedy setups you inject into your other videos, but in my opinion the instructionals have a really good balance of humour and seriousness that gets the point across (takes me back to the instructors at the school of photography).
It would be great to have some more instances of Amanda going “full Canadian” as I can’t understand her, nor can google translate, and I love a challenge! How on earth do you cope?
it's a struggle
Smashing, learned some shortcut button tricks there thanks
That's was a really good vid, it is similar to how I back mine up, how ever I did learn some nice little tricks or tips cheers
Hey Gavin …..thanks so much for that big help for a LR novice😊
For repetitive folder structures like this I make a generic one that I duplicate (cmd D) and rename the duplicates.
For example: folder named _location, duplicate it, rename it, inside is a day folder duplicate or rename accordingly, and waiting inside of that is your camera, drone and osmo, all ready to go.
The starting underscore keeps the folder at the top alphabetically.
Nice video thanks. I use a similar system and I think is a lot simpler and more time efficient. Firstly, I do like to use the date first in my master folder structure. With the date as 'YearMonthDay' and then folder description. eg '20241008 Sports job' This way the years and folders will always be in chronological order. Secondly, I use the fantastic PhotoMechanic software for doing all the captioning, culling etc. In the setup of PM you can specify what labels to use in the caption/filing. So I have caption, date, event and camera make. This way all images can be dumped in the one folder and then down track if searching, you can simply sort them by 'camera make' for instance and it will allow only view those images. Saves all the dramas of having to make up separate folders etc as you have shown here. Just thought I share my process anyway.
Thanks for that run-through of your method. Entertaining as always (although I was half expecting Amanda to appear and 'accidentally' delete some files). I won't have nearly as many photos as you, but I too am a bit of a photo hoarder. The only ones I delete are the obvious mistakes where I have taken a photo of my thumb or foot! You, as a professional, will obviously not make those silly mistakes. 😇 I do keep all my sd cards as an emergency back-up. Thanks again - a new Fototripper video is always worth settling down to with a brew and biscuits!
I do exactly the same as you when I am traveling. Every days I backup my photos on an external hard drive in sub folders by day, with the name of the location. It work well that way.
Glad i only have 1 device. Thanks sharing ur method on this boring subject. I use one folder with year, day and subject. I have also made a main folder then sub folders, again year, where it is.
Do you use Apple Photos for the JPEGs? Or some kind of Cloud storage (Google Photos, iCloud)?
You probably can’t do this in Bridge, but I use Apple’s built in tags feature to quickly label pics. That way you just need to label different tags once, so I just have tags like “Ambient light”, Panorama, HDR etc. I then just right click files/photos and choose the tag to add. You can tag a bunch of files in one hit.
Very helpful!!
The basics can be a pain but, well explained 😎
Hi Gavin, great video again, thank you.... I do the same as you and store in a similar way. All I do different is delete the real crap ones, ( a lot) just think I'm never going to look at them again so in the bin, they go.....Thanx again Gavin. Colin Devon UK.
Thanks Gavin! Long time fan. I’m curious do you use Photoshop exclusively for editing or do you also LrC? I’m just setting up a new external SSD. I was trying to get a little more organized so this is helpful. Look forward to seeing more on this channel and your other channels too.
I use LR very rarely.
Cool tips Gavin. If I may add, I usually put the date first so I can organize by date and sometimes the sequence of days helps me organize it better. I can have all of 2024 photographs and select all folders easily. If I have location first it’s sorted alphabetically and I need to go through all folders one by one to copy for example. I also like to keep one Lightroom catalog per year and sometimes per trip if I have a lot of photographs and the catalog stays in the folder with the year or the trip. When o backup the files to the NAS or online the catalog gets backed up with it so I save a lot of time later. Also I have a 1TB online storage (onedrive offers you 1TB storage if you have office. In fact the Microsoft family office subscription give you 5 accounts with 1TB of space for each member and you get both Microsoft office and the online storage for 99 euros a year of something like that. were I keep my keepers. If anything goes wrong I have at least those on a virtual space where it’s much harder to loose anything.
I cull my photos first using the X and P keys using the auto advance command. Its faster than right clicking and selecting a star or stars. X marks the photo as "to be discarded or not to be used" and P flags the photo as a keeper, for the time being. I can then go thru the Flagged photos and rate them later as needed.
Your drive is probably much slower because it's formatted as exFat format. If you don't need to use that drive on a PC, I'd recommend formatting it in a Mac format. You'll find it's much faster and more reliable.
I mostly use a PC.
@@fototripperstudioThat's understandable then.
Thanks for the pointers. I do not put all my pictures onto the computer because I have read it can reduce the storage space, speed, and make the disk more prone to corruption if your constantly adding and deleting large amounts of data. It’s cheaper to replace an external hd than your MacBook is my logic.
Thanks Gavin, that was refreshing to see you have a common sense approach to storing. Something I can do easily without big investment. You mentioned your big computer at home. Could you tell us what you have and a breakdown of its specification. This was always a plan I had to one day order a PC for home.
Interesting timing. I have just completely re-arranged my image storage categories. I was arranging everything by date, but if I wanted to recover an image of XYZ then I had to remember the date - and sometimes it was a year or two back - which is not good for my old fart memory. So now I am trying more descriptive categories, eg: Overseas Trips\Country\City. Or wildlife\animal type. And then I have an export folder in each for the edited images. It is all part of the photography adventure. I do back up, but I need to implement a better more streamlined option. Thanks for the reminder. 👍👍
If you go back to the same location year after year organising by date at the top level is a real pain. Far better to organise by location with subfolders for each year (if you must). Remember all operating systems and Digital Asset Management (DAM) software (such as Adobe Bridge or Lightroom) have the ability to sort by date. Therefore, it’s somewhat redundant (and pointless) to put the date in the file name.
All my top-level folders begin with year-month-day and then place or purpose or subject etc. (e.g., "2024-09-25_Gavin-Portrait"). I may steal some ideas from this video to improve organization and search capabilities.
I do the exact same mirroring copies on two external hardrives.
That is the way to get the folders sorted properly and have an understandable structure.
I do almost exactly the same eg 240910 Description. This is 2024 Sept 10th .
This means when you sort your files by name they are automatically sorted by date.
When travelling I take a Microsoft Surface Pro and 2 SSD and at the end of each day, I back up the cards to the 2 SSD.
Useful tips
Thanks, helped.
That unmade bed in the background is triggering my ex-army OCD 😮😊
Maybe she's tied up in bed.🤨
What? I made the bed to the absolute best of my ability. If you'd seen it before you'd be fully triggered ;)
Excellent video! I have organized my images the same way you do since I started shooting with a digital camera, except I haven't used bridge. I keep all of my images as well...lol...lost track of the number of hard drives I now have (I have to be over ten now)!
I use a file sync program to make sure I have duplicates from my main drive to my backup, plus if I've made any changes they are also highlighted, so I can confirm to backup
You need to keep in mind bit-rot or the SSD equivalent on those forgotten drives, Gavin 👍
bit-rot?
@@fototripperstudio The propensity for magnetic media and SSDs to lose their charge or magnetism over time. Copying the files around avoids this. Good NAS devices do this automatically. Cheers.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_degradation
Is there really a good way to store digital files for the extremely long term? Data that was stored as recently as the 1990s is now often degraded and difficult to recover as old rotating drives fail. How long is a modern SSD good for before it degrades? A RAID set-up that you maintain for life? Redundant cloud storage providers in perpetuity? I really don't know the answer to this question.
I try to make a nice photo book every year with the photos that I prize the most. I have old, well cared for books that still look as good as new.
I'm pretty much of a hoarder too but on my initial culling I'll delete the totally out focus images. I'll backup the rest on external hard drives and use Idrive which is a supposedly encrypted cloud storage for my final edited shots for my personal albums of favorites which helps keep storage fees to a minimum. We heat with wood so if my house burns down I'll still have the most prized images safe.
Nice, if your like me my wrists gets to close to the track pad which is sensitive to the close proximity of your hands and can confuses the keyboard commands, might help. So sort your wrists out! Thanks for the video, very helpful. 👍
Get a mouse and use it instead of the trackpad. Mice are inexpensive, earlier and more accurate in use, and, above all, much better for your wrist.
Very interesting, thanks for your insight! Why are you not using Lightroom? The only reason I can think of, is if once one or more images are chosen, and everything is backed up you don't access them as often. I'm curious to know. Tks
photoshop is so much better than lr.
Being a learning photographer (since more than 20 years ...) I don't keep all pictures, I discard the ones that are just mediocre, whether they're JPEGs or RAWs. It helps save space, and it recalls to myself, "Why did you even take this shit?"
Cool video
Gavin ... great video and loads of great ideas. May I ask, what do you do once you edit your photos? How do you save them and arrange them? Thanks!
I save them as flat TIFF files after saving them as a PSB. They live in the same folder as the raw FILES.
👍 thank you
You growing that beard for Christmas??? Santa Gavin!!! Great vid.
it gets dealt with in a future video with some...nose waxing...
i have never been able to make a file system, i have important letters slipped behind cup rack to remind me to read them everytime i make coffee, some of them have been there for a year...... and thats the best organised bit of my filing system.
I use Bridge uploader. In that, I can create a folder for location and date. Then I rename files, location, date, device, then number. Example: Lakes1-1-24/Lakes 1-1-24 Drone 1. Or, Lakes1-1-24/Lakes 1-1-24 Z8 1. and if I need to find a file, I do a search. I type in lakes, newest to oldest, then find the date. I have 2 backup drives.
Very useful suggestions for people who don't have a good management system or those who want to change it. I personally struggle with moving a catalogue and related photos on my laptop to my main catalogue on my desktop at home. This would make for a good future video. Also do you maintain one large catalogue or multiple smaller ones?? thx
Just dozens on separate SSD drives.
Thanks 😊
All my photos are organised by date. Top-level folder for 2024, then a month folder "09-Sept", then each shoot is titled with the date and location "2024-09-26 Location". Rather than renaming images, I use colour labels and stacks in Lightroom to indicate groups that go together for focus or exposure brackets.
With a tiny shell script you could have the computer prompt you for day number and description, then create the folder trees automatically. Beyond that much more could be done (e.g., automatically insert the current year-month-day into the folder name, etc.) but even that tiny help could be, well... helpful. LOL
this is my preferred method too. i wrote a little rust cli program that asks me some questions and creates folders and sub folders to my desired organization of: subject/date/ingress (the dumping ground for all my imported photos), subject/date/egress/web|print and subject/date/processed
I'm too thick for that.
@@jacobbb-t7i Sounds like something that should be shared here :) It would benefit everyone.
@@krimke881 The thing is, it would be pretty specific to a given computer. The same basic details would change between computers but it would still be tied to specific drive / volume / folder names, etc. Given correct information it should be reasonably simple to write or adapt. But making it generic enough to distribute and behave properly on its own, in unknown circumstances would turn it into "software" and the complexity would go up astronomically. Plus there's the fact that I can write Linux (AT&T style unix) scripts, but I'm not familiar with BSD unix nor certainly what Apple has done to it for more than two decades. 🙂
@@fototripperstudio like my coworker liked to say, "Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn every now and then!" LOL 🤣
I print out all my images, then photocopy the print to make back-ups before deleting the RAW files.
😂
Never considered that strategy. Wouldn't surprise me if all the paper, printing and copying was more expensive than just buying extra drives.
I do the same except I print each picture really small so I can fit more on each page. Saves paper. Then I delete the raw files.
@@andrewroland what how does this even make sense u keep no raw files but a photocopy version
Huh… I do something similar. Main difference is I also scan the images onto the computer so that I have a hi-res back up just in case. Stored on a 3.5” floppy for easy, and compact, filing.
When it comes to the transfer speed -one note from my side: the USB-C connector doesn't guarantee for any transfer speeds. There are USB-C cables that transfer at USB2 speeds, USB3 speeds, Thunderbolt 3 or 4 speeds... the list goes on and on.
good point. I've tested loads of drives and cables over the years using Black Magic to measure them. It's surprising the crappy cables that some manufacturers include with their drives
USB-C is a standard for the physical shape of the plug/socket and the contacts. It’s not a speed standard. Some USB-C devices (including cables) will deliver power but some don’t. You really have to study the specs to buy the connecting cable and device that fits your needs. As a general rule USB-C will be faster than the older USB-A. Also beware of cheap cables which (a) might be slow and (b) might damage your computer and/or SSD.
Very useful when importing photos to use keywords which I NEVER have done with my terabytes of photographs :P But a good theory ntl
You use a very similar structure to what I do…a couple of minor differences. I too don’t delete anything and probably should…I’m often reminded of this whenever I am nearly to capacity. 🤷🏻♂️📸😎
This is more or less how I would manage photos. My setup is smaller. Smartphone and one camera. This is how I manage them in Lightroom CC. I have folders by country like Estonia, Portugal and US. Under folders are albums of my trips. Like so "2024 07 Funchal" or "2021 08 Tallinn" and "2021 09 Tartu" This way each trip is sorted on their own albums chronologically by year+month+main location.
Great explanation. Very similar to the method I use. I do have a question though. Do you ever key word photos? I'm still trying to come up with a way to find certain subjects fast. Say.. I'm looking for a picture of a tropical sunset. I know I have dozens of them... but trying to remember where and when can be a pain. I tried doing it in Bridge, but I can't seem to make it work when I go back to find them. Maybe it's something I'm just doing wrong. LOL.. there are days I hate Adobe.
For that I just use Excite foto 2024. It does it automatically. Link in descrippy.
My process is to delete the crap pictures, learned the hard lesson. Copy to external drive from my mac, work on them in LR/PS then save/copy edited ones to main computer. Time machine back up to local external hard drive plus time machine to additional 2 NAS drives. this way its automated and there are 3 copies to restore from should the worst happen.
I'm just an amateur, but I basically also keep all the files. I have day job and my free time is limited. I rather buy some extra drives and save the time going through all the images now. I can always do that when I'm retired if I feel like it (not too likely as drives get cheaper all the time).
I trash the obvious missfires then grade the rest zero to 3 stars. 4 and 5 reserved for 'nearly right' and 'Good-un'. Sometimes it doesn't happen due to time constraints so will keep them all until I do have time.
This was fun to watch and the import and organization workflow seems pragmatic. I hate Adobe’s file management system. I typically use Lightroom to import and “organize” my photos. The problem I have is I create backups of my image directories outside of Lightroom. When I change the folder name in Lightroom, and then back up my directory of images I end up with a copy of the original folder with a new name. I also move my Lightroom folders, over 6 months old to an Archive folder on an external drive, making it even harder to find duplicates. If I delete a file on the local disk using Lightroom, it does not get deleted on the backup drive. My question is, do up you ind an o these issues with Bridge?
There's none of that nonsense with Bridge. No database, nothing.
I would back up to external drive each day or more often if high importance. If your camera/cards get nicked after day one, it's not all lost.
Do you compress files?
This was helpful. I've found it impossible to drag copy files from my Mac Pro laptop to another window or drive. It just starts to open the first image in whatever easy app it finds when I click on it to drag it to another location for copying. It does this regardless of holding down the option key or not. Have you noticed this same problem? I have a 2015 laptop with the USB ports and the card reader. It has 16gb of RAM. I have not been able to download Bridge for the laptop to install it, not sure why.
have you considered a NAS for your home as the "final storage location" instead of a bunch of external drives in a drawer? I am using a Synology NAS with 4 drives in a RAID array and then I back that unit up to a remote location. Also, you can access your files on the road as long as you have an internet connection. Or even upload them to your home NAS form the road as another backup copy.
Got a tutorial?
I do not, but I did learn how to set up my Synology NAS system by watching RUclips videos .
Showing of them guns son 💪
The guns re getting dilapidated but will receive upgrades soon.
interesting stuff.
I've got every raw file I've ever shot since 2010 saved on 2 hard drives. I like to re-look at stuff whenever Adobe release a new functionality or my processing skills improve
Hey Gavin! Appreciate the video!
I’m curious about your export process.
I’m currently exporting to a folder within the picture directory which is just the date the pictures were taken. This works for the first day or so then I completely lose track of what pics are from which days and every single day has an Edit folder with files to go through. This really rears its ugly head when someone wants a print from a long past date as I don’t always post pictures the day they’re taken.
I suppose with your method here that you could probably do what I’m doing. Since you’re labeling things it may make finding them easier.
If you leave your external hdd’s in a drawer, how do you find the right HDD that contains the photo you want? How do you label your hdd’s?
I don't. I take a trip down memory lane every time.
I use a very similar system for my video files. I have a folder with subfolders under it labelled something like Dummy Project and just Duplicate it when starting a new one. My photo storage varies a bit, but uses an essentially similar workflow. I am also guilty of hoarding substandard images, so I sometimes go on a late night binge with a glass of something strong at hand to loosen my inhibitions about deleting photos. Cheers! ps only moderately distracted by the shag-pile Window surrounds...
You do realise to create sub folders on a Mac you can just highlight the files you want to move, right click (or command click) and choose new folder containing "x" files. The sub folder is immediately created with the highlighted items enclosed and the "new folder" name is even highlighted ready to edit the folder name. Also when duplicating your folder structure just duplicate the parent folder and rename it rather than creating a new folder, naming it, drilling down into it and the pasting the empty folders.
I suppose this doesn't apply to Gaving, because of his fast internal camera storage, but for the rest of us mere mortals I doubt any camera can transfer files faster than an internal SD card reader on a computer or even better an external card reader. I know some folks will never take the card out of the camera to avoid having any damage happen to it, however I do take it out and put it in my Prograde card reader which is fast as heck. Obviously two things matter here: 1) the max speed of any given card with which it can spit those files out and 2) how fast is the port to where the card reader is connected to. In this scenario if you are using your fastest ports for the extarnal nvme/SSD and card reader, the limiting factor will be the card itself and it won't matter if you copy directly to the external or internal drive.
I noticed you connect the camera to the computer rather than taking the SD card out and connecting that. Do you feel that it's detrimental to the card continuously taking it in and out?
There is no SD card, just a 1TB internal drive.
@@fototripperstudio Wow!
I used to use a program Called registax for my planetary photos
It would allow you to set a point that it would only pick out the images that were at or above that level then stack them into a single image
I wonder if they make a similar program for still photos
A point? that level? please elaborate
sure wish i would have started doing this 15 years ago
I look at my files using XMP Viewer. I can add a rating from nothing 1 to 5 stars.
I then copy all the files onto my hard drive. Import into Lightroom and the star rating is brought over. Then using LRC sorting on rating I use LRC to delete the RAW files that are not rated.
Duade Paton has a video on how to set this up. Sorry to plug another channel. 😊
If the MacBook has an SD card slot, could you not use it, if the cameras use SD cards? It should be faster. And I always use Bridge’s Photo Downloader utility, as with it you can add metadata like copyright to every image as you import them. Or rename the files. It’ll also save copies to a second location as it imports, then delete the files from the card (if you wish) automatically after import. Saves a lot of work managing files manually.
I use the internal 1TB drive for the Hassy.
Hi, are you having any compatibility issues using ExFAT file system on your ext. SSD regarding windows and Mac ?
Anything to keep in mind when doing so ? Any hints
nope. no issues ever.
I create years folders then inside put the trip name or model name and that's it, doesn't matter with which camera i shoot
I use the same method, including hoarding all the images.
Quick question Gavin. You mention that the left ports are slower than the right. I have a Macbook pro M1 (16 version) and the specs state that all 3 USB-C ports are USB 4.0 (40 Gbps). Are there any differences between these 3 ports?! cheers.
On mine they are colour coded.
@@fototripperstudio I don’t see that on mine. It’s a M1 Pro so it’s probably an older version that yours
Oh god I am the same I keep every file even out of focus shots. You never know one day software will make them in focus and sharp and well exposed.... or not.
what about the cloud? although you would probably get charged for high storage space and also you'd need mobile hotspot or something.
exactly
I download the sd card to my MacBook, cull through the images and delete the crappers. I then remove the sd card and label it. That SD card the goes in my safe, never to be deleted.