How do you sort, process, and organize your photos?

[Longdolphin01]

Hi all, it’s not really a Fuji specific question, apart from the fact that I use a Fuji camera and certain software handles .RAF files better than others.

I’m interested in how different people sort and process their photos. I have my method, which I’ll outline below, but it has its problems and I can’t help but feel that I’m missing something that could make my photography life easier. I’d love to hear some workflows and sorting techniques that people use so hopefully I (and others) can improve! If you have specific suggestions for me, I’d be delighted to hear them, but I’m also just interested in people’s processes in general.

I’ve listed my processes below as well as some upsides and downsides I find with my current system. I feel like the upsides/downsides part is particularly important, as those are things we don’t discover until we’ve tried a process, but that others’ experience can point out in advance.

Importing/Sorting:

I pull photos from my SD card and put them in to Lightroom. If I’m really on it, I cull them right away from the “recently added” tab for that specific import. Once they’re culled, I add them to an album.

If I know I can’t or won’t get to them right away, I dump them in a “to process” album. This helps me keep track of the photos and prevents my albums from getting cluttered, but then sometimes you have to sort 1000 photos from there which sucks.

I do my editing in Lightroom, with the exception of noise reduction. I don’t mind Lightroom’s denoise tool, but it’s extremely slow and gives worse results than DXO PureRaw 2, which I purchased before starting to use LR. If photos need that, I export them to a DXO folder, process them and then export them back to Lightroom from DXO. Lightroom keeps the edits I’ve already made, so it’s pretty seamless.

Organization:

I tend to have an album for each calendar year, which is the general dumping ground, and then secondary albums, sorted by year, for specific things like trips.

As lightroom allows the same photos in multiple albums, I also have “collections” for things like my favorite portraits, wildlife photos, photos of my kid, etc.

Benefits:

- Lightroom is generally fine at everything. It’s a good photo editor and has organizational tools built in.

- Lightroom (CC I think) has 1 TB of storage included in the plan, and allows me to see photos from my phone and iPad, which are usually what I have with me when people want to see them. The cross-platform aspect seems to be a huge advantage.

- Lightroom’s noise reduction isn’t great, but I have DXO PureRaw 2, so apart from an extra step, that works quite well.

Downsides/Areas for Improvement:

- The current system can easily lead to a buildup of un-culled photos, and it can be easy to lose track of them, since Lightroom doesn’t have a tool to show photos that aren’t in an album.

- I hate paying for Lightroom monthly. It’s not the total cost, which seems fair, but that I feel guilty in months that I barely use it.

- Usually people have the patience to see a couple images. I try to have my best ones ready, but my organization doesn’t appear to be “organized” enough, and I often struggle to find the best images in a short amount of time.

- DXO isn’t available if I want to edit on my iPad while travelling.

Total Cost:

$156 per year for Lightroom (Canada) plus around $80 bucks a few years ago for DXO.

It seems cheap enough overall (although I know Adobe is raising prices soon) that it’s hard to try something else. I really considered DXO PhotoLab, but with how weak the Canadian dollar is, it’s almost two years of Lightroom just to try it out, and that doesn’t include the online backup.

 

[Rand 47]

Lightroom ingest.

My Library is organized into large parent folders such as:

• Calibration Images
• Client Files
• Family
• Places
• Projects in Progress

Under each of these parent folders will be sub categories like:

• Places
  • Eastern Sierrra
    • Trip with Rod 5-24
    • Trip to Lone Pine 4-23

I very much dislike and find useless organization by “dated folders” such as year, date, etc. because it tells me nothing at all about the content.

In each subfolder, I have a folder for ‘Keepers,” e.g. for the “Trip to Lone Pine 4-23” I’ll create a “Keeper” folder for finished keeper photos.

I tend to be ruthless in culling… so “over time” all the folders above “Keeper” folders continue to be winnowed down.

Rand

 

[ernest56]

I also use folders to organize my library.

Top level is Pictures with parent folders such as:

• Aurora Borealis
• Countries
• Family
• Milky Way
• Star Trails
• Moon

Under each of these parent folders will be sub categories:

• Countries
  • Canada
    • Alberta
    • British Columbia
    • New Brunswick
    • Nova Scotia
  • New Zealand
  • Norway
  • UK
  • USA

Sorting:

I copy all my photos into to a sub category folder and use Fast Raw Viewer to CUL my photos. Rejected photos are moved to a "rejected folder" created by Fast Raw Viewer. I delete this "rejected" folder after a final review.

Lightroom Importing:

I import sub category into Lightroom and add keywords.

 

[Breamish]

Hi all, it’s not really a Fuji specific question, apart from the fact that I use a Fuji camera and certain software handles .RAF files better than others.

I’m interested in how different people sort and process their photos. I have my method, which I’ll outline below, but it has its problems and I can’t help but feel that I’m missing something that could make my photography life easier. I’d love to hear some workflows and sorting techniques that people use so hopefully I (and others) can improve! If you have specific suggestions for me, I’d be delighted to hear them, but I’m also just interested in people’s processes in general.

I’ve listed my processes below as well as some upsides and downsides I find with my current system. I feel like the upsides/downsides part is particularly important, as those are things we don’t discover until we’ve tried a process, but that others’ experience can point out in advance.

Importing/Sorting:

I pull photos from my SD card and put them in to Lightroom. If I’m really on it, I cull them right away from the “recently added” tab for that specific import. Once they’re culled, I add them to an album.

If I know I can’t or won’t get to them right away, I dump them in a “to process” album. This helps me keep track of the photos and prevents my albums from getting cluttered, but then sometimes you have to sort 1000 photos from there which sucks.

I do my editing in Lightroom, with the exception of noise reduction. I don’t mind Lightroom’s denoise tool, but it’s extremely slow and gives worse results than DXO PureRaw 2, which I purchased before starting to use LR. If photos need that, I export them to a DXO folder, process them and then export them back to Lightroom from DXO. Lightroom keeps the edits I’ve already made, so it’s pretty seamless.

Organization:

I tend to have an album for each calendar year, which is the general dumping ground, and then secondary albums, sorted by year, for specific things like trips.

As lightroom allows the same photos in multiple albums, I also have “collections” for things like my favorite portraits, wildlife photos, photos of my kid, etc.

Benefits:

- Lightroom is generally fine at everything. It’s a good photo editor and has organizational tools built in.

- Lightroom (CC I think) has 1 TB of storage included in the plan, and allows me to see photos from my phone and iPad, which are usually what I have with me when people want to see them. The cross-platform aspect seems to be a huge advantage.

- Lightroom’s noise reduction isn’t great, but I have DXO PureRaw 2, so apart from an extra step, that works quite well.

Downsides/Areas for Improvement:

- The current system can easily lead to a buildup of un-culled photos, and it can be easy to lose track of them, since Lightroom doesn’t have a tool to show photos that aren’t in an album.

- I hate paying for Lightroom monthly. It’s not the total cost, which seems fair, but that I feel guilty in months that I barely use it.

- Usually people have the patience to see a couple images. I try to have my best ones ready, but my organization doesn’t appear to be “organized” enough, and I often struggle to find the best images in a short amount of time.

- DXO isn’t available if I want to edit on my iPad while travelling.

Total Cost:

$156 per year for Lightroom (Canada) plus around $80 bucks a few years ago for DXO.

It seems cheap enough overall (although I know Adobe is raising prices soon) that it’s hard to try something else. I really considered DXO PhotoLab, but with how weak the Canadian dollar is, it’s almost two years of Lightroom just to try it out, and that doesn’t include the online backup.

What is it about Lightroom’s denoise you don’t like? It continues to impress me so I’ve never felt the need to pay for yet more software.

Just a note on your point Adobe cloud storage - if you’re editing on iPad, it uses Smart Previews instead of your actual raw files, and these don’t contribute towards your cloud storage limit, so you can have your whole library available for offline editing. As far as I can tell, only raw files that you import on iPad which are then uploaded count towards your storage, and these can of course be removed once they’re downloaded into your Lightroom Classic catalog.

 

[Truman Prevatt]

Everyone has their own process. Mine evolved from about 40 years of shooting film. Depending on the film type, each negative was documented and the documentation was kept with the image. For roll film, it was by roll and kept in the sleeve that held the negatives. For sheet film, I carried a notebook developed for the process and each sheet was documented and remained with the negative. From that point contact sheets were made for culling and the sheets referred back to the numbering on the film holder sleeves. I wrote the reference on the back of the contact prints. From that point I could choose which images to concentrate on. The negative holders were stored in a binder labeled by date ranges. The contact sheets were kept in print boxes again listed by date and each contact sheet had a number and date(s) the images were taken. I had a master journal with categories, that cross referenced the contact sheets to genres, e.g. street, landscape, people, etc. That allowed me go back and track down a contract print and hence the negative.

My current method is similar. I do not like programs that suck up your images, particularly raw in a large data base like many Lightroom. I started using Capture One years ago because it does a good job on all my cameras including Fuji when Lightroom was having issues. Capture has two forms of library data bases. On is similar to Lightroom, where it gobbles the images. The second is relational, where the files stay where the are on your disk in your own folder organization. When an image is imported, it is not moved. The database consist of a pointer file that points to the original along with current edits. I find much cleaner.



So base this architecture, my workflow is to put all the images on a temp photos file. I then use Fast Raw Viewer to do the original cull. The ones I want keep are moved to a large external disk. The path starts with year/broad topic/specific topic. An example could be

…/2024/Summer Western Trip/Flaming Gorge/Day 1/image raw files

inside …/Summer Western Trip/ there will folders of our stops.

Once the images I want to keep are in the proper place, all the remaining files in the temp folder are erased and the files on the cars is deleted.

The one Adobe program I do use is Bridge, but only for of its features - bulk file rename. It is extremely flexible and alloys one to rename files that make sense. I prepend a project name, e.g. Flaming Gorge- to the file name of that comes out of the camera.

I then append to the back of the camera file name the date (year month day) then to that a one four digit bumper is append to. So the file name will be something like Flaming George-L0012521-20240725-0124.dng (L is for Leica whose raw fils are dng).



Hit change in file and hit rename. Done, the files are now documented so I can look that an exported image and know in what capture on library it was processed and can easily find even years later if I want to go back and reinterpret it.

If I move the images to a different disk, I simply C1 the new location of the files and it goes and find them and reassigns the pointers. Between the pointer architecture on the C1 library database and the file structure that Bridge I have something that pretty much matches what I developed to keep my contact sheets and negatives synchronized.

 

[bastibe]

I organize my JPEGs, but not the RAWs. The RAWs go into year/day directories, and that's it. The reason being, I file away the RAWs after a few years (to slow storage), but I want to keep the JPEGs always available. I cull RAWs by rating them appropriately, and only edit/export the good ones.

I've used various raw developers over the years. But since I don't organize my collection in the raw developer, I'm not stuck with them.

The JPEGs I organize like the OP, with a yearly dumping directory, and additional directories per event or trip. I organize them with DigiKam, which is where I add face tags as well. I start each file's name with the date, so I can browse my collection not just with DigiKam, but with any file explorer as well. I often find this useful.

 

[Battery_Kinzie]

If I may use this thread to ask a follow up question for people - how do you guys make your photos 'viewable' when away from where they are stored? Like if you're away from home, but want to view some photos for whatever reason, what do you use? Do you upload them to Google Photos? Lightroom Cloud? A cloud solution? Something else?

 

[jhorse]

An interesting question and one where each of us can gain valuable tips from forum members, so thank you for posting it. I’ll focus on my approach to organising photos and not of processing or backing them up (would become too long a response).

Organisation

I organise my photos on an iMac, but in the past on a PC/Windows. I use a folder structure which descends from Pictures. Under Pictures I list each calendar year going back to 2004, when I first entered the digital photographic era.

In each year I do three things. First, I have a folder for each calendar month which is titled, for example, 20250101_General, which reverses the year, month and date. By using the reverse date approach the months will descend in chronological order in the folder structure. I put all my general photos taken in January, including any pictures taken when out on walks/hikes, into 20250101_General. Then, I have a folder titled 20250201_General where I put all my February photographs and so on for each month. This takes care of general photos.

Second, if I have been to an event, been on holiday or taken pictures of something special I create a folder for that subject matter. The folder is titled along similar date lines, examples: 20240720_Family_[insert event]; 20241010_[insert country X holiday] (using the first day of the holiday); 20250207_Skiing_[insert resort name]; 20250208_NT_[insert property name] (NT = National Trust in the UK), etc. This means that any event, etc, in say January will be listed adjacent to the January General folder.

Third, for each month, I have a folder named: 20250131_Best_Photos. Note I use the last day of the month. This is for general photos. For each event, hols, etc, I also have a best sub-folder, so for example if I have some good photos from a skiing holiday, I will grade (see below), edit and copy the edited JPEGs into this folder. This provides me with a quick reference to the photos I am most likely to want to see often. These are often uploaded to my SmugMug library so I can see them anywhere/anytime. That said, with Apply photos the need for a separate paid account/library is dwindling. I am considering creating albums in my Apple photos library and copying into it from my SmugMug album. I have yet to do the cost comparison, but this approach with the cost of increased Apple storage might be a lot cheaper. That said, family and friends can see the photos in SmugMug.

Benefits

I tend to remember my life in terms of what I did, when and with whom. So, my folder organisational structure tends to include at least two and sometimes all three elements: when (the year), the what (the event/activity) and the who (such as a family event). The benefit of this approach for me is that I can quickly find the photo(s) I am looking for.

Culling and Grading

Post an event, I create a suitably dated/named folder as outlined above and import photos to it. I have a simple grading/sorting system using the numerical star system in Capture One:

• 1 star, not a great photo/rubbish photo, or a duplicate of a similar one where the latter is better. Not keeping these so at the end of grading photos I will select all 1* images and delete them. – RAWs and JPEGs.
• 2 stars, a reasonable photo, will keep, but not edit in post processing.
• 3 stars, a really great photo (to my eye!), will keep it, edit to improve it and then copy it as a JPEG to the best folder.

Downsides/Improvements

My approach has served me well since 2004. Without the cost of using bespoke digital management software, such Photo Mechanic (currently £149 pa), I am fine with my ‘nil additional cost’ approach. Arguably, I could improve this approach and make it more efficient by tagging photos or groups of photos with key words, but I have not gone down this road (yet).

I use Capture One Pro (C1). For post processing, I find it easy to use and it delivers all I want for my editing of my current Fuji and Sony cameras and on the odd occasion I have dived back into the past for my Nikon and Olympus RAW files. However, I find C1’s approach to folders and filing an absolute pain. This continues to be so even after reading Nils Wille Christoffersen book Raw Capturer Guide, which is quite excellent (highly recommended). So, I do my folder and file management in Pictures and then within Capture One I synchronise the folders.

Cost

My annual C1 cost is £179 pa (to be increased by 6% in 2025), which for editing I find okay. This is the same price in the UK as Adobe Lightroom/Photoshop (albeit a sale price). I am content with the editing aspects of C1 for my Fuji RAF files, but having played with the free trial of Lr I think it is easier to manage folders/photos in Lr than C1.

Summary

In my opinion, over the years and with many images from multiple events, a good simple and efficient way to organise photos is a ‘must’.

I’d be interested to hear other approaches used by forum members. Hope this helps.

 

[bastibe]

If I may use this thread to ask a follow up question for people - how do you guys make your photos 'viewable' when away from where they are stored? Like if you're away from home, but want to view some photos for whatever reason, what do you use? Do you upload them to Google Photos? Lightroom Cloud? A cloud solution? Something else?

I upload to a German photo cloud provider, Cewe, where I get a huge discount since I'm printing our yearly photo books with them.

I also have a private blog with our best photos.

None of my photos are on Google, Amazon, or Adobe services. I don't trust them to respect my privacy.

 

[Bill Ferris]

I use Lightroom Classic's sync function to sync a portfolio collection with the free Lightroom mobile app on my phone.

 

[Bill Ferris]

I use Lightroom Classic.

Importing

Photos from a shoot are imported to the LrC catalog. Here's how I set up each import:

• Create a new folder on the current year directory on my internal drive. My folder naming convention is: YYYY-MM-DD (short descriptive phrase)
• Confirm the photos will be copied to a new folder on the external drive where I keep a local backup
• Confirm my copyright is selected to be applied
• Add keywords that can be applied to all new photos
• Click "Import"

When the import is done, I go into the "Map" module and batch place the photos on the place where they were made. I also add relevant location information.

Next, I add keywords that apply to individual or small groups of photos

Then, I'll review the images and give a 5-star rating to any photo I want to keep. Typically, I'll select 3-5 favorites from each set of similar images.

Finally, I'll use the LrC metadata sorting tool to display all unrated photos. I'll select and remove all from the catalog. This also deletes the photos from the folder into which they were imported.

This prices typical saves roughly 10% of the photos from a shoot.

Processing

Reviewing the photos from a recent shoot, I'll select a favorite set of images, then my favorite photo from that set. This is the first image I'll process. My processing workflow is as follows:

• Crop the image
• Activate "Remove Chromatic Aberration"
• Actuation "Lens Profile"
• In "Detail" Panel, adjust Masking, Amount, Radius, and Detail settings
• Use "Masks" to make targeted adjustments to specific areas of the photo
• When done, flag the photo as a pick

If there are one or two other images from that set I like, I'll use the sync tool to copying processing from the first to the others and then adjust the masks as needed.

When processing is complete, I'll use the metadata search tool to sort all flagged images by ISO.

• Use "Enhance" tool to apply AI sharpening and denoise.

When the batch application(s) of enhance are done, I'll use the metadata search tool to sort all DNG files. The Enhance tool creates DNGs. These get a red label attached.

Organization

Smart collections are one of LrC's most powerful tools. All photos meeting selected criteria are automatically added to a given smart collection. I've created the following smart collections:

• Ready for Processing: all 5-star photos without other labels
• Completed Images: all 5-star photos with a green label
• Best Images: all 5-star photos with a red label
• Portfolio: all 5-star photos with red label and flagged as picks
• Genre collections: collections for wildlife, bird, landscape, portrait, sports, travel, and night sky keyworded photos with 5-star ratings, color labels, and flagged as picks

I'll periodically review photos in my Portfolio smart collection to reevaluate the images. Some will get downgraded to my "Best of" collection (remove pick flag). Some might get downgraded to the "Completed Images" collection (remove pick flag and change label to green)

I'll export select images as JPEGs for sharing on social. Photos can be published directly to Flickr through LrC. I've also used the "Book" module for projects.

I upgraded my 5+ year old laptop last November. LrC, it's most demanding tools, and processes all run, nimbly, on the new laptop.

 

[DJ STU-C]

Straight off the SD card onto my NAS. I have an apple shortcut running to create a new folder on my NAS with the date as a prefix to the folder name, so they are always in order, it then pops up with a window for me to type the rest of the file name in, which I’ll just call the location or event I was using my camera at.
Once done I’ll open Capture One and import the shots (but leave them on the NAS itself) at which point I’ll do the culling. I then delete all the unwanted ones and start to process the ones I want to keep, 99% of the time it’s done solely in Capture One, the odd occasion I have to do cloning I’ll round trip to Affinity using the plugin inside C1.

Once complete I export jpeg and upload to Flickr, or anywhere else I want to post.

--
Stu-C
https://flickr.com/photos/138087015@N02/

 

[Bill Ferris]

- Lightroom’s noise reduction isn’t great, but I have DXO PureRaw 2, so apart from an extra step, that works quite well.

I'm surprised you don't like the results from LrC's AI noise reduction and sharpening. I know the pain of waiting for batch processing of the Enhance tool to finish on an older laptop and also the drive space occupied by the DNG files the Enhance tool creates. But I find the end result to be outstanding. Here's a photo I made the other day at ISO 12800.


ISO 12800 raw file processed in LrC and finished with Enhance (AI denoise & sharpening) set to 30.

--
Bill Ferris Photography
Flagstaff, AZ

 

[Rightsaidfred]

I have a folder structure for darktable .

Since more than one year, I am on Adobe LR. I always import both raw and jpeg. I use collection sets, collections, and keywords. For rating, I use stars. Exported photos are marked green. Very happy. I export jpegs photos to a folder structure on my NAS.

Cheers,

Martin

--
SmugMug - https://martinlang.smugmug.com
500px - https://500px.com/martinlangphotography
Insta - https://www.instagram.com/martininframes
Co-author on https://frickelfarm.de/

 

[Breamish]

I use Lightroom Classic's sync function to sync a portfolio collection with the free Lightroom mobile app on my phone.

I constantly have issues getting stuff to sync from Lightroom Classic. More often than not, it will get stuck on "Syncing X photos" (where X is a number), and I've tried many of the suggestions online to no avail.

It really shouldn't be difficult to upload some relatively small smart previews to the cloud on a 1gbps upload internet connection, especially for a company like Adobe.

 

[Bill Ferris]

When I've gotten really stuck on something in LrC, my fallback has been to do a live chat session with Adobe support and ask that the support person remote into the computer to check the settings. That usually results in the issue getting resolved. I also learn something new about the app.

 

[Rightsaidfred]

Downsides/Areas for Improvement:

- The current system can easily lead to a buildup of un-culled photos, and it can be easy to lose track of them, since Lightroom doesn’t have a tool to show photos that aren’t in an album.

It does, and I utilize this a lot.

See, for example,

Photos Not in Any Collection – Ask Tim Grey

asktimgrey.com

Or do a web search for " find photos not in any collection".

Cheers,

Martin

 

[Bielers]

Reading how other people organise and process their photos, I'm beginning to feel like I need to raise my game!

I copy my files from the card to a folder on my HD. I organise them by year first. I then have sub categories (e.g. family, landscape, etc) often with further categories (e.g. specific child, type of landscape, area, etc). Finally, I will have a folder that has the date/dates and potentially a title that gives an idea of what photos are inside (e.g. if they were all shot at a particular location).

Once they are copied onto my HD, I import them into LR. In LR I have categories and collection sets for things like a specific child, landscape photography (and type), specific bird or animal, etc. Once edited, I export into the same folder on my HD that the original RAW files are located.

 

[Josef889]

I would love to have NAS, but am intimidated by the prospect of setting one up. Any advice?

 

[DJ STU-C]

I would love to have NAS, but am intimidated by the prospect of setting one up. Any advice?

Yeah, don’t be afraid

i got a Western Digital 2 bay NAS (the my cloud EX2 ultra) and its the easiest thing to set up, you have an app or you can access it using an IP address in your browser and the dashboard is super simple. Once connected to your network and fired up it’s a simple job of locating the drive on your network and after that it’ll work the same way as any other file folder on your computer.

Modern Routers mean you can also upload to it super fast, so it’s really not much different to an internal file.

--
Stu-C
https://flickr.com/photos/138087015@N02/