Organize Pictures » Organize Pictures

Is it a good idea to rename your image files?

vlad — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 22:34:04 +0000

When reading professional photographers blogs and websites I keep coming across this question: is it a good idea to rename your digital pictures files or leave them with the original file name assigned by the camera automatically? The question seems to be a subtle one and the apparent reason for the debate is not immediately obvious. In this article I will be focusing on clearing the issues and identifying the terms.

How to select your best pictures

vlad — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:07:27 +0000

Selecting the best pictures from a set of digital pictures is one of the most common tasks for a digital photographer. This used to be the case even during the film era. Sometimes you would just print one copy of each picture in a roll of film and then you would physically select the best pictures to put in your photo album. The rest would end up in some envelope in a shoebox that would start collecting dust. Well, this happens in the digital world as well, except for...the dust. But how do you select your best pictures efficiently in a digital world?

My pictures counter for June 2010

vlad — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 00:17:00 +0000

How many digital pictures do you have? Have you ever counted them? It's easy! At the end of October 2009 I decided to keep track of how many digital pictures and videos I have on my hard drive. So, I hope to be able to provide an update at the end of each month and show you how many pictures & videos I have, how much space they take and how much space I have left on my main hard drive.

My pictures counter for May 2010

vlad — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 16:51:45 +0000

A novel approach to organizing your pictures?

vlad — Mon, 17 May 2010 20:11:36 +0000

As you know, I keep looking for simple solutions for organizing my digital pictures. Recently I had the opportunity to chat with Andrea D'Intino about his company's product called Tabbles. Tabbles provides an innovative approach to organizing all the files on your computer, not only your pictures. I'm hoping to be able to provide a full review of this product, but for now you can read my interview with Andrea where he describes his own company's product.

My pictures counter for April 2010

vlad — Wed, 05 May 2010 20:25:54 +0000

Efficient keywording techniques or how to create a controlled vocabulary

vlad — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 01:00:30 +0000

If you have been using image keywords or tags for a while, the topic of managing your keywords is very relevant. If you're new however, to image keywords, then this topic might not seem necessary, at least not now. However, after applying keywords to your images without any strategy, you will end up having a pile of keywords that you can't sort out. Just like folders can become unusable if not named and organized correctly, keywords too can become unusable if not maintained properly. In order to avoid this problem you need to create efficient keywords, or in other words, you need a controlled vocabulary. But how do you create a controlled vocabulary?

How to organize video clips

vlad — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 01:00:40 +0000

Even though I take a ton of pictures I also shoot quite a few video clips as well. Having small children makes taking video clips a lot of fun since they like to look at video clips as well. Learning better ways to organize my video clips is one of my goals for this year. Over the years I created a very efficient method for organizing my pictures, but when it comes to my video clips, I pretty much place them in the same folders where my pictures are. This is the simplest way, but it might not be best way to organize my video clips. In this article I'm exploring different options for organizing your video clips. I'm not sure what is the best method but here are some options I found to work pretty well.

My pictures counter for March 2010

vlad — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 00:00:11 +0000

How to organize your old scanned pictures

vlad — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 15:58:09 +0000

Old pictures are fun because they bring back lots of memories. It's funny how we mostly remember the good things about most memories. Memories are the primary driver for me when I go back into my childhood pictures and decide to scan some and make them digital. I have hundreds of pictures from when I was a child. Even though I would like to scan all of them, I usually pick a few to scan and then forget about it for a while. Organizing old scanned pictures is the same as organizing current picture, at least for me. I get many questions however about organizing scanned pictures, and so i'll describe here how I organize them.

You may be a professional photographer whether you like it or not.

vlad — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:38:13 +0000

Digital photography has turned every mom and dad into a professional photographer. Well, not exactly professional as in having to live from our pictures, but a professional photographer because we all have to deal with a ton of pictures. You see, professional photographers, you know those people who have the coolest jobs and travel around the world for free, they live because of the pictures they take. They have been forced by their profession to organize and protect their pictures. They have to! Otherwise, they can't find and refine their products and if they can't do that...well they're done as far as being professional photographers.

My pictures counter for February 2010

vlad — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:30:06 +0000

My pictures counter for January 2010

vlad — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 03:15:53 +0000

My pictures counter for December 2009

vlad — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 08:04:26 +0000

Two new year resolutions you have to keep

vlad — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 00:25:41 +0000

Almost everyone that owns a digital camera takes pictures on Christmas and New Year holidays...ok...lots of pictures. This is also the time when we make new year resolutions. Have you every made any resolutions about your pictures? I believe that there are two new year resolutions that anyone taking pictures should not only make but also make sure they keep.

Image metadata in Ligthtroom and Picasa is compatible.

vlad — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 02:45:00 +0000

Is Picasa image metadata compatible with Lightroom? The short answer is yes...but. However, this short answer has to be gualified. They are compatible because of Lightroom and not because of Picasa. Or in other words Lightroom is backward compatible. Read on to see the specifics.

My pictures counter for November 2009

vlad — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 02:03:35 +0000

How to start organizing your digital pictures

vlad — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 07:00:58 +0000

When learning something new the first steps are always the hardest and the most important. In order to accomplish something, you have to start somewhere. This is also the case when it comes to learning how to organize your pictures. I can talk a lot about efficient folder structures, image metadata, IPTC, XMP and other things like this. But many times I people simply ask me: how do I start organizing my pictures? I think that's a great question.

What is the future of your image tags?

vlad — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:00:19 +0000

Last week I published the first part of the interview I conducted with Hans Fremuth from Metability Software about image metadata. In this section Hans talked about the current state of the image metadata standard development and in particular about the XMP standard developed by Adobe. In addition, Hans provides insight into how he organizes his own pictures on his computer. This article is the second part of the interview.

The best history lesson on image metadata standards

vlad — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:00:24 +0000

I had the privilege to chat over e-mail with Hans Fremuth from Metability Software about image metadata. He was very gracious not only to answer my questions but also to provide a great history of the image metadata standards available today (EXIF, IPTC, XMP). His long history with file metadata in general and image metadata in particular makes him a great resource for a serious photographer. Hans' great understanding of the history of modern image metadata standards provides great clarity to his vision about the field of managing unstructured data in general and image metadata in particular. This article is the first part of the interview.

My pictures counter for October 2009

vlad — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:05:58 +0000

How many digital pictures do you have? Have you ever counted them? It’s easy! This month I decided that I will track the number of digital pictures and videos on my hard drive. I think that this little exercise will provide great insight on how many pictures I have and how many I take on a regular basis. So, I hope to be able to provide an update at the end of each month and show you how many pictures & videos I have, how much space they take and how much space I have left on my main hard drive.

Talking about why and how people take pictures. An interview with photography professor Stephen Cysewski.

vlad — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:09:09 +0000

Some time ago I had the privilege to ask professor and photographer Stephen Cysewski some questions. He was very gracious to include lots of details in his answers. Stephen Cysewski is Professor of Computer Applications, Emeritus at University of Alaska Fairbanks and has been living in Alaska since 1967.

Use folders and tags the right way.

vlad — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 06:00:48 +0000

Folders and tags are two complimentary methods for organizing your digital pictures on your computer. I have written in the past about the differences and similarities of folders and tags and people have written and asked questions (Read Tags vs Folders the big debate). This article explores one key difference between the two methods and how to use it for your own advantage.

How to organize baby pictures

vlad — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 01:42:41 +0000

I find myself today in almost the same situation as when I started this blog. In the summer of 2006 I had my first baby, my daughter! That was three years ago. Now, three years later I had my second baby, my son! This is a great blessing indeed! Because we live in modern times with digital cameras, babies come with...well, among many other things, lots of pictures. And all these pictures need organization. There are a few things about organzing baby pictures that make the task a little different especially if you're only using folders for organizing your pictures.

Image geotagging goes one step further with Flickr

vlad — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 22:38:25 +0000

It's only a matter of time until image geotagging will become the one thing that every photographer will have to do for their pictures. This type of image metadata is becoming very useful and desired. Flickr, of course, is the master keeper of over 100 million geotagged images. This means that they can provide a tot of geographically linked images and they can also create all kinds of interesting relationships between images and photographers.

Image metadata terms definition

vlad — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:08:38 +0000

I have been meaning to put together a list of image metadata terms and their definitions. I have found this list already created by the Metadata Working Group. So, I took it and published it here. Sometimes it's easier to read a list in bullet form. I always try to define the terms before I use them and so, I believe this list is very helpful as a reference point.

Best resource for understanding image metadata standards.

vlad — Mon, 25 May 2009 19:53:00 +0000

Once in a while I find something on the web that makes me say: It's about time! That's what I found a couple of weeks ago. Image metadata and image metadata standards are very important for coming up with any meaningful long term strategy for organizing your pictures. However, with so many standards and acronyms it is very hard to figure out what to do. Do you use EXIF, IPTC or XMP for your strategy? How about all three? I believe I found a really good resource that explains the differences and commonalities between all three standards.

Why folders will remain the most popular method for organizing pictures

vlad — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:37:09 +0000

Last month I have created a survey among the readers of OrganizePictures.com. The question was very simple: Do you use folders or tags? The answers were pretty much split in the middle. Half of those who answered responded that they use only folders for organizing their pictures, while half of them were using a combination of folders and tags for organizing their pictures. Only two people said they're only using tags for organizing their pictures. One of the conclusions of this survey is that image organization just with folders is very popular. I was not surprised by this conclusion because of several reasons.

How do you organize 35 million pictures ?

vlad — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 08:56:44 +0000

It is very rare for me to read about photography on blogs that have to do with computer science and programming, but this week I came across a very interesting study that combines computer science and picture organization methods. The study was done by Cornell University faculty and students and was presented at the 2009 edition of the International World Wide Web conference. It was entitled "Mapping the world's photos" (See resources at the end for the PDF link).

Add precision to your picture collection by adding layers of organization

vlad — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 07:19:07 +0000

Many times precision is achieved by approaching the target in small steps. This is true also when it comes to your photo collection. It would be great if we could have unlimited free time to add tags and geotags to all of our pictures. Unfortunately, this is not the case and many times we have to choose how precise we want to organize our pictures. So we approach precision in picture organization in layers...layers of organization.

2 simple examples of using image geotags

vlad — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 07:19:16 +0000

Yeah, image geotags are cool, they're the latest buzz...but who cares? Should you really care just because everyone else cares? Well, it takes a lot of time to create image geotags and put them in your images, then some sharing sites may use them while others may not...so what's the use? In this article I'll show you two of my own examples of using image geotags: Picasa Web Albums and Flickr...then you can decide for yourself if image geotags are the next thing you'll be staying up late for.

How to use your image geotags in Flickr

vlad — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 07:59:44 +0000

Geotagging images is soon becoming the hottest topic in photography primarily thanks to Flickr. Flickr is such a popular photo sharing site (apparently after Facebook) that whatever Flickr does it spreads very quickly. Flickr has embraced image geotagging around 2006 I believe, and they have tailored their tools to make the picture geotagging process very easy for the user. It is surprising however, that Flickr doesn't do image geotagging according to what it's expected...but rather in a roundabout way.

Geotagging and Geocoding – friends forever.

vlad — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 07:29:06 +0000

As I have promised in my article about Geotagging, today I'm writing about Geocoding. I won't get too deep into Geocoding because you can find all the information you would want on Wikipedia. I want to write more about the relationship between Geocoding and Geotagging.

2 simple methods for geotagging your pictures

vlad — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 07:45:56 +0000

When photography which is an art, intersects technology which is...not an art what do you get? You get some weird buzz words. Today's star is Geotagging ! Think of it as Geographic Tags, or Geographic keywords. The thing that makes it weird is that GeoTags are actual coordinates, so they're not related to tags or keywords at all. They're not keywords...'cause they're not even words.

One simple strategy to optimize your photography workflow

vlad — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 05:24:15 +0000

Now that you have asked the right questions, figured out your purpose and defined your photography workflow steps, what do you do to make everything more efficient ? Is there something extra to be done to tie everything together in a nice and smooth process ? While I believe that there is nothing you can do to eliminate hard and repetitive work, there is one thing you can do to make all that hard work...easier.

The ABCs of an efficient photography workflow

vlad — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 15:41:23 +0000

In my last two articles I have written about basic questions to ask when creating or modifying your photography workflow. However, what do you do after asking these foundational questions ? Where do you start analyzing your current workflow? This article will explain the simplest steps of a photography workflow...this is the "ABC" of photography workflow. These are the steps that are part of any photography workflow no matter how simple or complicated. This is where all photography workflows start, this is the birthplace of a photography workflow.

Is your photography workflow good enough ?

vlad — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 03:12:05 +0000

You'll probably ask immediately: good enough for what? Well...that's exactly the question to ask when it comes to your photography workflow. While my last article deals with similar basic questions, this article is a variation on the same theme but with a twist. I hope you like the twist :)

How to define an efficient photography workflow

vlad — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:48:09 +0000

It is my belief that while there are general steps in a photographer's workflow, each photographer will have his/her own workflow customised to fit his or her purpose. That being said, I also believe that there a few questions that each photographer should ask when contemplating changes to their photography workflow. I don't know about you, but it has happened to me a few times when I read about someone else's photography workflow and I just quickly adapted it only to find out later that it's not working that great for me. This forced me to ask some really simple questions before changing anything. ( Photo credit: SXC )

Is there a perfect photography workflow ?

vlad — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 20:23:09 +0000

Workflow is a new buzz word that appears everywhere from making cars to mowing your lawn. Photographers also love to talk about their workflow and how their workflow is more efficient than another workflow. In this article I want to take a step back and look at what a workflow is and in particular to see its application to photography.

2 great examples of photography workflow

vlad — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 17:37:00 +0000

There is so much information about photography workflow on the net that it is very hard to sort through all the articles. Many articles are just being copied and edited from blog to blog and they are not that helpful. On the other hand there are a few articles that will definitely help you in fine tuning your photography workflow. I am posting two links here with the hope that they will help you as they helped me.

What makes photo management software tick?

vlad — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 21:55:21 +0000

Keywords or tags are the hottest topic when it comes to organizing your pictures. The standards used for capturing photo keywords and saving them to the actual image files are XMP and IPTC. It is important to understand what these terms mean and how to use them, but it is also important to understand how the actual keywords end up being added to your image files. So what does an image organizer software do in order to create and add keywords to image files ?

The road frequently traveled by image metadata

vlad — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:08:07 +0000

Now that I have explained the different types of image metadata there is one more question to answer: how does this image metadata end up in your image files? This article will explain the road very frequently traveled by image metadata. From your camera to your computer and back to your image file, image metadata becomes connected to each image and this way becomes PORTABLE.

Understand and manage your image metadata

vlad — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:47:55 +0000

Tagging your images is so cool, compared with using plain old folders...at least that's what everyone says :) But how do your carefully created keywords get attached to your images? What are EXIF, IPTC and XMP? And most of all...why should you care about all of these acronyms? Understanding the different types of image metadata will help you better manage your pictures.

All you need to know about organizing your pictures

vlad — Thu, 22 May 2008 15:37:57 +0000

There is a lot of information on OrganizePictures.com. Sometimes it's hard for a first time visitor to find what he or she needs. That's why I created a new page called START HERE ! This page contains most of the core articles I have written about organizing pictures. So it actually contains everything you need to know about organizing your pictures. It's true that there is a lot more on my page, but this is where all new visitors should start.

Adobe Lightroom – an exercise in keywording

vlad — Wed, 07 May 2008 21:43:48 +0000

I have been looking for a long time for some software that would allow me to manage keywords in an efficient manner. What do I mean by efficient? It's pretty simple: all I want is the ability to group my keywords into categories or domains. For example: I want car, boat, ship, carriage, bus and bicycle to all be grouped into a domain called transportation. This seems simple, but I can't really find any decently priced :) software to do that. Now, I was suspecting that Adobe Lightroom might do what I wanted but the price was way too much for me! Eventually I decided to give Lightroom a try and found out why people like it.

5 steps to create precise keywords for tagging your pictures

vlad — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:16:31 +0000

Once you get started with Digital Asset Management (DAM) software you will quickly run into another management issue: your keywords. I believe any DAM software user will eventually ask himself the question: how am I supposed to create my keywords? Reading various internet sources on the subject I usually run into two kinds of advice: some say you should just start adding keywords to your images while others say you should be careful and think through your keywords before creating them. Even though it seems that most advice falls in the first category, I happen to fall into the second category. I do believe that you should be careful when you create keywords primarily because if you create too many, then you will have to manage your keywords as well pretty soon...as if managing your pictures is not enough headache. :)

When folders are not enough…tags are your friends.

vlad — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:01:35 +0000

It is rare when a complex problem can have a simple solution. Most of the times however, a complex problem can have a simple solution that only works well for some of the times. When "some of the times" is "most of the times" for you, then the simple solution will work fine. However if "some of the times" does turn out not to be "most of the times" then the simple solution breaks down very easily. This is the case with the folder based method of organizing your pictures. So, how do you know when folders are not enough?

How to insert precise tags in folder names

vlad — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:22:49 +0000

I am not sure about the history of peanut butter and jelly. I am pretty sure that nobody at that time was thinking to combine the two. So how did it get so popular? Probably somebody in some kitchen somewhere has combined the two ingredients, most likely by accident, and they liked it and told their friends. Tags and folders are two methods of organizing pictures that many think don't go together. This article will show that they can be used together to create a very efficient organization structure.

Using folders to select favorite pictures

vlad — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 02:15:19 +0000

There are quite a few software programs that allow you to mark your favorite pictures through some kind of sign (a star, a colored square). Then this kind of software allows you to locate your favorite pictures by adding labels to these groups of pictures. The problem with this approach is lack of portability. If you want to give a whole folder of pictures to your friend but he's not using the same software then all your favorite pictures will not appear on as favorite on his software.

Tags and Folders are NOT mutually exclusive

vlad — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 21:29:36 +0000

Popular opinion on the internet suggests that the Tags and Folders based methods for picture organization are mutually exclusive. This means that if you decide to use Tags then you will not be using folders. Or if you're using Folders to organize your picture, you cannot use Tags. This is very far from reality and in fact Tags and Folders are NOT mutually exclusive.