Techniques

I am not sure if this is the correct place to pose/post this question, but I am wondering how each of you organize your image libraries - I assume most will be by date, but do any of you organize by subject/species/location etc? And any advice you could give regarding this? I know that LR and Aperture do a good job with image searches - if you put in the metadata, but sometimes I am lazy and forget to tag things well. Thanks for the feedback.

Sorry if this is redundant. You might ask me this on Sept 26th at my Lightroom Presentation for the Digital Meeting. I am also pasting my reply to you on Facebook for others to see

Terry Mieger LR, LR LR is the "WAY" It does it any way you want. When I import I rename with a present that starts with the date then shoot title. The date is to help my memory. In the right pane of the Library Module, I change the name of the folder to include a location or other pertinent info.I am add keywords-LR allows nested keywords into folders such as Birds-->Great Blue Heron This usually done after import but can be done at import. You can move the image files and organize them ANY way you want. With "Find", Collections and Smart Collections you can select or sort with any metadata, text ANYTHING, camera lens, iso, shutter speed, etc. Sorting/finding peed is not a question I I can find any image out of over 75,000 in about 2 seconds. I can get all of my Great Blue Heron shots even faster. So, I do it by date and shoot, using the keywords, collections and metadata for locating.

Thanks Terry, I will see if I can make your meeting on the 26th. I have been out of town for 5 weeks and will be getting back in town just before the meeting - I am sure I will be playing catch up for some time but would like to learn more of LR. Thanks again.

Hope to see you
The problem with LR is the more you learn the better it gets and the more you are hooked. Got a full day workshop Sat Sept 14 on the Library and Develop Modules. $15 or $25 just email me silver45@me.com

Cathy and I organize our files by species or location. If it's a scenic image, we use location. If it's wildlife, or to some extent plants, we use species. We don't use date at all, and we use LR.

Thank you Gordon. I see benefits to doing it this way as opposed to dates because if you use multiple hard drives you may not always know which dates to look for but you usually know the species or scene and thus know which hard drive to search. If all images are on one drive then the date seems to work better. At least that is why I am asking this question. I realize that you can search LR or Aperture (I use Aperture) for any date or meta data, but you have to have the right Hard Drive attached to search first. Thanks again.

totally agree - animals by species and landscapes by location. Let your system evolve based on this criteria. The cleaner you can keep it, the better!

Thanks Russ.