Home-Word-Photography program in chronological order. What's the best way to store photos on your computer?

Photography program in chronological order. What's the best way to store photos on your computer?

Since the weather is not being kind, it's time to take care of your home photo archive. Everything that was photographed in the summer, fall, or on vacation in hot and not so hot countries, that has been stored on the hard drive for a long time, must be sorted, organized, backed up, and printed. As hard as it may be to believe, more than 80 percent of our photographs never make it to print. In this article I will tell you how best to organize your home photo archive so that you can easily and simply find the photo you need, or even the entire series, and how to finally decide to print your favorite pictures for a family album.

Step 1: Sort your photos. Review your photos. Delete frequently repeated photos and low-quality blurry images mercilessly. Fight the misconception that “every shot is precious,” because in fact, bad and extra photos create a mess, which makes it very difficult to find really good shots. The exception is a photo of a unique moment that reminds you and your family of something very important, meaningful and understandable. For example, a baby’s christening often goes poorly due to poor lighting in the church. And yet these photographs are infinitely precious. But even here, you should choose the best of the best.

Advice: If the batch of photographs is too large, it may be difficult to sort it, since after some time the eyes get tired, and the brain also ceases to distinguish high quality photo from less successful. Try to take breaks every 20-30 minutes. You have enough evenings to complete this task.

Step 2: Create folders. The organization of photographs is divided into two types: thematic and chronological. You can choose one of them, or you can use both at the same time. I like to organize my family photo archive in chronological order by year and month. For example, in the 2013 folder I have 12 folders, one for each month. Thematic folders have been created for each month. For example, the folder “January 01” contains the following folders: “New Year’s Eve”, “Walk in Jurmala”, “Winter Landscapes”, “Ice Show”, “Aunt Valya’s Birthday”, etc. It is no coincidence that I named the January folder 01. In this case, all my months are in order. If you leave only the name of the month, the folders will automatically be placed in alphabetical order, which is not very convenient.

Step 3: Copy and change the title. Sometimes from a trip we bring a very large number of photographs, where there are noticeably fewer of our personal ones than photos of landscapes, city streets, strange objects, fruits, etc. To make it easier for you to find yourself in these photographs in the future, I suggest you select personal photos, copy them, and place the copies in a separate folder called “My Portrait”. To this folder you can copy photos from the folder “New Year’s Eve”, “Bachelorette Party at Tanya’s”, “Graduation Reunion”, as well as from any others. But don’t forget to change the name in the “My Portrait” folder, since the photos are from different chronologies and you can accidentally duplicate the name given by the camera and replace one photo with another. You can change the title in each photo: “Me on New Year’s Eve,” “I’m in Rome,” “I’m with my mom,” and so on, or you can change all the photos at once. To do this, you need to select all the photos and give one of them a name, for example, “My portrait”, and the program will automatically rename all the photos, giving each a serial number “My portrait 01, 02, 03” and so on.

Step 4: Remove red eye. Portraits with red eyes are not uncommon. Today, this can be corrected even online on the website http://kras-glaz.ru/. To quickly correct a photo's color, cropping, and tone saturation, you can use your favorite editor. Very often to digital camera Programs for correcting digital photographs are included. By carefully studying the instructions, you can add significant originality to your photographs. But before experimenting with photographs, make a copy of the original, just in case. What if you don't like the result of your color manipulations?

Step 5: Create a copy. As soon as a batch of photos is sorted into folders and corrected, immediately create backup copy the entire archive. Professional photographers recommend using the following storage methods: external drive, online storage service, and printing. Most experts do not recommend backing up to DVDs or CDs. When choosing an online service, consider the fact that it specializes in storing files for an unlimited amount of time. I personally know the following online storage: Google Drive, Yandex Disk and Drop Box.

Tip for storing photos: external drive – although it sounds too high-tech, it is very easy to use. Connect the drive to your computer via a USB port, like a flash drive, and drag folders with organized photos onto it. However, you shouldn’t limit yourself to them. If it is damaged, the data can be restored, but not always. It all depends on the extent of the damage. Therefore, you still risk losing your data. So see the next step.

Step 6: Print. Now that your photos are in order, you can slowly print them out, as a printed photo is still the best backup. I join the experts who do not recommend messing around with a home printer - consumables are quite expensive, and the quality is not always good. Use online services or specialized photo stores. You can try printing batches of pictures in different stores and services to compare and choose the best one for yourself in terms of price and quality.

With the advent of digital cameras, it has become possible to photograph absolutely any objects and, most importantly, in any quantity. Digital technologies impose virtually no restrictions on the ease of obtaining images. The immediate result of this was that the number of photographs created by amateur photographers, not to mention professionals, increased significantly. An affordable and capacious memory card for your camera can easily accommodate several hundred or even thousands of frames maximum quality. Moreover, only a small part of these photographic images is printed; the full photo archive is usually stored on the computer’s hard drive.

This is where the photographer faces a very important pressing question - how to store huge amount digital photographs, so as not to get confused in the huge volume of files and, if possible, quickly find the photo he needs? Almost every photographer faces this task of cataloging and organizing a photo archive. How to best organize your home photo archive in order to ensure easy search and quick retouching of the captured footage later?

Organizing your home photo archive

It must be said that each photographer copes with the problem of organizing and managing photographic images in his own, individual way. But in any case, first all the captured frames are transferred by the photographer from various flash drives and disks to hard drive a computer that can be used specifically for archival storage and catalog maintenance. The easiest way to catalog photos is to rename all the photos in advance and place the files on disk in separate folders with specific names. That is, the photographer in in this case catalogs the captured footage manually, renaming the file names and moving them to the required folders.

This approach can be used by an amateur photographer who does not shoot often, mainly, for example, family photos. He doesn't need to resort to complex methods cataloging. It is quite enough to create several folders for each year with subfolders for certain events - a camping trip, meeting with friends or a summer vacation. Thus, all folders with photos will be located on your hard drive in chronological order, which is quite convenient for finding the photo images you need.

Similar simple system Cataloging a home archive works well when the number of photographs remains relatively small. But, as practice shows, even among ordinary amateur photographers, the number of frames captured increases at an avalanche-like pace. As a result, the entire procedure of renaming and placing files becomes quite tedious. But the most important thing is that at one point the photographer has difficulty remembering which year or event the particular pictures he wants to find belong to. And with each new shooting the situation will only get worse. Therefore, many photographers who shoot shots in large quantities, prefer to use special programs for cataloging photographic images. These photo organizers are based on the principle of physically dividing them into folders and sorting frames using keywords.

Cataloging photos using software tools

It will help you cope with organizing and cataloging a large volume of digital photographs. special program– photo organizer. Today you can find plenty of them on the Internet, some are distributed completely free of charge, while the use of others requires the purchase of a license. Some of the most popular and in-demand photo organizers include programs such as Adobe Photoshop Album, Lightroom, PicaJet Photo Album, Extensis Portfolio, iView, Photo Cataloging, Google Picasa, FotoAlbum Pro and many others. Most photo cataloging similar programs is carried out by placing the captured frames in a kind of storage, in which all information is divided into certain categories. Within these categories, subcategories and labels can also be placed. All photographs located in such a repository are marked with so-called metadata, that is, data about the photographs containing certain keywords, the date of shooting and brief description. The logical folders with photos created by the program resemble ordinary physical folders, however, the files displayed in them may be located in more than one specific place, but in a variety of physical folders on the computer’s hard drive.

The logical folder itself only stores links to image files. Accordingly, this means that in each photo collection, user-created, images may appear from different sources. Thus, the program automatically organizes some SQL database data with a preview of all photos placed on the hard drive. Such programs provide a convenient and quick search for captured footage and their demonstration. Moreover, photo organizers often go beyond just cataloging digital photographs and offer the photographer such additional features, How quick adjustment images, adjusting brightness and contrast, cropping photos and much more.

It is clear that using such a program if you have an existing archive with a large volume of photographs is very convenient. But in order to place photographs in the catalog, you must first provide them with the appropriate data. It is not necessary to include every photo detailed description. Keywords should be short enough to main task is to make the process of finding photos easier. When each new batch of photographs is placed in the catalog, they are first viewed, then the unsuccessful photographs are deleted and minor corrections are made to the images. Some photos can be immediately converted to black and white format or change the color saturation of a photo using the photo organizer features.

Next, each photo image is assigned its own special tag - keywords. Moreover, such keywords in the catalog can have several levels, for example, “Travel” - “Country” - “Czech Republic” - “Prague”. In addition to keywords, you can add some description to the photo, in particular, where and under what circumstances this photo was taken. Photos must also be accompanied by a note indicating the date of shooting. Using keywords and a tagging system, the program will very quickly find the photo you need or present a whole list of images searched for by keywords. Moreover, you can search not only by keywords, but also by album name and shooting date. You can also quickly view all the photos taken during the period of time you are interested in. Photos in the catalog can also be accompanied by your personal rating, so that you can immediately remember the most successful and interesting shots in a particular photo shoot. Using the photo organizer, you can quickly transfer your collections to other media and record on DVDs, and also create slideshows with subtitles and music.

So, it is obvious that cataloging photographs is a rather labor-intensive process, requiring the photographer to view each image, provide it with keywords and a description. However proper organization a photo archive will definitely pay off handsomely, because it will significantly simplify the search for captured footage by subject, date and other criteria. Working with a photo catalog will provide you with significant time savings.

If there is a whole bunch of photos and videos on the computer and all this is also scattered around different folders, then sometimes you want to look at photos from certain period time (for example, for some year) and it turns out that it’s not so easy to do this!

Of course, you can put everything together, put it in one folder, but you will still have to organize all this stuff by year, month, or otherwise, depending on how necessary.

Let's look at 2 ways to organize photos and videos (together or separately, it doesn't matter) so that you can easily navigate, even if there are a lot of files, for example, several thousand.

The easiest and most convenient way to organize all your photos and videos so that you can easily navigate through them is to group them all in the so-called Windows library (or several).

WHAT ARE FILE LIBRARIES IN WINDOWS

Libraries are separate folders that group files according to a certain criterion (for example, music, images, videos, general) and allow you to work with these files more conveniently, for example, if you take images or videos, you can organize them by date, which is not possible in ordinary folders cannot be done.

On Windows, the following libraries are initially created:

  • Video;
  • Images;
  • Documents;
  • Music.

Accordingly, each of them is intended for a specific type of file, as is clear from the names.

Libraries are displayed directly in Windows Explorer, in the left column:

You can rename the libraries as needed. For example, it is not necessary to split videos and images into separate libraries. Yes, it will be more correct and more orderly, but for some it may be convenient to put everything in one pile, including photos and videos. In this case, you can rename the “Images” library, for example, “Video and Photos” and put both there. The “Images” library itself will allow you to organize videos correctly, since the settings of these libraries are very similar.

You can create new libraries if you wish. But usually this is not necessary. Since the ones already available by default are sufficient for any type of file.

ORGANIZING PHOTO/VIDEO IN LIBRARIES

Transferring photo/video collections to the library

The first thing you need to do is transfer all your photos and videos scattered around your computer to one or more libraries. Decide right away whether you will store photos and videos separately, i.e. in different libraries, as originally intended in Windows, or everything is in the heap. Let me remind you that you can do it this way and it will work.

According to your choice, collect all the photos and videos from your computer into the appropriate folders: “Images” and “Videos” (or everything in “Images”).

If your computer is such a mess that it is difficult to manually find all the photos and videos scattered in different folders, then you can use the WinDirStat program to help. It allows you to evaluate which files (by category) are taking up space on your computer and where they are located.

Photos and videos should be moved to folders, not libraries. You can find the “Images”, “Videos” and other folders in your user’s folder (for old operating systems), or in the “This PC” section (for new systems, for example, Windows 10).

The libraries themselves are formed from just some of these folders.

If you already had photos and videos in some other folders, then you can transfer them entirely in the folders. It is not necessary to move files separately. Example:

Organize by date

After you have moved your entire collection to the “images” and “videos” folders or to one of them, open the corresponding library through the “Libraries” section (shown above). Initially, of course, there will be no order there. Everything will look something like this:

But since the collection is now in the library, everything can be easily organized by date.

To do this, click on an empty space in the library right click mouse (hereinafter referred to as “RMB”) and select “arrange”, then select the value “day” or “month”. When you select “month,” your collection will be organized by month, with the year next to it. Example:

And now you can open a specific month and see photos for this period. Once in the folder of the selected month, the photos in it will already be organized by day (see below).

When you select “day”, the entire collection in the folder will be organized according to day:

By clicking on the arrows opposite on a certain day, you can hide photos/videos for that day:

If you want to cancel the ordering, i.e. turn on normal look display, then select “Folder” from the “Arrange” menu.

Pay attention! Windows organizes photos and videos primarily by parameters such as “date taken” (for photos) and “date media created” (for videos). These parameters are usually set to the file by the device itself on which the shooting was carried out. You can see them and change them through the file properties (right-click on the file and select “Properties”), in the “Details” tab.

Video media creation date

If for some reason this data is not in the file (for example, the device did not create it when shooting), then the photos and videos will be sorted by the date the file was created:

But this is not good, because the creation date of the file changes every time it is copied to another folder, to another drive, etc. It is always better to indicate the date of shooting and the date of creation of multimedia!

More refined filtering by dates

You can further filter your collections, for example, select a specific day or range of days (weeks, months, etc.) for which you want to display photos/videos.

Before this, you need to change the file display option to “table”. To do this, right-click in the window area and select “view” - “table”. The files in the folder will be displayed in the form of a table, indicating the date, size and other parameters in the corresponding cells:

Now by clicking to the right of the “Dates” column you can select a specific day or range of dates, weeks, months, years. For example, we want to display photos/videos only for the dates from November 11, 2016 to November 30 of the same year. Select the range with the mouse and all elements that do not correspond to the specified dates will disappear in the Explorer window.

If you need to cancel filtering, then also open the window of the selected filter and uncheck it (see image above).

Ability to group files according to different criteria

In addition to organizing the collection by date, you can also group by certain criteria, for example, by file type, and in this case all displayed files will be conveniently grouped. Example:

From the example above we see that 3 groups have been created, according to file types, the unnecessary ones can be collapsed so as not to get in the way. This is convenient when there are a large number of different files in a folder, when you only need to view files certain types. For example, we want to separate photos and videos by grouping them accordingly. By selecting grouping by file type, we will see separately video files grouped by file type (MP4, MOV, etc.) and photos grouped similarly (JPG, PNG, etc.).

To perform a grouping, right-click on the desired folder, select “Grouping” and in the submenu that opens, specify the desired grouping option, for example, “Type” (just “by file type”, as described above in the example).

Eat different options groupings, in addition to file type. If the desired option is not in the list (it happens that the “Type” option is also missing), in the grouping submenu, click “Details”.

In the window that opens, check the box next to the desired grouping options that you will use and click “OK.” They will now appear in the list of grouping options.

If you want to cancel grouping, select “No” in the list of options.

You should be aware that grouping is not available if you have selected an ordering option, such as “month” or “day”. Grouping only works when ordering is disabled, i.e. the “folder” option is selected (see above).

CONCLUSION

In fact, for those who have a large collection of photos and videos, it will always be important to be able to quickly organize everything by date or group it. It is convenient and very easy to do.

If you have anything to add or any questions about the article, leave it in the comments, I won’t miss anything! :)

Do you have a lot of photos and videos stored on your computer? :) How do you organize your multimedia collections?

“What is the best way to store photos on a computer?” - I am often asked this question, and today I will tell you how I do it. After all, my archive of family and client photos with a volume of more than 500 GB requires order in storage, otherwise it will be difficult to quickly find the necessary photos and generally find them among tens of thousands of files :).

I have more than once observed a situation where on a computer folders with photographs are stored on the desktop, and piled up in the “My Documents” folder, and simply scattered around hard drive V different places Oh. Because These folders do not have a name by which you can understand what kind of photos are there; finding the desired photo often involves viewing all the folders and opening the photos in them. For me this is just a nightmare! That's it, let's move on to the description :)

First of all, I will clarify about the approach I use to store archival materials, and these are not only photographs, but also family video archives and materials from seminars, trainings, etc.

The human brain can remember the details of a moment in life if it is given the date and place when it happened. The same approach is used by the wonderful Evernote program for saving notes and by hypnotists (yes!) to extract details from your subconscious. I use a specific date format and a description of the location or type of event to name the folder. This allows me to quickly find folders with photographs taken on a specific date and refine them by description.

For example, I am photographing relatives and friends at the birthday of one of them on March 8th of this year. I will name the folder where I will store photos from this photo shoot “2014.03.08 Birthday. Petya Ivanov."

More examples:


The examples are real, I just changed my name. I note that I used to call folders in Latin, but now I often write in Cyrillic, this is not important.

Why does the date come at the beginning of the file and why is it important?
At the beginning of the file name, I write the year separated by a dot, then the month and then the number of the date when the shooting took place, since this allows you to automatically sort in ascending date order. It's very convenient. For clarity, look at the photo of the final structure for storing photos one chapter below.

Separately about storing photos from long trips/travels

When we go on big trips, of course, in addition to impressions, we bring a lot of photographs. I usually store photos on the day of shooting inside their shared folder and specify the location (as in the example below) or event, here clear example from a trip to France (photos are in Facebook):


If shooting dates fall on New Year, then I save them in the year when the shooting began, i.e., as in the example above, in 2012.

What does the final structure for storing photos look like?

Eat shared folder“!!!Photo” with folders by year and inside each year there are already folders with photos.


What to do with newly taken or copied photographs?

If you're sorting through or processing photos after shooting, I recommend creating a folder in which you save all new photos. As you process them, you will move them into a photo storage folder.

This allows you to always know that the photos are either in the archive or in a folder for processing, and not somewhere else on the computer. Important point- name the folder correctly right away, i.e. in the “date - event” format, so that the folders are immediately sorted by date.

What to do with photos on your mobile phone?

Nowadays, for many people, a phone with its advanced camera is actually a pocket camera. This is convenient when you can take pictures of something useful and not so useful :), and we often leave photos on the phone without sorting them out or transferring them to the computer in the first folder we come across.

I also sometimes take pictures on my phone, but I stick to following rules with photos on it:

  • If these are photos from a meeting or some event that I save in the file storage structure (for example, a work project or attending a conference), I write the photo into a folder dedicated to this event. The principle of the folder name is the same - the “date-event” format.
  • If these are photographs “for myself,” I save them in the archive with photographs, adding to the title an indication that they are from a mobile phone, for example, “2014.03.23 Home (mobile).”
  • A certain number of quickly needed photos are stored on the phone, and I always have a fresh backup copy of them in case the phone is lost. I delete all unnecessary photos on it.

And how can I bring order to my chaos now?

To put things in order, you need to put in a little effort and take the following steps:

  1. First of all, create a structure to store your photos.

If you already have a lot of folders with photos, you can start by at least putting them in one folder so as not to search through the entire disk. In the future, as you search or desire, rename the folders and transfer them to your structure.

  1. Place new photos in the right place.

I also want to remind you again that your photo archive should be backed up so that if you lose your files, you won't lose your memory in the form of photos. Pay attention to this, don’t put it off later and don’t hope for chance! I personally have already gone through this twice ( the second time - no consequences) and I know how painful it is to lose the only pictures that can no longer be replaced, of your family, loved ones and friends. Take care of your insurance in the IT world.

If you have questions or comments about the article, let me know.

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    After much trial and error, I came to the same general structure, each day of shooting in a separate folder, in the title first the date, then an explanation. To clear the rubble I used total commander, with batch renaming of files by creation date. I'm using it now Adobe Lightroom. The fact is that in this program you can assign tags to each photo and geographical coordinates. And in the end, if I just need to find photographs of a person, without reference to a nearby event, I simply indicate Vasya Pupkin, and the program shows me all the photographs with this person that are in my catalog. You can also search by any assigned tag or location. In addition, the program perfectly implements the functions of collecting photos in a collection, without physically moving them, both manual and automatic, according to specified parameters. So Adobe Lightroom is not only photo processing, but also a very powerful tool for organizing your photos.

    Gregory, thank you for sharing your experience!

    I agree with you about the capabilities of Adobe Lightroom, although I don’t use it for editing. I had experience cataloging photos with different programs many years ago, and in the end, the current version turned out to be the most convenient.

    I now register tags in iptc (though not in all years) for searching by keywords (tags) + I don’t depend on the Lightroom database; it needs to be backed up periodically at least and have Adobe Lightroom itself (I’m talking about the licensed version).

    And the advantage of this structure (“date - event”) is that I use it in other folders; uniformity in data management is more comfortable for me to work with.

    I also use the layout in folders by year, and in them by events and places. There is also a separate general folder - photos before disassembly and a folder with photo quotes (from the phone, sometimes I read something interesting and take a photo of the page). There’s just an inconvenience - when I’m looking for a specific photo, let’s say I know the year, but I don’t remember the location - it’s inconvenient to open all the folders and search. Maybe someone has encountered the same problem and there is a solution that you kindly write in simple language for "non-technicians" :)

    Inessa, thanks for the comment.

    Sometimes I also photograph interesting articles from paper publications and then sign the file as a brief idea for the article. And then these words (actually tags) are easy to find regular search by files. I also call documents and voice recordings and other files.

    Another option is to use a program for tagging an article for quick search, such as Evernote. I also actively use it for taking notes and collaborating on projects.

    Have you tried these methods?

    Advice for those who already have a lot of footage, but somehow started the sorting process - they cope with cataloging quite successfully Picasa program. Sorts by year, event, and person. The photographs themselves remain in place.

    Mikhail, good afternoon!

    I missed your comment :(, I’m correcting myself.

    Creating a structure for storing information in in this example photos, allows you not only to conveniently find them, but also to make a backup copy.

    Not everyone does this (before the first data loss), but those who make a backup copy of selective data (documents, photos, etc.) will appreciate this convenience and the elimination of the loss of forgotten photos.

    Picasa is also convenient to use to understand where your photos are now.

    Greetings! This topic very relevant, thanks for your description.

    I have a question: Do you store photos and videos together or in addition to the!!!Photo folder there is also!!!Video.

    At first I sorted them separately, but as I use them I am more inclined to think that it is more convenient to store photos and videos together. After all, sometimes you take a photo and are asked to shoot a little video of some episode, and this is all for example at some event on the same day, well, because of this, you won’t store photos in the photo folder and video in the video folder.

    How do you look at this??? Am I right?

    Ivan, good afternoon.

    I have not come across programs that will do convenient search from photos in automatic mode. If you have thousands of files on your computer that do not have a description in the name, but only numbers, then the program will not be able to automatically add tags in any way. I have not come across programs for home that can very accurately tag images. Google (Picas) has some experience in identifying faces, yes.

    Sergey, good afternoon!

    I replied to you with a new message: (a week ago, I’m correcting myself.

    Thanks for the question.

    Sergey, good afternoon!

    I have a folder!!!Video, it stores videos made with an HD video camera. Because The size is quite large (almost 1TB, so for backup it is more convenient for the video from the HD camera to be stored separately).

    If the video was filmed on mobile phone together with many photos, then I allow it to be stored along with the photos in the appropriate folder, that year I even used shortcuts for convenience, you can also make hard links to folders (for example, through the FAR file manager). In any case, I have no more than two points of search for information.

    I am in favor of using the most convenient and simple structure for storing information, and if it is more convenient to store photos and videos in one place - why not! Moreover, you take photos and videos with one camera, as I understand it.

    Thanks for the question.

    VERY IMPORTANT! I'm looking for a program that will automatically parse my PC and offer to sort everything into folders. Next, it lays out, adding tags (taken from the creation dates, editing dates, file name, comments in the photo, type and my own, while using the program, etc.). Next is a convenient search, I write “February” and it finds all the photos with the same tag + adds photos from the Internet with the same tag to my photos. THIS program IS in nature. I used her and even remember how angry I was that she pumped up some photos from the Internet for my searches. I was chasing a place then. Now the goal is a stuffed content combine. To have a media file, use files for projects, without creating them and doing everything MANUALLY. Everything described in the article is BAD. That's what a PC is for, to automate everything

    Ivan, good afternoon.

    I have not come across programs that will make it convenient to search through photos automatically. If you have thousands of files on your computer that do not have a description in the name, but only numbers, then the program will not be able to automatically add tags in any way. I have not come across programs for home that can very accurately tag images. Google (Picas) has some experience in identifying faces, yes, but events, places and other details - no.

    I add IPTC tags (keywords) to my photos and use them to find the ones I need. This method works the same way as the option of using a third-party program (for example, Lightroom).

    I don’t do everything manually, I assign tags to many files at once, often it takes about 2-10 minutes per folder. For me, a PC is a tool, but not a means of automation (I have IT experience behind me and am well aware that what is usually automated is order, not chaos).

    If you’ve already used it, you probably remember the program that you were even angry at. Share with us if you find it.

    Perhaps you worked with Picasa (judging by the behavior you described) or Lightroom.

    Hello, now the very pressing issue of transferring photos and videos to the cloud, I have approximately 1TB of total volume, I chose filikr for this because it gives 1TB for free, but unfortunately there is no way to create a structure like you and I have in folders, I have a structure still broken up by the seasons (autumn winter And so on) for example /2015/autumn/trip to the dacha/ and only the final folder remains in the cloud (trip to the dacha) well, there’s just a bunch of folders named

    Gregory, I looked closely at Flickr and storage from Canon, but in the first case I just didn’t like the lack of structure, even though exif has a date and time, but I like to store/backup because it’s convenient for me, not the tool.

    In the second case, there were restrictions on files and then the service became paid.

    I think it is important for reliability to store TWO copies of data in different places, the cloud can be one of them. The main thing is to synchronize your copies to keep them up to date. I'm just cloud solutions I don’t trust it, I and my friends had negative experiences. But I’m considering it as a solution for backup.

    If you already have an account in the mail.ru cloud with 1TB, then I would recommend it. I myself am looking at a Yandex disk, which has 1TB, just like in the cloud from Microsoft for 2000 rubles.

    Yandex disk is more flexible for me than the Microsoft solution, although in the second case you can also get a 1-year license for the MS Office package.

    Thanks for sharing your photo storage system! I have pretty much the same approach.

    And here's what got me interested. Is there some secret meaning to adding 3 exclamation points to the folder name? (!!!Video)

    Alexandra, good afternoon.

    In some article I touched on this point, apparently I forgot to clarify it here.

    I put exclamation marks so that the folder is at the top of all when sorting by name. I always know that the photo folder on drive "D" is the top one. The folder with the image database has two signs (!!) and interesting photos, and one sign (!) has a folder with a database of useful materials.

    This is a long-standing habit dating back to the days of Windows. You can also use other signs if necessary.

    P.S. I found an article that clarified this - http://site/myself/25b5f4b59a06

    Personally, I have developed the following method for myself:

    http://rebus-x.livejournal.com/908.html

    In short, the point is to develop something like “tags” yourself and write the whole thing with delimiters in the file name. It couldn’t be simpler (if you don’t take into account the labor involved in naming files), there are continuous advantages when searching. Goes great with filing.

    I don’t have too many photographs, but I do the same with them. And this was invented to put the database of photo textures in order, with the goal of finding as quickly as possible not only strictly defined ones, but also generally suitable ones for a particular case. Perhaps it will be useful to someone.

    Roman, thank you for sharing your storage option.

    I myself also use IPTC tags for photos, but this is for photos from 2010 only. I use these tags to search by keywords.

    Considering the volume of photos and their storage in raw and jpg (selected) formats, renaming them will take a long time, which is not worth the time spent on it. After all, I can always quickly find the folder I need even in thumbnail view mode (Irfanview or standard means Windows) to find the photo I need.

    For documents, I use proper file names (close to your method) and storage in a structure that is convenient for me.

    Have a great week!

    As an addition, I can offer a simple way to select and search for the most successful (meaningful) photographs. Inside each date and event folder, I create a folder with the conditional index!AAAAA in its name. In this folder I place the most successful photographs from the series and make a selection by transferring them from the main array.

    Subsequently, to automatically select the most successful photos in the photo array, I search using the key!AAAAA and in any explorer I copy the search results to a new folder. New folder As a result, it contains the best photographs and is of no value, since the sources are stored in the array. For different search criteria, you can create folders with different conditional indexes in the names, for example, !BBBBB !SSSSS and so on. The root of the archive with photographs contains a short text document with comments regarding the values ​​of the indices. Something like that. In the end I get freedom from different programs-cataloguers, which change over the years, as well as freedom from the databases of different programs, the logic of which cannot always be understood and accepted.

An unbridled desire to photograph anything and everything is typical of any owner of a digital camera. Therefore, on the computers of the vast majority of users (some of them modern users doesn’t take photographs?) quite quickly an unimaginable number of pictures accumulate, which are often located in randomly named folders and have nothing meaningful names. Finding the right photo in such gigabyte photo jungles is quite difficult, because it is unrealistic to look through the entire photo archive every time. As a result, unique photographs that captured some memorable moments of life will most likely be lost among a host of other images.
At the same time, provide quick and convenient access to specific photographs not that difficult. To do this, you will need to think carefully about the system for storing images in your photo archive and involve specialized software tools.

Storing pictures on a computer

The first step is to clearly understand that storing all your pictures in a digital camera is not the most convenient and, of course, not the most reliable way. It is better to download photos to your computer after each photo shoot, and do this as soon as possible - while the memories of the events are still fresh in your memory. After this, it is wise to immediately get rid of bad shots - blurry photos, dimly lit photos, out of focus photos, etc. Of course, some of them can be improved by certain software tools, but if the same images are available best quality It’s clearly not worth spending time correcting shooting defects.

Of course, when importing photos to your computer, it is better to dump them not into randomly created folders - otherwise, in the future you will spend a lot of time searching for the necessary pictures. It is necessary to develop some kind of hierarchical image storage system (taking into account the nuances possible search), and then save the pictures in accordance with your own system of rules.

There are many options for organizing image storage in a photo archive. Most often, when distributing pictures into folders, they are guided by the calendar-geographical principle (in this case, the date and place appear in the folder name - for example, 2011_05_27_Crete) or they divide the pictures into folders, taking into account the events at which they were taken (for example, 2011_07_31_Birthday) - Fig. . 1. You can also take into account the subject of the pictures (landscapes, animals, flowers, etc.), etc. in the system. In general, each user will have his own version of the hierarchy in the photo archive, which depends on the significance of certain criteria for him.

Rice. 1. Possible option
photo archive folder structures

In addition, it may be useful for searching if you tag photographs with keywords (family, vacation, corporate event, etc.), thereby combining them into virtual thematic collections. This will allow you to quickly identify (by filtering or otherwise - depending on what software tool will be used to solve this problem) images taking into account the keywords of interest. It's quicker to assign such keywords while importing images from the camera, although you can do this later, after saving the photos to disk. Unfortunately, in any case, the initial process of assigning keywords will require some time and effort, although modern software allows you to assign keywords to groups of photos at once, which significantly speeds up the process. In addition, you need to approach the assignment of keywords thoughtfully - with an eye to the expected needs and, relying on the software tools that will be used to manage the photo archive.

As for file names, not everything is clear here. It is advisable to use descriptive file names that can be used to easily identify what kind of image it is, since it is completely unrealistic to guess from the view name DSC_0705 that this is, say, a photo from a family vacation in Thailand. Therefore, it is better to rename pictures using a template. The type of template is determined by the nuances of the search. It seems to us preferable to include the date (possibly only the year and month) and frame number in the image name - for example, 2011-09-05_0015.jpg or 2011-09_0015.jpg (15th frame, taken on September 5, 2011 or in September 2011 ) - rice. 2. It is also possible to add the name of a place or event to the name of the photo - a variant of the name of a specific photo from the group in this case may look like: Thailand_2011-09_0015.jpg. Such renaming should be carried out in batch mode (manually renaming hundreds and thousands of files is completely unrealistic) - it is better during the process of importing files or immediately after loading them into a photo archive.

Rice. 2. Batch renaming files

When developing a hierarchical division of photographs, you should be guided by two important principles. Firstly, if possible, place photographs of the same type together - this will simplify orientation in the future. Secondly, each image must be added to the archive in a single copy, otherwise the volume of the archive will noticeably increase, and difficulties will also arise if it is necessary to edit images that have duplicates. It should also be noted that it is more convenient (both in terms of orientation and from the point of view of the intended backup) to store your photo archive on a separate disk or in its separate section (ideally on a separate external drive), where no other information will be saved.

Photo management

Manage photo archive after setup hierarchical system You can store images on disk using a variety of software tools. The simplest and most accessible way is to use Windows 7 libraries. Libraries, in essence, are virtual folders, which combine files regardless of their physical location. This makes it easier to find, use, and organize files on your computer or network. By default, libraries are designed for more effective management documents, music, pictures and videos, although you can use them to organize other files if you wish. Browsing files in libraries is done in the same way as in regular folders.

In the case of working with your own photo archive, it makes sense to create a library specially designed for this, assign it an appropriate name (for example, “Photo Archive”), and then directly from Windows Explorer indicate to Windows the range of folders that the new library will contain (Fig. 3). It is worth noting that the specified folders with photos can be stored on various media (for example, on the hard drive of a desktop PC and an external hard drive), but, nevertheless, after placing them in the library it will be possible viewing corresponding images in one window. And this is not the only convenience - it will also be possible to organize files by properties (for example, by date, type, etc.), sort and group them according to a number of parameters, including keywords (Fig. 4).

Rice. 3. Defining a range of folders for the created library in Windows 7

Rice. 4. Grouping images based on keywords through libraries
Windows 7

You can go the other way - use the graphics viewer you like, which has minimal functionality for organizing photo collections - as a rule, support for categories, tags and ratings (similar capabilities are provided in many solutions of this kind). Which solution to choose is a matter of taste and wallet, since on the market you can find both recognized commercial products, and quite worthy alternative free applications. As an example, let’s name one that is well known to most users paid program ACDSee and the increasingly popular free cross-platform viewer XnView. Both of these software products are designed for viewing, organizing and simply editing images.

Working with images in these solutions is easy and convenient, since the developers have provided different options for viewing images and included simple tools for performing basic operations editing, thought through the functionality for convenient exchange pictures, etc. As for organizing a photo archive and getting quick access to images of interest, the possibilities here, of course, are more impressive than in the libraries of Windows 7 (that’s why there is specialized software!). Thus, rating images allows you to assign each image a certain value in terms of its value (for example, quality), thanks to which in the future it will be possible to quickly find the most popular original images. The use of color marks also simplifies organization - with such marks, for example, you can mark images at different stages of the workflow (in some colors - original images, in others - images after correction, in others - images selected for printing, etc.) - Fig. . 5. No less convenient is the use of categories, thanks to which you can instantly find images belonging to a specific category or even several at once (Fig. 6).

Rice. 5. Use custom color markers to highlight photos
in ACDSee

Rice. 6. Quickly access images from two categories at once in XnView

As a rule, even more convenient option Photo archive management is provided by photo organizers, which are designed to organize and sort digital photographs. Therefore, it is not surprising that these products have more advanced capabilities for organizing photo collections and quickly searching for images in them. There are many similar solutions on the market. Some of them (such as Apple Aperture, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, ACDSee Pro Photo Manager, etc.) are quite expensive, difficult to learn and aimed at professional photographers. At the same time, home users also have nothing to complain about - they have at their disposal numerous compact and easy-to-learn applications that are affordable or even free. Examples of such programs include: Zoner Photo Studio, PicaJet and Picasa.

Cataloging pictures using photo organizers is as easy as shelling pears - just place each photo immediately in its designated logical catalog category (Fig. 7) or first in shared storage, and then assign categories to the images (often with the ability to highlight different categories with icons), ratings and tags, and also assign keywords (this will determine whether the images belong to specific logical groups). Note that you can assign keywords to all selected images at once and not just one keyword at a time (Fig. 8) - this significantly reduces the complexity of this operation.

Rice. 7. Adding files from disk to the PicaJet category

Rice. 8. Assigning keywords in Zoner Photo Studio

All this will allow you to quickly find the photos you need in the future by searching, filtering, sorting and grouping. It is especially worth noting the ability to take into account keywords when searching and filtering, which makes it possible to possible implementation complex search queries(taking into account not only one, but also several keywords) - fig. 9. In particular, by manipulating keywords, you can special effort find in the depths hard drives all photographs with a sunset on the river, a son on a bicycle, temples during restoration, blossoming apple trees, etc., even if you took photographs of such objects along the way, many times and at different times.

Rice. 9. Quick search based on keywords in Zoner Photo Studio

Briefly about the products

ACDSee 14.3

Developer: ACD Systems

Distribution size: 71.8 MB

Work under control: Windows XP(SP2)/Vista/7

Distribution method: shareware (30-day demo - http://www.acdsee.com/en/free-trials)

Price:$29.99

ACDSee is a world-famous graphics viewer (Fig. 10), aimed at both professionals and home users. Includes tools for quickly and conveniently viewing files in a wide variety of graphic formats, as well as audio and video files and archives. In addition to viewing graphics, this solution can be used for editing and cataloging images, batch processing files, duplicate search, online image sharing, etc.

Rice. 10. Working with images in ACDSee

Cataloging in ACDSee is based on the use of categories, ratings and multi-colored labels. Categories are created manually (there is a predefined list of base categories) and can be nested; For better orientation, categories are highlighted with different icons. The ratings in this program are basic, but the labels can be edited, which allows you to separate images into logical groups in accordance with personal tasks. There is support for keywords and geotags, it is possible to edit EXIF ​​and IPTC data. Imported into categories are images from the most different devices: hard drive, CDs, digital cameras, flash drives, scanners, etc. Batch renaming of files is supported. With one click, you can send files selected from different places according to some principle to the so-called Image Basket for further editing or sharing. When viewing, images are displayed as thumbnails, in full screen or as a slideshow; If necessary, individual fragments of the image can be easily viewed in enlarged form using a magnifying glass. Get more quick access It's easy to get to the photos you need using sorting, grouping, and filtering based on image size, date, rating, tags, EXIF ​​data, categories, and keywords.

The editing panel built into the program, in addition to supporting basic operations (rotation, cropping, etc.), will help correct the image exposure, adjust levels and curves, color correction, get rid of red-eye and noise, and also apply standard filters to the image. These operations can be performed not only on single images, but also on several images at once in batch mode. Tools are provided for comparing images and converting them to other raster formats. In addition, ACDSee allows you to burn pictures to CD/DVDs, combine them into slideshows, PDF files and web albums, and easily share images by uploading them to social networks, FTP servers, etc.

Zoner Photo Studio 14

Developer: Zoner Software

Sizedistribution: Zoner Photo Studio Free- 26.7 MB; Zoner Photo Studio Pro- 87.7 MB

Work under control: Windows XP(SP2)/Vista/7

Distribution method: Zoner Photo Studio Free - freeware; two other editions - shareware, 30-day demo version (http://www.zoner.com/ww-en/download-free-photo-program)

Price: Zoner Photo Studio Home - $34.99, Zoner Photo Studio Pro - $69.99, Zoner Photo Studio Free - Free

Zoner Photo Studio is a recent product on the market, but already a well-proven program for managing and editing photographs and organizing shared access to them (Fig. 11). The capabilities of this solution are impressive; many functions were implemented by developers with an eye on professional products, in particular Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. The program is presented in three editions: free Zoner Photo Studio Free and two commercial ones - Zoner Photo Studio Home and Zoner Photo Studio Pro. The capabilities of the free edition are limited to basic functionality. In addition, this edition does not have a 64-bit version and does not support GPU acceleration or dual-monitor operation.

Rice. 11. Organizing a photo collection in Zoner Photo Studio

Zoner Photo Studio allows you to create a photo archive in the form of a set of albums based on an existing folder structure or manually. Albums have an unlimited nesting level, and the easiest way to create them is by dragging the corresponding folders with pictures from the Explorer window onto the “Albums” folder of the program navigator. You can replenish your photo archive directly from devices (from camera memory cards, scanners, etc.), as well as by obtaining images from websites, PDF files, etc. When viewing images, they are displayed in the form of icons or thumbnails; to speed up access to the images of interest, it is easy to use sorting, built-in search and filtering. When filtering and searching, EXIF ​​data, keywords, service text information(title, description, etc.), as well as ratings, tags and GPS coordinates (the latter are entered manually or read from Google maps). Possibility provided batch renaming files according to the template.

The editing capabilities are also impressive and will interest both beginners and advanced users. The former may limit themselves basic functions(rotation, cropping, alignment, automatic image enhancement), while the latter will be interested in using advanced editing functions such as level adjustments, color correction, exposure improvement, noise reduction, etc. Any changes can be applied not only to one, but also to several images at once in batch mode. There is also functionality for converting images from RAW formats to raster formats and editing EXIF ​​data. It's easy to combine your favorite photos into a PDF slideshow or convert them into a postcard, and even create 3D and HDR images. As for publishing, it is worth noting the creation of web galleries, recording DVD presentations, printing (from templates and photo calendars), sending by email, as well as uploading to Facebook, Flickr and Picasa web albums.

PicaJet 2.6

Developer: Picajet.com

Distribution size: PicaJet FX - 5.91 MB; PicaJet Free - 4.81 MB

Work under control: Windows 2000/2003/XP/Vista/7

Distribution method: PicaJet Free - freeware; PicaJet FX - shareware, 15-day demo version (http://www.picajet.com/ru/index.php?page=download)

Price: PicaJet FX - 490 rub.

PicaJet is a convenient and very easy-to-use program for cataloging image collections (Fig. 12). It is presented in two editions: free PicaJet Free and commercial PicaJet FX. The free edition includes only a basic set of functions - in particular, the creation of categories is not provided, the sorting and search capabilities are more than limited, etc., so we do not recommend choosing PicaJet Free to manage large and complex archives. The commercial edition has everything you need for effective organization photo archives set of functions, and it may well suit most home users.

Rice. 12. Managing your photo collection in PicaJet

To organize a photo archive, PicaJet uses categories that are created automatically when adding images based on the existing folder structure and/or based on IPTC data, or manually. The nesting level of categories is not limited. You can add pictures to the collection from a digital camera, scanner, webcam, CD/DVD discs and hard drive folders. To speed up the process of including images in the photo archive, you can use hot keys; You can also quickly import images from Explorer by dragging and dropping. In order to better identify categories, they can be assigned a variety of icons. Categories are assigned during import or manually by simply dragging a group of images onto a category. There is functionality for batch renaming of selected files based on templates. If necessary, it is easy to add a description and/or rating to the selected images. Photos can be viewed with grouping and/or sorting by date, rating, import time, etc.; It is possible to display pictures when viewing them as a slideshow.

The editing plan includes operations such as cropping and rotation, red-eye removal, sharpness adjustment, auto-correction, etc. Supports quick correction of several images with one click, as well as resizing them and converting them to another graphic format"on the fly". You can print photos in popular formats (including 9x13, 13x18, 10x15), as well as edit metadata (EXIF and IPTC). As for sharing, it is worth noting the presence of functionality for creating photo galleries for publication on a website, burning collections of photos on CDs, sending photos to a mobile phone, as well as optimizing photos for sending them by e-mail.

Picasa 3.9

Developer: Google

Distribution size: 14.5 MB

Work under control: Windows XP/Vista/7

Distribution method: freeware (http://dl.google.com/picasa/picasa39-setup.exe)

Price: for free

Picasa is a popular tool for organizing, viewing and easily editing photos (Fig. 13), which has gained fame in no small part due to its close integration with Picasa web albums. Such integration expands the possibilities of sharing pictures with other users, and this is a definite plus. And the functionality of this program as a whole is at the level. However, the way the developers implemented images is not very successful, in our opinion. In addition, the application is quite resource-intensive and comes with a very mediocre help system.

Rice. 13. Organizing a photo archive in Picasa

Picasa uses albums to catalog images; nested albums cannot be created. Albums are filled manually, by sorting out images found after scanning or importing images, which takes a lot of time from the user. Scanning hard drives starts when you first start the program, and by default all drives are scanned. hard drives computer, which is quite long - better this process interrupt, manually adjust the list of scanned directories through the folder manager and start scanning again. Photos from hard drives are added to photo collections automatically as scanning progresses, in addition, you can add pictures manually by importing images from cameras, CDs, memory cards, scanners, webcams, etc. In addition to albums, Picasa has another cataloging tool - the People collection. With its help, photographs are cataloged according to the people depicted on them with the connection of facial recognition technology. Created this collection in semi-automatic mode - faces in all photographs are automatically recognized, and the user then needs to indicate the persons of interest in the photographs to create albums corresponding to them. When viewing, images are displayed in normal mode or as a slideshow, depending on given option sorting (by name, date, etc.). To speed up access to the photos you need, you can mark your favorite photos using tags, and also use tags - they resemble keywords and allow you to later easily find photos through the built-in search. You can also specify geographic data to link images to a Google Earth map.

Built-in editing tools allow you to resize photos, rotate them, crop them, and also perform a number of image correction operations (red-eye removal, straightening, adjusting contrast and color balance, etc.). In addition, it is possible to rename multiple photos and batch editing, as well as online image editing using the Picnik.com service. There is functionality for printing photos in basic formats, as well as editing EXIF ​​data. If you want, it's easy to create a photo collage from selected photos, burn the photos to a CD, create a video by combining photos into a slideshow, or publish them on Blogger. You can also share your albums with others after you add them to Picasa Web Albums.

XnView 1.99.1

Developer: Pierre E Gougelet

Distribution size: 4.36 MB

Work under control: Windows 95/98/NT/2000/ME/XP/Vista/7; There are versions for Mac OS X and Linux

Distribution method: freeware (http://www.xnview.com/en/download.html)

Price: free (for private, non-commercial or educational use)

XnView is a free cross-platform viewer of images and other multimedia files (Fig. 14) with support for very large quantity formats (currently more than 500). The program allows you to easily view, process and convert image files, and is also equipped with a number of additional functions, including the availability of simple tools for organizing photo collections.

Rice. 14. Working with a collection of images in XnView

Photo archive management in XnView is based on the use of categories, the nesting of which is unlimited. Assigning categories to images is done manually and is possible for all selected or tagged files at once. You can add pictures to the photo archive from disk, as well as from scanners and digital cameras. In addition to supporting categories, you can assign ratings, color tags, and labels to make it easier to navigate among multiple images. When viewing photos, you are allowed to enable sorting by date, rating, format, width/height, orientation, description, comment, etc.; You can view selected pictures in slideshow mode. The program also includes a built-in search taking into account basic image parameters, including EXIF ​​and IPTC data. It is possible to batch convert and batch rename files.

The utility is equipped with a basic set of functions for editing images (including reducing size, rotating, cropping), allows you to adjust brightness, contrast, gamma and color balance, and has tools for automatic settings levels, eliminating red-eye, applying simple filters and effects, etc. Many operations can be applied to a group of images at once in batch mode. IPTC data can be edited. If necessary, the XnView utility can also be used to compare images, print files, create panoramic images, take screenshots, generate multi-page files and web pages, and a number of other actions.

Conclusion

Everyone’s photo archives are different, as are the requirements for working with them, but for all users, searching for the necessary images in the archive takes a lot of time. It can be dramatically accelerated only by the correct organization of a photo collection, which implies a well-thought-out system of catalogs in the archive and the use of specialized software tools.

Each user chooses the hierarchical system himself, based on the subject of the images and his own priorities - the main thing here is that you are comfortable. As for the software tools, it all depends on the user’s requirements in terms of cataloging and the complexity of the intended search. There will be enough opportunities for some Windows libraries 7 or simple free viewer, others will prefer more functional paid solutions: popular program to view ACDSee or one of the reviewed photo organizers, among which we found the Zoner Photo Studio program to be the most convenient for cataloging.



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