You raise some interesting questions, bobb...particularly about
finding specific pics several years later. That forces me to
re-evaluate how I'm doin it.
First, I use XP's scanner and camera wizard, whenever possible, to
transfer from camera to pc...it makes it a little easier to rename
pics during the transfer process, especially when there a pics on the
camera from several different subjects...high school dance, scenery,
family get-together as an example.
Second, I create a series of folders by the year;
\\Pictures
\2007
\2008
And then descriptive folder names underneath that...
\2008-01 (Jan)-27 Snowboarding
\2008-02 (Feb)-9 HS Musical on Ice
Because we visit WDW so often, I have a seperate folder for that,
under...
\\Pictures\Walt Disneyworld
... and again, divide them by the year/trip
\\Pictures\Walt Disneyworld\WDW-2004
\\Pictures\Walt Disneyworld\WDW-2006 VIDEO CLIPS
I also created a "Temp" folder under \\Pictures. I'll copy pics into
the temp folder for editing. Usually I just do some cropping for the
Mrs. scrapbooking so they don't need to be saved after there edited
and I just delete them. (well, ok...there's currently 500+mb of pics
in my temp folder but, I know it's no biggie if they disappear.)
A couple things that are helpful,
DELETE, DELETE, DELETE!
...as soon as posible after transfering them to the pc, get rid of the
crappy pictures. you know, the pics of your thumb, totally black pics,
totally outa focus pics, and the like. (I still stumble upon too many
of these taking up lotsa hard drive space.)
http://rename.lupasfreeware.org/
a free, simple, straight forward file renameing program. Takes 30
seconds to figure out how to rename 100 pictures at once...very easy.
I have thousands of pics with names like HPIM6041.JPG and IMG_1066.JPG
and it drives me nuts. Anyway, your point about finding certain pics
years later is a good one. Maybe giving the pics very descriptive
names, and then searching for pics by name, is the only real world way
to find them later...I'm VERY open for suggestions/ideas on that part
myself. (The only other thing I can think of is "Thumbnail View" and a
really, REALLY big monitor! or, that connector thingy on the back of
our head..you know, from the movie "Matrix"? That'd be cool!)
>For those that travel a lot and take pix/videos on vacation and store them
>on your PC ... have you found one way that works better than another ?
>Make travel folders by ... Location ? Time ? ( FLA - 2007 then month ?)
>
>I find that WHILE on vacation, I'm dumping from camera into one folder per
>day
>Day 1 - Miami Tour , Day 2 - Fishing
>Day 3 - Beach etc , and just dump all pix/videos into that folder and
>then erase the stick.
>I rename/edit them later ( on a rainy day of the trip or when I get home).
>When I get home I copy all of it to my desktop PC ( lots of disk space).
>
>Sometimes I'm returning to one location ( say FLA) so want to separate by
>year rather than dump into one big FLA folder. After a few trips in the
>past few months I'm finding that the "Library" disk on my desktop PC was
>getting rather full and just did a search for video thinking maybe I had a
>few copies of travel videos and found I had sometimes a few copies of same
>file ( the camera dump in one folder and the "perhaps edited" "finished
>product" in another for example). I was able to delete a lot of them and
>when I saw the folders I can see why I created each folder at the time,
>but now wondering what is best way ??
>
>When copying to desktop I was filing by time frame ( Travel - Location -
>Yr - Month etc) in a folder such as
>Travel - FLA- Keys - 2007 ( or WDW or Fishing) etc and I'm thinking ...
>in a few years I'll be trying to find a file and not know which trip it
>was from.
>So file them by
>Location ? Then Video OR pictures ? Time ?
>Or dump all video/pix into one folder by location then subfolder ?
>Travel - Fla- WDW -
>Travel - Fla- WDW - 2007
>Travel - Fla- Fishing
>Travel - Fla- Fishing -2007 - Pictures
>Travel - Fla- Fishing -2007 - Video
>or
>Travel 2007 - FLA .... and a few years from now I'll have to open each
>folder to find a particular picture ?
>OR
>I'll find them and not know which trip ( year) it happened ( - who cares ?
>you say - maybe you're right - that's what I'm asking for those that HAVE
>done this already)
>I've got a few extra 300gb drives that I'm gonna be using soon but , for
>now, have alot of disk space to move/organize/put back what I've got and
>get organized.
>
>Thanks,
>Bobb
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