The more and more I take pictures the harder it gets to organize my pictures. All my pictures are taken in RAW format, then converted over to JPEG.

My question to you is, how do you manage your files? Do you keep both RAW and JPEG's of the SAME picture. Do you keep them in folders by date.. or by categories??? Do you keep the RAW and JPEG's the same folders or separate them??

Thanks!

 

Assuming you are running Vista, why don't you keep your RAW's and JPEG's in the same folder and just group them by file type? Just Right Click > Group By > Type... This will separate them for you, but keep them in the same folder.

 

F vista

 

Aperture FTW

 

I always shoot RAW + basic jpeg (for emailing to people) and group them side by side right next to eachother.

 

I use Photoshop Elements 6. It imports them for me and puts them into any of a number of different folder name formats. I take everything in jpeg and raw simultaneously.

If I use Windows Explorer to view them I do what Hoods suggested to sort them. And I use Vista...not having any issues with it at all. Actually, I am really liking it as it was much easier to get my two monitors to play nice with it. No trouble at all actually, just plugged them in, designated one as the primary, set the resolution on it, and the same for the other. 22" for photo stuff, 17" for email and iTunes and that sort of thing.

I don't have any RAW stuff here at work to try it with, but I am sure you could sort by file type in XP just as easily as Vista. No idea how you would manage it on a Mac.

 

I usually keep all my Raw's and JPG's together. But when I edit the Raw's to JPG's, I keep the JPG's on my computer and put everything else on an external harddrive.

 

/2008/autoeventpictures/nameanddateofevent/originals (RAW only)
/2008/autoeventpictures/nameanddateofevent/highres (JPG converted from RAW)
/2008/autoeventpictures/nameanddateofevent/lowres

I do this for each event, keeping three folders: 1) RAW, 2) high res JPG, 3) low res JPG

I move everything to an external hard drive every 4 weeks.

 

Have fun making three different folders for the same picture then.

 

adobe bridge

 

I use an external hard drive just for pictures. I group them by categories. For example:

Lets say a 350z. It will go in my car folder, sub folder of 350z's. If it was a meet then I make a folder for meets then sub folder of dates. I keep my RAW and JPEGs.