Help with scanning and organizing old photos

[domer77]

I just purchased Photoshop Elements 6.0. I will eventually use it for digital phototography and image editing. But, my immediate challenge is scanning and organizing 5 boxes containing about 2 cubic feet each of old photos going back to ~1915. As you can see this is a long term project and I need to have a plan mapped out for organization in advance.

Does anyone know of a tutorial or tutorials, or a book that will give me advice and walk me through this. I'm technically savvy but photo ignorant. So I can get through all the computer hardware, drives, networking, backup, storage issues OK. What I need in particular is advice and tradeoffs on file directory structure. Also what key items to tag to photos immediately after scanning for easier referencing later. Pitfalls and tradeoffs.

I can move on to the editing, restoring, scrapbooking, etc. later. What I really need help with is initial organization so I don't end up with a terabit of digital goo. ;)

I didn't subscribe but would if I knew this information was in the subscriber courses. It would be useful to have a list of courses contained in the subsriber area if anyone has this.

Any advice is appreciated. Thanks.

[GaryK]

Domer

I wouldn't say there is anything in particular to help your plight in th sub area. At least as far as scanning is concerned.
Later, once you get into the editing, then for sure subscribe.

I like www.scantips.com (http://www.scantips.com) for scanning info.

I can't recall if there is organizing ideas there or not.

The problem with organizing is, everybody has a way that works for them and is not quite right for the next person.:)

The questions for tagging are
Do you want to tag by date taken (even if it is a guess)
Do you want to tag by location/Family/people/objects
Lots of options:eek:
There is no reason why you can't apply all the tags to the same photo.
So you could tag "Aunt Mary" and "Uncle Bob" at the "Cottage" water skiing "sports"
Then later you can sort by any of these tags.

Like I said so may options and hard to apply a system that is right for all.;)

[domer77]

Thanks Gary. The scantips link was extremely useful.

I figured the organization question was going to be very user preference dependent but I was hoping somebody out there who has done this before could give me their opinion FWIW.

Right now the images I have downloaded from a digital camera purchased 3 years ago is simply in the following structure

c:\......\My Pictures\mm-dd-yyyy\(the images)

So it is pretty flat in structure with the only structure being the date the pictures were taken. I'll have to go through all of these photos and tag them to start getting organized.

The real question in my mind is the images I'll be scanning in which is the vast majority of what I need to organize. Should I simply estimate the date, or in many cases years or even decades and put them in an equally flat directory structure? Or, is there something in Photoshop that will benefit me later on if I go to a more hierarchical structure on the initial scan?

Maybe there isn't but if there is I would appreciate any insight from an experienced user.

Thanks.

[dbmazz]

I have been scanning and organizing my photographs of 60 some years (plus photos of my mother's) for the past three years. I had many false starts about how to organize. One big problem was the photographs were not in chronological order. One might have been taken in 1936 and the next in 2005. I finally decided to identify each photograph in numerical order as I scanned it. I also decided to identify in the file name the source of the scan. That is was it a scan from a negative, from a print, from a transparency or from a digital camera. My file naming system looks like this:
For a scan from a negative: mxxxxxx_n_org.tif
For a scan from a print: mxxxxxx_p_org.tif
For a scan from a transparency (slide): mxxxxxx_s_org.tif
For a photo from a digital camera: mxxxxxx_d_org.tif (or jpg)

This naming system has worked for me for over 14,000 scans and digital photos.

My folder organization is based on the number of scans that will fit on a DVD. I started numbering the first DVD as Org_0001 and the second as Org_0002. The number of images or files on each DVD would vary depending upon the size of the scan. I printed a contact sheet for each DVD and file the sheet in a notebook.

I use Extensis Portfolio for cataloging my photographs. Extensis uses keywording and user fields to annotate each photograph for searches. I am considering converting to Adobe Lightroom for cataloging and maintaining my photographs. At this time Lightroom's database structure is not as flexible as is Extensis Portfolio.

I have used two books to learn about scanning. One is 'Scanning Negatives and Slides' by Sascha Steinhoff. The other is 'Mastering Digital Scanning' by David D Busch. They both contain good tips and ideas for scanning and organizing you photograph.

Have fun scanning.

[GaryK]

Domer

I like to have my stuff organized as well (although I'm not that organized).

The thing with the Organizer in Elements is you really don't NEED to have a structure. It just finds all your hard drive photos and you just tag them.
Who cares where they are the organizer knows.:)

That being said, I like to keep all mine together in the same folder structure type thing, but more for backing up purposes than any other reason.

I don't think I will ever "trust" a program to keep my junk together but that is the point of the organizer.:rolleyes:

[domer77]

Thank you dbmazz and Gary. Being an anal engineer I may be overthinking this. I appreciate both your tips.