PSE 6 Organizing Tips/Workflow Advice?

[Ted]

Hello all,

I've recently installed PSE 6 and discovered I have over 6000 images that were imported into the organizer! Yikes! :)

I know I won't be able to album/tag all of these in one sitting, so I am asking for some advice on the best way to do this.

I don't mind doing a group at a time... but my question is this:

If I do some this evening and decide to take a break and do some more tomorrow, how will I best know which images are already organized/tagged? Or even IS there a best way to know that?

I reckon I could create a tag "Organized" and then tag each photo with it... and then simply look for photos which do NOT have that tag... but I thought it wouldn't hurt asking for you advice.

Also, is there ever a danger of "over-organizing"? For example, if I take a photo of my car, I don't want to tag it with "Car", "Highlander", "Toyota", "Blue", etc.

I suppose that last question will be best answered: It all depends on what I want... :)

If you have any other advice for FIRST-time organizing, I'd appreciate it.

Also, now that I have PSE 6, do I want to use IT for importing from my camera, instead of Windows?

And finally, if I rename photos in PSE 6, does it change the file name, or simply the image in the photo browser?

I appreciate your help!
Ted

[jhzich]

Ted,

In order for the tagging process to be enjoyable, instead of a chore, you should tackle it in whatever way keeps it enjoyable for you. In terms of organizing the effort, your proposal to set up a tag "organized" is a good idea...although I think I would take the opposite approach and tag EVERYTHING with "disorganized"--that way with a single click you'll get all those photos still needing attention.

Over-organizing is certainly possible, but if you start simple, you can always come back and add additional tags and categories.

In terms of importing from your camera, yes, have PSE open and File>Get Photos... Using that process, you can still (and should still) direct photographs into specific directories/folders on your hard drive so you know where they are. If you care, I organize photos on my hard drive by year and by month--the rest of my organizing is done within PSE with tagging.

If you rename images in PSE, it changes the name on the hard drive (a good thing). If you don't want that to be the case, then use captions instead which stay with PSE and don't affect the image on your hard drive. A really neat thing here is if you have a bunch of photos in your organizer from a particular shoot which are named img001, img002, etc, or some similarly useless convention, you can change the names all that the same time:

1) In the organizer, select all the images to change (usually click on the first image in the shoot's series and then shift-click the last one)
2) File>Rename... will bring up the dialog box to prompt for a new name
3) Once executed, your images will now have new names, like Chucks Wedding_001, Chucks Wedding_002, Chucks Wedding_003, etc...

This is just my advice--it free and can be kept or tossed at your discretion.

[Ted]

Hi Jon,

Thanks very much for the advice. I like your idea about the "disorganized" tag... I guess then I would just have to right-click and REMOVE that tag once it's organized, yes?

I certainly do NOT look forward to organizing over 6000 images - but I know I'll be grateful once it's done.

Now... a follow-up question:

Once I FINALLY get done with the arduous task (say, late 2009!) is there a way to SAVE and/or BACKUP the catalog on an external drive so that, God forbid, I have computer problems...I do NOT have to do this all over again! :)

[jhzich]

Yes, remove the "disorganized" tag when done--and you can have multiple images selected when you do this.

And yes...File>Backup Catalog...


Hi Jon,

Thanks very much for the advice. I like your idea about the "disorganized" tag... I guess then I would just have to right-click and REMOVE that tag once it's organized, yes?

I certainly do NOT look forward to organizing over 6000 images - but I know I'll be grateful once it's done.

Now... a follow-up question:

Once I FINALLY get done with the arduous task (say, late 2009!) is there a way to SAVE and/or BACKUP the catalog on an external drive so that, God forbid, I have computer problems...I do NOT have to do this all over again! :)

[dj_paige]

I don't really see a need for Organized or Disorganized tags.

When you add a tag to a photo, there should be a little icon that appears underneath the photo thumbnail indicating the type of tag applied. No icons appear if you haven't added a tag to that photo. To see the icon, you may need to turn on the showing of details in your Organizer. I could tell you how to do that in PSE5, but you said PSE6, so you will need a PSE6 person to chime in (or you could probably figure it out yourself).

The easiest way to add tags is to select click/ctrl-click or click/shift-click all the photos that are going to receive a specific tag, and then apply the tag. Do it once, it applies to all selected photos. I'll bet you get through the 6000 tags faster than you thought. However, it also helps to add meaningful captions as well. That will take longer than tagging.

While I don't think there is a serious danger of over-organizing, I do agree with jhzich that its perfectly normal to come back later and add or remove or otherwise change your tags. For example, three months from now, you may decide that things aren't organized as well as possible, you need more detail.

Since you have a big task (tagging and captioning 6000 photos), let me recommend that you not include renaming the photos in this task. First of all, it only doubles the amount of work, and secondly, it is my very strong opinion that putting your effort into properly tagging and captioning your photos gives you everything you need. There is no additional advantage to add descriptive names to your photos. Descriptive photo names will be redundant (and as I said, twice the work). If you want a picture of your car when you visited Buffalo, you click the Toyota tag, you click the Buffalo tag, and finding your photo is very easy. Try doing that in Windows ... not easily doable. Searching your tags and captions in Organizer is fast and easy.

[Ted]

Hi Paige,

You bring up excellent points about renaming my pictures. I agree. I won't even THINK about that (if ever) until I finish with the tagging and categories.

Question for anybody reading:

How useful are albums? Do you all use them?

I ask because I started making them but wondered why. It seems that if I want pictures of my nephew, I would just click the tag for my nephew. Why would I create an album?

I can see albums being useful to make projects, etc... but not for organization.

Or am I not seeing the true value of them?

Thanks for any future tips!
Ted

[dj_paige]

You bring up excellent points about renaming my pictures. I agree. I won't even THINK about that (if ever) until I finish with the tagging and categories.

I think you missed my point. I don't see any value to renaming your photos if you have good captions and tags. As in ... don't think about it, even when you finish tagging.

How useful are albums? Do you all use them?

Albums are usually made for projects, sometimes where you want to control the order of your photos. If you don't need to select a group of photos for a project, tags will do a better job.