Naming of Digital Photo's

[ricebrianrice]

I love taking pictures with my digital camera, but I am having problems coming up with a naming convention for all my photos.

How do some of you guys name your photos, and organize them so you can find them at a later time?

I've found that using the engine number/train number worked nice to start, but after have 20 pictures of the same engine/train it gets old trying to come up with a unique name every time.

Any help?
Brian

[Conrail4evr]

I always just sort them by date. You could always sort it by railroad, then locomotive model, then do something like "number-location-date.jpg".

[FiatFan]

I keep mine in separate folders named for a particular project or photo session.

Tom

[dj_paige]

I use Photoshop Elements, and I don't worry about renaming the files.

Once the image file is imported into Photoshop Elements, you assign a "tag" to the file. This tag can be anything you want. Mine are things like: CSX, NS, BNSF, Livonia-Avon-Lakeville, etc. You can also assign a location to the photos, indicating where the photo was taken. You can add a caption or note to each photo or many photos simultaneously, so the photo is identified as CSX 708. Its easy to "tag" all of your day's photos with a few simple mouse operations. Its easy to assign a location to all of the photos from that location with a few simple mouse operations.

And then years later, when you want to see your BNSF photos, you click on the BNSF tag. If you want to see all of your photos at Wayneport, NY, you open the map, scroll over to Wayneport, NY, and there are all of your photos. Want to find all of your photos with caption or note CSX 708, just do a find.

Works great for me.

[W.E.Coyote]

I have mine sorted by camera image number, in folders of each particular outing. Further, after the number I add the units, train # and location. Some filenames tend to get a tad big but keeping it brief helps. If I take two shots of the same train, one might be

05556 - CP5855 NREX5431 #135 North Toronto
05557 - CP5855 NREX5431 #135 North Toronto

For older photos I used to add the date, but EXIF data on digital photos can provide the time and date for each individual shot. As well, I put a short description and date on each photo outings' file folder.

If I edit something, I save it as another copy and give it a set prefex such as b for crop, d for desaturated, e for edit, etc. Thus:

05558 - CP5822 CP9818 CP5398 #434 Weston Rd crossing
05558b - CP5822 CP9818 CP5398 #434 Weston Rd crossing

To find something, I just go in Windows search and type "CP5855" or "#135".

(Warning about #, for saving files for internet use it gives an error loading pages/files/images with a #)

Oh, be sure to back them up. External hard drives would be the best way to go. There was a topic on this a while back.

[pgengler]

Right now, I just use the default, out-of-camera name, and I'm working on adding railroad/locomotive/location information to the photos via IPTC (which is a way of storing metadata in a photo). I do this in Adobe Bridge before I start doing any work on the photos themselves for new photos, and I'm going back through the process of adding it to older ones.

I recently read "The DAM Book" (DAM == Digital Asset Management) which is pretty good about explaining how and why to add keywords/metadata, and it does suggest a file naming scheme (which I mean to implement), but it doesn't involve including any metadata in the filename.

[transit383]

I guess I'm the black sheep in this crowd. I go through a process to sort and subsort mine. The photos come out of the camera as IMG_XXXXX and are placed into a folder in "My Pictures." From there, I go through and delete the ones that are not to my liking, leaving the good ones to sort. I have a folder for my pics called "Railroad Photos", and in that folder are all different sub folders for each railroad. One for Amtrak, one for NJ Transit, one for Conrail, etc... The photos are then labeled according to the unit number in the photo and location. Using NJ Transit 4150 as an example, the first photo of it is "njt4150 - bayhead", the second one is "njt4150a - raritan", the third one is "njt4150b - hoboken", etc...

Labeling can be a real pain if I don't keep up with it!

[Sand Box John]

I leave the file names as they are. I copy the image files into directories with total size slightly less then 700 MB and name the directory based on the first and last picture in the directory (D70s1388_1659). I create chronological order directory listing of the directory using the dir command in a dos window [dir > dir.txt]. I save the dir.txt as an HTML file (date.htm) using a text editor. I add links to the file names followed by a description of the subject of the picture (city, state, enterprise, location/station/cross street/building, angle direction (north, east, west, south), track number if known). I then take the saved HTML file and comma delineated it and save it as a CSV file (date.csv). I load date.csv into a spread sheet program and sort the description column alphabetically. Save date.csv as location.csv and open it in a text editor and delete the comma delineation's and save it as location.htm. I put a link to the other HTML file at the top of each file. What I end up with is one HTML and one CSV file with listings in chronicle order and one HTML and one CSV file with listings in alphabetical order. I then take the image files along with the HTML and CSV files and burn them onto a CD and make the CD volume label the same as the directory name.

This index file is variation of what my location.htm files look like.

[mxdata]

Many good suggestions here. I keep all my digital images on an auxiliary hard drive on my computer and use Microsoft SyncToy (a free download from their website) to back them up over a home network to the auxiliary hard drive on a second computer. The software easily handles hundreds of images in an evening backup on a wired system through a router.

I keep them in folders by railroad or subject, but I also name them so that they will come up alphanumerically in an open sorting. I don't always use the exact reporting marks of the railroad, sometimes my own abbreviations:

(RR)(Unit number - four digit)(Type)(Location)(Date)(Identifier for Unit)

Example:

ELRR-0832-E8A-HORNELL-NY-FEB74-0001

A glance at the folder in Windows Explorer takes you right to whatever image you want to preview.

[Orgnoi1]

I keep ALL originals as is... and then as they get processed they move to "year_month_date-R##"

I put all dates into one single folder of the same type name said above also... so that all dates are separate...

[Fred G]

Hi all!

I like to download my photos into a folder whose name includes the date and a short descriptive title. I then create a subfolder for processed "good" photos that I upload to my website. I keep the "raw" photos named as they are from the camera but rename the processed ones to describe the photos as the filename becomes the caption on my site. It's not perfect but it seems to work for me at the moment.

[dj_paige]

All this renaming of files and folders can be very time consuming.

I wonder why you folks don't use photo organizing software, such as Photoshop Elements. If I shoot 100 photos of CSX on a given day, a few quick mouse clicks and they are all tagged CSX. I don't have to rename them individually, as many of you seem to be doing. I don't even need to modify the folder names, its not necessary. If I shoot them at a particular location, a few short mouse clicks and they are all geotagged as being taken at a particular location, and are selectable from a map. No individually changing the file's name, or changing the folder's name, to indicate the location.

There are many other advantages to using a photo organizer that I haven't mentioned, compared to using Windows folders and file names to identify your shots.

Which raises the question in my mind ... why don't you use an organizer like Photoshop Elements? Is it simply cost? Picasa is free.