Organizing scans

[bert26]

Hi all,

I just got a new iMac and I'm starting fresh. Save for Lightroom, Photoshop, and Vuescan, I have nothing on this machine.

I want to rescan all my negatives and keep them organized. On my MacBook, it was just a huge unorganized cluster of scans. Some of my print file sheets are already labeled.

The way I tried to organize before was like this..

On the negative sheets I'd have

7/15 01
7/15 02
7/15 03

8/15 01
8/15 02

etc

and so on and so forth. On my hard drive I'd have 2015, 16, 17, 18, and 19 folders with subfolders of months and in those folders 01, 02, 03 04, etc to correspond to the negatives.

Is this making sense?

I lost my way and got lazy. Stopped labeling a lot of the print file sleeves and organizing the scans so I'm starting all over.

Does the method described above seem like a good way to organize? The problem is all of the unlabeled sleeves... I have no idea when they were shot. Also how does cataloging in LR work exactly? You just add tags to each scan so then you can search for something like "dog water fountain" and then have it pop up rather than going through the folders?

 

[Larry Cloetta]

..... Also how does cataloging in LR work exactly? You just add tags to each scan so then you can search for something like "dog water fountain" and then have it pop up rather than going through the folders?

That’s basically it, but best advice is to look up an instructional video or three on the catalog system for Lightroom. It’s not immediately intuitive for most people, but it works if you do it right. If you don’t do it right, and understand how to move files so that LR can find them, you’ll be very sorry.🙂
Tip for the day, keywords must be separated by commas. In your example, if you searched for “dog” or “water fountain”, your photo wouldn’t come up because the keyword you entered wasn’t dog, it was “dog water fountain” which LR considers to be one keyword.

Best advice is to watch some of Adobe’s instructional videos. It will take some time, but in the long run, even if you have 20,000 photos, you will be able to use LR to find the one you need whenever you want to.

LR is going to make its own file folder hierarchy, so how you organize your scan files, that’s something I am not going to touch because there are many ways to do it either using LR, or using your computer’s file structure outside of LR, with some other program.
Main thing is to fully understand how LR works, if that is what you will be using, before you start importing any files into it. And make sure you understand where your actual scan files really are on your computer HD or external drive. Otherwise you may be doing a lot of things over.
If what I am saying doesn’t make sense, and why it is critical to understand it before you set up LR, it will make sense once you understand how LR works.

 

[DHK]

I use epson scan and set the file names to a serial number for the roll and let the scanner add the 001, 002... to the end of each file. I just started at 0001. Then I create a folder with the number to keep things in chronological order and a little description like “0001 2020 Trix Leica M5 28mm Downtown” Then “0002 2020 HP5 SWC San Francisco”

This keeps it program neutral (but I do use bridge to browse)

 

[PRJ]

About 15 years ago my negatives were a mess. I decided to get them organized. The method I used is year-roll#-frame#. So an image name would look like 2020-023-01. That would be shot in 2020 on the 23rd roll and the frame number is 1. Simple. Easy to keep track of things that way too.

I started the process by organizing all the negs I had into years, then sorting them roughly into some reasonable order. Then the numbering began. I just started at the beginning numbering them all. The neg pages have the year-roll# written at the top. If you just start that way, it is manageable.

Once you get it all sorted out it is easy to keep track of things. Keep the negs in binders in numerical order.

One thing to note is that Lightroom keeps things organized by the folders on your hard drive. You can drag anything in the Folders view in Lightroom into any folder and Lightroom will move the file there on your hard drive. I keep the Folders section organized by State for the most part.

You can also use keywords which I make extensive use of. These days I keep track of film types, developer types, times, cameras, lenses, etc. I just input them into the keywords box which is somewhat automatic. You could put anything in there you want. Location, names, etc.

Use the Collections area to put together disparate images. I use it to keep track of different projects or ideas. You can make smart collections too. I keep a folder sorted by year so if I want to see what I shot in any given year I expand the folder and inside there is a smart collection for every year. 27 at this point. Yikes! Works great though.

If you don't want to rescan everything, I would suggest coming up with some type of labeling system for the negs. The one I outlined above works great. You can then just put all your image folders inside one main folder and import that folder into Lightroom. Lightroom will keep the organization for you while you reorganize and rename the files. It will be a lot of work, but faster than rescanning everything.

Once you get everything all set though, it is easy to maintain. I keep a separate folder on the same hard drive as my Lightroom library and any new scans go into that for importing. I leave them there though until about twice a year and them move them over to the main folder sorting them as I go. It helps to keep fresh images seperate from the main images.

I hope that helps. Good luck!

 

[aizan]

If you have a public library card, chances are you’ll have access to Lynda.com that has courses on Lightroom. The basic idea is that you first sort your files into folders on your computer according to a “meaningless” scheme such as folders for years then folders for months, with every file having a unique name (following a file naming convention like 2015-05_0336_cat.jpg for the cat photo that was the 36th frame on roll 3 of the month from May 2015), then you use collections and tags in Lightroom to organize things meaningfully.

Since you have undated negative sheets, you should create a new series for them separate from your dated negative sheets. When figuring out how to organize them, keep in mind that the thing that matters is being able to physically locate a frame based on information you have about it. If you don’t have a date, what do you have? Film stock? Format? Pick something that’ll make it as easy as possible to find a shot if you have to go through everything one by one. Then number them sequentially so they’re unique.

 

[xjonstars]

Save yourself a lot of time and frustration and read Peter Krogh’s excellent book on this subject - https://www.damuseful.com/products/digitizing-your-photographs-pdf

Truly one of the best sources of information on this subject. It’s as important to me as David Vestal’s The Craft of Photography.

TLDR - @PRJ’s method above is an excellent start.