M_L_Sadler wrote:

So I have quite the mess.

I don't see a mess at all. I see your folders are quite nicely organized.

 

1. Would it make sense to import all the generated files, or should I only import the original PSDs?

In my opinion, the point of using Lightroom as your digital asset manager, is to manage ALL of your photos. Lightroom becomes the tool for searching and locating your photos. If some photos aren't in LR, then you have created disorganization ... some photos you find in Lightroom, others you find by other means. Put all the photos into LR.

Would it make sense to tag each image with the original year, or use the folder name instead?
Just noticed the date of image creation is fully populated in the library…nice!

Using a tag is redundant ... extra work, no benefit. Your ability to find photos is not enhanced if you have both a tag that says 1957 and a folder that says 1957.

Should I rename each filename to include the folder year? (Since I already know)
Guess not needed!

My opinion is consistently to not put metadata into file names. The important point to me is that once you get Lightroom up and running properly, you will not be using file names to locate your photos, you will be using Lightroom tools such as keywords, captions and other metadata.

I also want to urge you to move away from calendar based organizing. The power of Lightroom comes from the fact that now you can categorize/organize/search for photos by the photo content, not the year that it was taken. Most people think much more naturally of the content of a photo, not the year it was taken. By using keywords and captions to describe the content of the photo, you create a mechanism that is much more natural for searching. Furthermore, consider a library of books -- there is no library of books that I know of that makes you search by the year the book was published ... they all offer you the ability to search by title, author, keyword, etc.

Should I attempt some type of auto tagging based on what I know about what is in each folder
or is tagging just going to be a nightmare?

I object to the phrasing of the question, calling tagging a nightmare. Tagging is a necessary step to make use of Lightroom, and to enable you and others to find the photos. I am not aware of any autotagging that works well in a case such as this. Adding keywords is work that pays high dividends if you do it well. Certainly, it is not a simple task that can be completed in an hour, but it is extremely valuable work to do.

You might want to consider, using pencil and paper, or a text editor, making a preliminary hierarchy of keywords to use, based upon your knowledge of the content of the photos. You would then apply these to the photos —  and of course, there may need to be additions/corrections to the hierarchy, but this is easily changed in Lightroom.

But other than that, it seems to me you are at the point where you want to start importing and keywording. You don't have to do this all at once; you can import and keyword a portion of the photos (for example, all the 1940s photos) and work on those before moving on to the next group.

Lightroom does not care where your photo files are stored as it keeps track of their location in the "catalog"

In my opinion, the MOST important reason to have all of your photo files under one top level folder is for ease of backup of your photo files. If the photos are spread all over the place, backup will be a difficult task and no matter how strongly you feel about backup, you will eventually not do it as it is too difficult.

I concur with the other writer that you should develop a keywording structure outside of Lightroom. This includes not only the keywords but the organization of those keywords, i.e. which keywords should be under what higher level category. I am an enthusiast (non-pro). Every photo I import into Lightroom is subject to two keyword categories... Location and Subject. Sometimes I want to look for photos based on my remembering where I took them. Other times I want to search for photos based on what is the subject matter of the photo.

This will be your first pass at this task. If you are like most folks, once you have started using this first pass keyword structure, you will come up with additional needs. For instance, I put some of my photos on a web site. Thus I added a top level keyword I call "Good_ones".

Hope this helps your thought process as you approach this task. It will take some time so don't rush it. Your efforts will pay off in the future.

I suggest you close Lightroom and spend some time here:

http://jkost.com/lightroom.html

QUOTE

Your ability to find photos is not enhanced if you have both a tag that says 1957 and a folder that says 1957.

End

I would question this.

There are two aspects to the answer.

First is finding images in LR

Second is finding files on disk.

I rename files on import and add the current date to whatever the camera defaults may be.

These files then go into a directory named with the date of image capture (LR extracts this from the camera data)

These folders are contained within a folder holding all captures from that month.

The 12 monthly folders are contained within a parent folder named with the year i.e. 2011, 2012 etc

If I copy a file into a working directory (I keep my images on one drive and perform work on them on another drive. This avoids the potential for a destructive edit using PS) then I can always locate the orginal directory as the image filename indicates the original physical location on disk.

I have a catalog with in excess of 100,000 images and this works well.

For all the rest of your indexing it is best to rely on LR using either keywords (I have scans keyworded as "scans" and screen captures keyworded as "screen captures." You could also organize your files using collections. Both keywords and collections permit extremely fine grained identification of specific images. The only problem is that LR will not import PNG. It would be nice to use LRs cataloging and keywording power to catalog the full range of images and files that might be used in graphic design.

I fully agree to dj_paige as long as you are within Lightroom, and to kuro_sushi when you are on your operating system.

I think you need to be able to navigate both.

At least if you think of some less agreeable disaster recovery - there might be times when you need some restoration software. Sometimes filenames or folder structures may be lost completely. RAID-controllers can fail...

When I move images from my laptop to longterm storage I need handy portions and have stuck with file folders, just for this purpose.

Naming convention is "YYYY-MM-DD shoot name", which I all put inside one YYYY-folder per year. I do not feel the need for a month level in between, because I do not shoot so much. Having this folder structure has the added value of being a mini-diary, especially on vacation travel.

But if you have keywords like that and create a set of collections based on it, you have the same as collection structure i.o. folder structure.

I do not have LR auto-saving to metadata, but I invoke it myself once I think it is ready or I would hate to loose stuff in case of LR corruption. Usually twice: after developing and after adding keywords and captions.

Meticulous backup of all LR stuff as well as of the images is essential. Keywords are written to xmp-metadata.

Renaming of files is superfluous for me, I just try to keep file names unique across all cameras and a decade, which Nikon supports better by in-camera-prefixes than Canon does. So Canon get a prefix during import, just for distinctive filename. Actually this could be improved by a general renaming... I should challenge my habits again...

For "location" you get now much better options with the new map module. This might save you some keywording, so you might want to learn about this feature first, before you decide on location-keywords on top. You have the general location/country etc. inside IPTC fields if you enable reverse geocoding. This is also searchable.

To decide on what *orderly* will mean for you, ask yourself and maybe others with access to your Lightroom database, what search questions you/they have.

You need to be able to answer any such use case by a collection or filter or search.

Once you have achieved this, you will have perfect order in your catalog!

Have fun,

Cornelia