Another vote for one catalogue here, unless you do work you want to keep separate. Say you are a professional photographer, you may want to have all your dul but profitable product work kept separate from your exciting but impoverishing personal work. Normally the benefit of a single catalogue is ease of finding. But if some things are so very different, that is less of an issue.
But if you want to combine images from one with images of another in say a slideshow, you can always export the selected images from one as a catalogue and import into the other one. Best of both worlds.
I have two different folder structures: One for raw imports and another for selected and processed images.
Not sure why you have a separate folder structure for selected/processed images. As if you use LR, you can do you selecting within one folder and simply hide any non selected images. This dual folder method seems to go against the benefits of the LR workflow. And you can process them in place have virtual copies anc normal copies all in one easy to find place. Not sdoing so is the same as having multiple catalogues [folders here] within a catalogue.
Just import your files in their dated folder, select/reject/label/rank in LR and if you need to export any images why not do so to a subfolder of one you are working in. Or even give them a slightly different name say append copy and keep in same folder.
By doing that, all images from one shoot are all in same place, not several different locations, so much easier to find.
Labelling, rating etc allows you to quickly sort out the good from the bad by using filters.
Though if exporting images for use on say the desktop or a specific job from several folders, then a folder for desktop images/job makes more sense.
All images are renamed on import like this:
DChew_YYMMDD_1234.cr2 for unprocessed or
DChew_YYMMDD_1234.dng for processed
I used to do that before realising not having date at front was a big mistake from a sort order point of view. Plus I do 2009-01-07 for date not 090107 as that is so difficult to read if you aren't a computer.
So 2009-02-16 Doona Nook 001.CR2, 2009-02-16 Doona Nook 001.jpg is how I now name my files. Date - description - number.File extension. I also add spaces for legibility, as if I use pics online, spaces are automatically corrected with underlines and capitals removed.
2009-02-16 Doona Nook 001.jpg then becomes 2009-02-16_doona_nook_001.jpg
I do my folders this following way as they order correctly in any OS, they are easy to read and often you can quickly find stuff by date and basic description sometimes easier than by keywords, particularly if you shoot certain subjects repeatedly, as keywording is not so useful then.
2009/
-2009-01-Jan/
--2009-01-06 Beachy Head
--2009-01-08 Langland Bay
--2009-01-08 Caswell
-2009-02-Feb/
--2009-02-12 Flanborough
--2009-02-14 Caswell
Shame LR doesn't have the excellent Date Filter than PS Elements organiser used. LR did have a weak version of it, but that was sadly dropped in V2 in favour of the filter panel.
Though If I was a wedding photographer I would keep that work separate from other work and I would file such by name of couple, not date of wedding, as if asked for such images later, it would be by name and not date.
