Lightroom and DAM

[john beardsworth]

How exactly is that a bad practice?

See ButchM's explanation above. Further, do you change the filenames when keywords change?

[jjj]

How exactly is that a bad practice?

I think John was talking about putting all the metadata into the name.

Of the files named 2014-08-01_04-01-25.CR2 and 2013-08-01_04-01-25.CR2, which one has a picture of Johnny? If you have 50,000 images each named according to this scheme, meticulously organized into folders named by year, how do you find all the images that contain pictures of your dog when you lived in San Francisco, but not in Los Angeles?

The file itself has a creation date and a modification date, and most systems will let you search for the capture date...so naming your file by date is duplicating data, and doesn't provide any meaningful information about what the file has in it (e.g. the subject).

No, but it serves the same purpose as your wanting to add keywords to the name, it's useful outside of a DAM. Plus it makes file names unique which is the most important reason.

Describing the subject is why keywords exist. Unfortunately, setting/getting keywords is only available in your "black box" DAM application.

I provided an explanation for why keyword-based file naming is a better solution for being able to find your images outside the DAM; it's up to you to show why date-based file naming (or any other file naming scheme) is better. The only explanations provided thus far are appeals to authority...("I read it in a book").

Long file/folder names tend to be hard to read as they get truncated in many UIs, so Date + [short]description is better. Date+description is like folder and metadata organising is better than either one is on their own.

[jjj]

Troll.

No that second quote you used was taking the mickey, a different thing from trolling and not the one you first quoted when calling me a troll. As I said, I thought you liked to be precise about things, you are being disappointing today Isaac.

"And that is not what I wish to be done."

Still as terse and uninformative as the first time you posted the link.

[digitaldog]

The file itself has a creation date and a modification date, and most systems will let you search for the capture date...so naming your file by date is duplicating data, and doesn't provide any meaningful information about what the file has in it (e.g. the subject). Describing the subject is why keywords exist. Unfortunately, setting/getting keywords is only available in your "black box" DAM application.

Completely agree.

I provided an explanation for why keyword-based file naming is a better solution for being able to find your images outside the DAM; it's up to you to show why date-based file naming (or any other file naming scheme) is better. The only explanations provided thus far are appeals to authority...("I read it in a book").

Right, the lack of any other explanation, when the same folks tell us:I always tell people to place things where it makes sense to them. is telling.

[jjj]

I simply cannot understand why folder structure and naming is such a pain. At the end of the day the filename is the thing that has to be unique in a given realm. Compare with isbn or ean coding. This makes it unique regardlesss of where it is stored or in which collection  it is being referred.  Folders are just physical storing structures.

Folder structure and naming is dead easy. Some people don't like to do things the easy way though.

[digitaldog]

See ButchM's explanation above. Further, do you change the filenames when keywords change?

There's no reason he couldn't.

[john beardsworth]

I think John was talking about putting all the metadata into the name.
 No, but it serves the same purpose as your wanting to add keywords to the name, it's useful outside of a DAM. Plus it makes file names unique which is the most important reason.

 Long file/folder names tend to be hard to read as they get truncated in many UIs, so Date + [short]description is better. Date+description is like folder and metadata organising is better than either one is on their own.

Agree, though I was just referring to keywords. Butch added all metadata.

I have encountered a good reason for pumping keywords into filenames, but it was purely for SEO because the stock site parsed information from the filenames. Instead of applying the keywords to files which were exported to his stock site, the user had followed the advice of Dan H?? and renamed his master files. Plenty hit 250+ characters and he found the system cumbersome to read and time consuming to maintain, and a year down the track he came to his senses when dealing with derivative files and finding he didn't have spare characters to add a suffix like "B&W" or "Client X". Sooner or later bad practice will bite you in the bum, usually at the most inconvenient time.

[john beardsworth]

There's no reason he couldn't.

You can spend hours polishing a turd, if that turns you on.

[Isaac]

At the end of the day the filename is the thing that has to be unique in a given realm.

Yes!

prefix (date the new folder was created) - suffix (sequence number within the folder)

20140809-001.ARW

[Isaac]

No that second quote you used was taking the mickey, a different thing from trolling and not the one you first quoted when calling me a troll.

"a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people"

[jjj]

"a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people"

Ooh, the irony.

[jjj]

You can spend hours polishing a turd, if that turns you on.

Apparently it does according to a previous excuse for doing things the hard way.

[digitaldog]

You can spend hours polishing a turd, if that turns you on.

One man's turd is another's gem. But of course, trying to get you or jjj to let us do what we think is best, based on our own unique workflow, needs and understanding or our needs isn't on your radar.
You guys are right, we are all wrong. That is about the only text that will get the troll-like behavior to cease in such discussions.
One can spend hours debating with turds, it's rather pointless.

[ButchM]

There's no reason he couldn't.

There are several good reasons not to as well ... foremost would be if the image is used or referenced elsewhere by other software for say a video, slideshow, book design, etc. outside of your DAM software, changing/updating the name to reflect metadata changes could break those links creating even more work. It seems silly to me to employ folder structure and naming conventions to duplicate the purpose EXIF and IPTC metadata ... the latter two specifically designed for such work ... it just seems like a unneccessary duplication of effort.

By all means, I am not judging anyone on what they use in their personal workflow ... only raising questions as to exactly how efficient such mentioned options are in real world daily chores.

Considering Apple is integrating "tagging" or keywords into the OS ... I'm hoping we can see better integration of metadata for our digital assets inside and outside of DAM solutions to streamline things even further.

[jjj]

I have encountered a good reason for pumping keywords into filenames, but it was purely for SEO because the stock site parsed information from the filenames. Instead of applying the keywords to files which were exported to his stock site, the user had followed the advice of Dan H?? and renamed his master files. Plenty hit 250+ characters and he found the system cumbersome to read and time consuming to maintain, and a year down the track he came to his senses when dealing with derivative files and finding he didn't have spare characters to add a suffix like "B&W" or "Client X". Sooner or later bad practice will bite you in the bum, usually at the most inconvenient time.

That would be Dan Heller I'd guess, the most prolix of chaps. So excessively long file names seem totally in keeping with his usual logorrhea.

[digitaldog]

Considering Apple is integrating "tagging" or keywords into the OS ... I'm hoping we can see better integration of metadata for our digital assets inside and outside of DAM solutions to streamline things even further.

I'm not sure what Apple is going to do, but it seems much of this exists as seen here using Get Info:

[jjj]

One man's turd is another's gem. But of course, trying to get you or jjj to let us do what we think is best, based on our own unique workflow, needs and understanding or our needs isn't on your radar.
You guys are right, we are all wrong. That is about the only text that will get the troll-like behavior to cease in such discussions.
One can spend hours debating with turds, it's rather pointless.

No one is saying you have to change your system. That's just your incorrect inference.
We are however talking about what we think is most efficient working practice long term to help Bob who asked about such things. As a result he can now see some potential issues with his non-date system
You are welcome to carry on with whatever system you like as that's your problem not ours.

In fact we would be foolish in encouraging you to be more efficient as they would mean you'd have more time to post on here. 

[Bob Rockefeller]

Bob, as the OP, you gaining anything here within the last page or two or is this just moving towards another waste of time?

It has become a waste of time with name calling and endless repeating of the same arguments. I was hoping someone new might join in with additional knowledge or perspective. Now, if they did, they might be unwilling to participate.

While I agree with John that there are such things as "best practices," not all choose to follow them or even agree with them. That's their prerogative. In my mind DAM, like so many other things, requires practitioners to understand the rules before attempting to break them. This thread was my attempt to understand those rules so that I could make my own informed decisions about my system and approach. My switch from Aperture to Lightroom made it a convenient time to consider another approach.

It's important now, and may be again in the future. Lightroom still doesn't feel "just right" to me. If, and that's a big if, Apple's new Photos app started with the many good features of Aperture and then expanded them (to the cloud, with 3rd part non-destructive plug-ins, or something), I may well want to be in a position to move back. I will not be deleting my Aperture library for quite a while.

[digitaldog]

No one is saying you have to change your system. That's just your incorrect inference.

Not a thing incorrect about it as far as I'm concerned! And your system as I said repeatedly is equality incorrect for me.

We are however talking about what we think is most efficient working practice long term to help Bob who asked about such things

Let's see if Bob finds this discussion useful as presented in the last day. He has a system, he seems more than OK with it. Other's here have said in no uncertain terms what you and John suggest isn't going to work for them. Again, if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

[digitaldog]

This thread was my attempt to understand those rules so that I could make my own informed decisions about my system and approach. My switch from Aperture to Lightroom made it a convenient time to consider another approach.

Agreed and I think at this point, the rule is, there are no rules if the system makes sense to you, it works for you, you have flexibility in changing the workflow as you move forward. Even jjj said he used to use one system and changed it, indicating:
1. He got it wrong for him.
2. He was able to move forward to another organizational system.

As I wrote, don't let FUD proponents give you an idea that everything is fine then one day, your system blows up in your face the next day. Even if you run out of room on a drive, there are simple ways to move forward. 

Lightroom still doesn't feel "just right" to me. If, and that's a big if, Apple's new Photos app started with the many good features of Aperture and then expanded them (to the cloud, with 3rd part non-destructive plug-ins, or something), I may well want to be in a position to move back. I will not be deleting my Aperture library for quite a while.

That is telling! It indicates you need a system that doesn't depend on Lightroom, you might move elsewhere. I love LR and plan to use it as long as I can but there's no way I'm building a system that would break if it went away, died while I needed to find photo’s and so on. Hence the reason I use a well structured (for me) folder system. It's why I would never use Kelby's suggestion of dumping all or even most images in one folder and using proprietary collections to find them. As I said, there's a balance IMHO between one folder and 1000 folders. That balance is understood by me and no one else. And the same is true for what you do. And that's the bottom line. Unless folks here can describe how on one day, everything is running fine and as you expect then the next you've got an impossible to fix mess, I think you should move ahead with what you feel works best for you.