# Lightroom Organizing Disaster...Need Suggestions



## nerwin

So the last few days I have been spending most of my time organizing photos inside of Lightroom because it starting to become a mess.

When I first starting using Lightroom, I had no idea what I was doing. I created catalog for each year but as time went on I always found myself wanted to look at a photo I took last year or a couple years before so I'd have to go load up that catalog and then I'd forget and start importing 2015 photos into a 2011 catalog. Next time I'd go to import photos I'll then realize I was in the wrong catalog and already have forgot about the photos I imported a week ago and never moved those photos to the right catalog.

So instead of having a catalog for each year, I just made one master catalog and imported the other catalogs into this new master catalog and made a folder for each year and once I sorted out each year, I then made monthly subfolders for each year and sorted all the photos out. Thankfully, I was smart enough when I imported photos I used a date naming theme for the folders like this "2015-04-16-subject or shoot" so it wasn't TOO hard to sort everything out.

Now I have a structure like this:

2013
2014
2015
     - 01 Jan
     - 02 Feb
     - 03 March

Etc...

Then I went through and renamed all the folders that contained the photos in each month. The problem I'm having is say for example I take several shots of my cat throughout the month of April, should I create a separate folder even if it's just one photo? Or should I just dump them into one folder like "Cat Photos" or something?

I took the folder structure idea from a Peter Krogh seminar since he's a "master" at Lightroom, but he also suggested making another organization structure using the keywords feature in Lightroom, so there I was adding keywords to 10,000 photos..sometimes one by one and it started to look like this...






This was only when I processed half of my photos...when I was nearly done..it was a complete mess. It took me longer to find a group of photos going through the keyword method that Peter Krogh recommends than just going to the folders and clicking on the year and month. It was a bit overwhelming for me..while that method may work for Peter..I don't think it did for me. So I ended up removing all keywords and now have a clean slate.

He also recommends adding location data to all the photos...so there I was again adding location data to all the photos which was brutal and I only got through maybe half of my photos. I understand why HE uses it because he travels A LOT but I don't travel that much. A lot of photos I take are around where I live. Do I really need location data for a few pictures I took down the road from where I live? What about when I go out for a drive and stop and take pictures on the way? I'm not going to exactly remember what town I was in when I took those particular photos.  If you don't add a sub location to the metadata, it will show up under the metadata search as "unknown sublocation".  So then, I had to go and add sublocations like "Home" or "Blah Blah Restaurant"  or "55 Main St"...something like that. It's like, do I really need to add location to a picture of a computer part I took for my blog? I don't think it's useful.

So...I removed all the location data and I now have a complete clean slate to work from. No keywords and no location data.

I don't know what to do, so I'm asking you guys to give me some suggestions on what I could do. Also, what kind of organization system do you use in Lightroom?


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## astroNikon

wow
stop taking pictures of your cat.

If you do photoshoots then it makes sense for all the metadata.  include the customer and stuff. Then you can more easily refer to it.

personally
I have a separate Catalog for Photoshoots
then my own personal catalog.

you just have to remember to get FIRST look at which catalog you are in before doing anything.
Since I do few photoshoots and customer "stuff" I don't go in it very often.  BUT I still check.

I also break my catalog by year otherwise it would get too big.
Those are the catalogs of the RAW files.
I have another OS directory of the processed JPEGs.  BUt I delete alot of those after I upload them to Flickr or something.

You have to adjust your storing to the way YOU want to store them instead of someone elses.  You can break it down by catagory catalogs if you want.  As long as you know f you have cross-categories that you do it one way or another AND you have to check which catalog you are in first before importing.

 I guess that was your main problem.  You were not checking which catalog you were in first before doing anything.  With more than 1 catalog, that will cause the most problems.


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## nerwin

astroNikon said:


> wow
> stop taking pictures of your cat.
> 
> If you do photoshoots then it makes sense for all the metadata.  include the customer and stuff. Then you can more easily refer to it.
> 
> personally
> I have a separate Catalog for Photoshoots
> then my own personal catalog.
> 
> you just have to remember to get FIRST look at which catalog you are in before doing anything.
> Since I do few photoshoots and customer "stuff" I don't go in it very often.  BUT I still check.
> 
> I also break my catalog by year otherwise it would get too big.
> Those are the catalogs of the RAW files.
> I have another OS directory of the processed JPEGs.  BUt I delete alot of those after I upload them to Flickr or something.
> 
> You have to adjust your storing to the way YOU want to store them instead of someone elses.  You can break it down by catagory catalogs if you want.  As long as you know f you have cross-categories that you do it one way or another AND you have to check which catalog you are in first before importing.
> 
> I guess that was your main problem.  You were not checking which catalog you were in first before doing anything.  With more than 1 catalog, that will cause the most problems.



But my cat is too photogenic to not take pictures of lol.

I'm not worried about space right now, I have several terabytes to play with. So I can dump them all into one which makes it a heck of alot easier to manage for me.

I even imported a ton house renovation project photos I've took into Lightroom and I'm not sure if  there is a point in having these in Lightroom as I don't do any kind of processing to them, I should just export them as Jpegs and delete the raw files and move them in a folder outside of Lightroom. I mean they are photos that I don't need to share online or be printed, they are simply for documentation of the work we have done and for reference.

I'm glad I'm trying to figure this out now and not when I have 50,000 photos haha.


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## KmH

Most Lightroom experts recommend organize all of your image files in a single catalog.
LR's Library module is a database manager, not a browser.
Keywording image files makes a database manager work.
You can make keyword templates in LR.

The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers


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## nerwin

KmH said:


> Most Lightroom experts recommend organize all of your image files in a single catalog.
> LR's Library module is a database manager, not a browser.
> Keywording image files makes a database manager work.
> You can make keyword templates in LR.
> 
> The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers



I didn't mind creating keywords for events I shoot because I could easily select 100 photos I took at a car show or something and just drag in drop like how Peter recommended. That was fine to me, but other issue is if I was to take 50 photos in my backyard of several different subjects and import them into Lightroom, I might have macro of a bug, a plane flying overhead, a bird, etc. So then I'd have to add keywords to each photo because they are different subjects. Its extremely overwhelming for me. 

Before I would just create a folder like this: "2015-12-21-backyard" and import all the photos in there and that would be it.


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## jaomul

If you copied all your files and foldes to say a folder called Nerwin, and then emptied your "my pictures"folder, removed everything from lightroom and stated again with the import and copy command and select "my pictures" as the location, lohtroom will import and make folders dated, year, month,day. Once that is done you can rename folders inside of lightroom. Example lightroom calls it 2015-04-21 you can rename it with date and then cat, bug, macro afterwards.

In library then in grid mode you can select as many photos as you want and keyword selected ones, not one by one


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## nerwin

This is what my folder structure looks like inside of Lightroom right now.


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## Dave442

Always seems like that small end of year organising project takes on a life of its own.

I keep just a date structure for where the images are. One thing I found is that I have to put at least one photo in the Year Folder (I just take any photo and add _base to the name and put that in the Year Folder. Then when I import using LR I have it make a yyyy-mm-dd folder where the shots from that day go (and at the same time LR adds yyyymmdd in front of the file name, i.e.: 20141121_DRB3258.NEF). I started using this naming because I also mixed up my images when I first started using LR and had a hard time locating them again. When I Export then I add a suffix to the file name, like _cat_x640b (that tells me it is a cat photo at 640 pixels on the long side and b for me is 75% quality). 

If I just look at my Folders I cannot tell what photos are in each. But if someone asks for a birthday photo or something where you know the date then I just go by date. If someone asks for a cat photo then I search for cat - I would usually select a year and then all the cat photos for that year, or select the base RAW directory and that would search for cat in all years.

My Collections folders look more like your file folders - this is where I have things like Car Show (all car show photos are in that collection). If I wanted a specific car show then I would search for it and then go to that date folder. I try to use Collections for photos that span multiple dates and want to have together in one spot.

I do not fully Keyword all photos, usually only those that get a star or general Keywords at Import. If I do a search then that keeps down the number of photos and if I want to see more then it is easy to know what folder to go to as the photo I found has the date in the name. I also add a Title and Caption to most exported photos as that data shows up in Flickr and the Title information is in one of the photo viewers I use.

This is my LR folder layout. I was sceptical of having a folder for every day, but it has worked so far for me and saved me at least a few times when I moved files around and had to locate them again.


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## nerwin

Well it is winter here and I don't shoot much during winter so I figured it's a good time to figure out my lightroom situation. By going through everything I was able to get rid of some photos that I no longer needed to keep or just junk photos.

I had to delete about all the photos in my 2008 folder because I must have been stupid and imported all the cropped 700px jpegs instead of the original res photos and deleted the original photos.  It's alright though, didn't need the photos anyways. But what the heck was a I thinking then? hahaha.


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## JacaRanda

I use one catalog only.  Folders are by year and location on each year.  It gets a little messy when I change locations and don't switch memory cards.


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## BlueStar2015

Subscribed!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## nerwin

I really like this guy's way of organizing. Its very simple but yet works powerfully. I still think I'd have separate folder for each month rather than one long list, but that's just me.


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## Dave442

OK, watched the video. I agree with his use of Smart Collections. That is similar to what I do. But in the first part where he talks about the initial Folder setup, I had tried that. In the end I found that when I tried to import and later move things to an actual physical Folder location on the disc, I was just to lazy as it was too much extra time on the workflow. I think it also adds more risk as you can drop things in the wrong spot, I just want to import one time and never move those files again. Also, what does he do if he has both the models in one photo, which Folder does he put that shot in. I ran into things like that and it slowed me down, also just trying to come up with a Folder name is extra time when I want to process photos. Keywords can be changed around very quickly and your not waiting for files to be moved around to different physical folder locations. 

So basically I am just not in agreement with trying to make the Folder section work like a File Cabinet, for me that area is just the Safe and I then want to use the LR database tools to get to my photos. I could just put every photo in one Directory, but as LR has the option to show photos in all subdirectories then I have it make the daily subdirectories upon import and then search for a photo either from the year folder or the parent RAW folder (that includes all years). The daily subdirectories just make it easy to take a look in each one and not have to scroll very far for any one photo.  I often have three or more very different events in one day and many events that start in the evening go over to the next day and a different folder, this is no problem as the specific events are together in a Collection or it may just need a specific keyword to pull them together with some filtering. 

I just use Keywords for things like Self Portraits, Mom and Mom Birthday and use Collections for things like Car Shows (of course Car Show is also a Keyword and the name of the particular car show would go under that Keyword). 

As all my photos have the date added, I can go to the Collection and find a photo based on an event name and just by looking at a photo name I know the date and that can lead me directly to the Folder where all the shots are from the same day as the one I am looking at in the Collection.  Having the date added to the file name is twofold, first is to never duplicate a file name and second is to make it easy to locate a photo that was moved outside of LR (fixing the dreaded ! message).

Also, when I Export photos, my default directory is Developed/Year and then subdirectory for each client or event. I have LR make that directory or use it if it already exists. This gives me a directory structure outside of LR that is similar to your current Folder setup and in some cases I will look for a photo there and as the file name includes the date I know right where to look for the original photos in LR.


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## nerwin

My head hurts. This is the part of photography they never mentioned, hahaha. I have no idea what I'm going to do..there is just so many ways.


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## nerwin

Dave442 said:


> OK, watched the video. I agree with his use of Smart Collections. That is similar to what I do. But in the first part where he talks about the initial Folder setup, I had tried that. In the end I found that when I tried to import and later move things to an actual physical Folder location on the disc, I was just to lazy as it was too much extra time on the workflow. I think it also adds more risk as you can drop things in the wrong spot, I just want to import one time and never move those files again. Also, what does he do if he has both the models in one photo, which Folder does he put that shot in. I ran into things like that and it slowed me down, also just trying to come up with a Folder name is extra time when I want to process photos. Keywords can be changed around very quickly and your not waiting for files to be moved around to different physical folder locations.
> 
> So basically I am just not in agreement with trying to make the Folder section work like a File Cabinet, for me that area is just the Safe and I then want to use the LR database tools to get to my photos. I could just put every photo in one Directory, but as LR has the option to show photos in all subdirectories then I have it make the daily subdirectories upon import and then search for a photo either from the year folder or the parent RAW folder (that includes all years). The daily subdirectories just make it easy to take a look in each one and not have to scroll very far for any one photo.  I often have three or more very different events in one day and many events that start in the evening go over to the next day and a different folder, this is no problem as the specific events are together in a Collection or it may just need a specific keyword to pull them together with some filtering.
> 
> I just use Keywords for things like Self Portraits, Mom and Mom Birthday and use Collections for things like Car Shows (of course Car Show is also a Keyword and the name of the particular car show would go under that Keyword).
> 
> As all my photos have the date added, I can go to the Collection and find a photo based on an event name and just by looking at a photo name I know the date and that can lead me directly to the Folder where all the shots are from the same day as the one I am looking at in the Collection.  Having the date added to the file name is twofold, first is to never duplicate a file name and second is to make it easy to locate a photo that was moved outside of LR (fixing the dreaded ! message).
> 
> Also, when I Export photos, my default directory is Developed/Year and then subdirectory for each client or event. I have LR make that directory or use it if it already exists. This gives me a directory structure outside of LR that is similar to your current Folder setup and in some cases I will look for a photo there and as the file name includes the date I know right where to look for the original photos in LR.



Do you browse by keywords or do you use it just strictly for searching and or collections?


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## Dillard

I began creating a new catalog for each shoot, and a few random (dog, family, etc). When I start lightroom, it prompts me to select a catalog to open, instead of just uploading the last used. Is it the best method? Probably not. But it works for me, and I enjoy I can always find what I'm looking for


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## nerwin

For the life of me, I cannot figure out how I should organize all the random shots I've taken around the house. Ugh.


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## nerwin

@Dave442 Are you talking about a keyword system kind of like this?


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## Dave442

I browse by keywords and, like I mentioned earlier, not all my photos have complete keyword listings. As the rated photos or photos that were Exported have the most keywords my search will bring those up and then I know there are some alternates in the Folder and if I find something close with the search I may jump to the Folder that is by date to see if there is an alternative that better meets what I need right now. 

An example could be that I need the subject on the right of the frame and my current photo with a one star rating and fully processed has the subject on the left.  I find that photo, go to the Folder that has all the session shots and see if there is one that better meets the current need. 

When I had first started using LR I quickly had a dozen Catalogs. Later I found that was like having a business that had multiple databases for their product line. My first step was to Import all the catalogs into just one, but then I found some duplicate file names so that led me to adding the date in front of the filename. That file naming also resolved the issue of having a photo and being able to quickly identify both its Folder and its physical location just by looking at the name.


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## nerwin

I created a smart collection for car shows and I must say, I kind of like this setup. I can easily find a particular car show.





The other problem though, what do I do with random car shows that don't really have name, should I just dump them under the parent keyword?


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## Dave442

nerwin said:


> @Dave442 Are you talking about a keyword system kind of like this?
> 
> View attachment 113180


Yes, like that. But say at the car show there is an Impala I like and take 10 shots, however my Keywords on the import are only Car Show and the name of that car show. When I select my favorite shot of the Impala I would add that name to the Keywords. Later I may need the shot of an Impala and may come up with three from different shows, but then I can go to each of the Folders that are by date and see more shots. 

Basically my Keywords are like part numbers and I am trying to balance the quantity of part numbers in my system so that it is manageable and at the same time is expandable to meet new business opportunities. 

I use the product part number analogy as that is where I have had experience. The best thing is to spend time initially deciding on the best way to lay things out so it will be easy to use and will hold up to time and size. My current setup had to go through a couple iterations and combines in any number of tips and pointers from other LR users. There is certainly room for improvement. 

Right now I know things are easy enough that a first time LR user could open my LR and do an Import and could find photos using Keywords with about five minutes of instruction. That's also important to me so that if I don't use the program for some time I can quickly get up and running again. 

As a final note, as we near 2016 it's time for me to update the copyright metadata that I apply during Import. And make a 2016 Folder with its one photo so that LR will automatically place 2016 photos inside that directory.


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## nerwin

Dave442 said:


> nerwin said:
> 
> 
> 
> @Dave442 Are you talking about a keyword system kind of like this?
> 
> View attachment 113180
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, like that. But say at the car show there is an Impala I like and take 10 shots, however my Keywords on the import are only Car Show and the name of that car show. When I select my favorite shot of the Impala I would add that name to the Keywords. Later I may need the shot of an Impala and may come up with three from different shows, but then I can go to each of the Folders that are by date and see more shots.
> 
> Basically my Keywords are like part numbers and I am trying to balance the quantity of part numbers in my system so that it is manageable and at the same time is expandable to meet new business opportunities.
> 
> I use the product part number analogy as that is where I have had experience. The best thing is to spend time initially deciding on the best way to lay things out so it will be easy to use and will hold up to time and size. My current setup had to go through a couple iterations and combines in any number of tips and pointers from other LR users. There is certainly room for improvement.
> 
> Right now I know things are easy enough that a first time LR user could open my LR and do an Import and could find photos using Keywords with about five minutes of instruction. That's also important to me so that if I don't use the program for some time I can quickly get up and running again.
> 
> As a final note, as we near 2016 it's time for me to update the copyright metadata that I apply during Import. And make a 2016 Folder with its one photo so that LR will automatically place 2016 photos inside that directory.
Click to expand...


I am so overwhelmed at the moment...

So what would you do with stuff like 4th of July parade photos? Dump them all under one "4th of July" keyword or would you separate them by date or location?


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## Dave442

Ran


nerwin said:


> I created a smart collection for car shows and I must say, I kind of like this setup. I can easily find a particular car show.
> 
> View attachment 113181
> 
> The other problem though, what do I do with random car shows that don't really have name, should I just dump them under the parent keyword?



For random car shows I would probably still have in the Caption box something like date/location. That way you can at least make a filter based on something like Joes Parking Lot from inside the Car Shows Collection. Of course you can always have Joes Parking Lot as a Keyword and filter with that from within the Library Filter so you don't need to make too many Collections under your Car Shows Collection Set. 

Most of my Collections are sets of photos that are part of a job and are all photos that have been fully processed. You could say the name of the car show is the Project name or customer name and all the photos in the Collection are what I expect to send to the customer.  I color code the shots sent to the customer (as new shots will be added to the collection over time).


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## Dave442

When I look f


nerwin said:


> Dave442 said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> nerwin said:
> 
> 
> 
> @Dave442 Are you talking about a keyword system kind of like this?
> 
> View attachment 113180
> 
> 
> 
> Yes, like that. But say at the car show there is an Impala I like and take 10 shots, however my Keywords on the import are only Car Show and the name of that car show. When I select my favorite shot of the Impala I would add that name to the Keywords. Later I may need the shot of an Impala and may come up with three from different shows, but then I can go to each of the Folders that are by date and see more shots.
> 
> Basically my Keywords are like part numbers and I am trying to balance the quantity of part numbers in my system so that it is manageable and at the same time is expandable to meet new business opportunities.
> 
> I use the product part number analogy as that is where I have had experience. The best thing is to spend time initially deciding on the best way to lay things out so it will be easy to use and will hold up to time and size. My current setup had to go through a couple iterations and combines in any number of tips and pointers from other LR users. There is certainly room for improvement.
> 
> Right now I know things are easy enough that a first time LR user could open my LR and do an Import and could find photos using Keywords with about five minutes of instruction. That's also important to me so that if I don't use the program for some time I can quickly get up and running again.
> 
> As a final note, as we near 2016 it's time for me to update the copyright metadata that I apply during Import. And make a 2016 Folder with its one photo so that LR will automatically place 2016 photos inside that directory.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> I am so overwhelmed at the moment...
> 
> So what would you do with stuff like 4th of July parade photos? Dump them all under one "4th of July" keyword or would you separate them by date or location?
Click to expand...


When I look for 4th of July photos I search for that Keyword from my root directory that includes all years. So now I have five years of these shots together. Usually I have already rated the best ones  so will filter to one star rating and look at those. If there is one I particularly like from a certain location I will either filter to that location or will go to the Folder that is by date to see the full set from that day as this can have shots that were not Keyworded. I also take time when doing this to lower a rating of a shot. I may have given 10 shots a 1 star rating five years ago and now with the new shots I can drop a star on a few of those as there are probably newer shots that are better. 

Usually just in my dreams I go back to old shots and find something amazing that I had previously overlooked. Most the time I go back and find shots that are overrated compared to a current shot I put next to them.


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## nerwin

What about photos you don't remember where you took them? Do you add location data to EVERY photo in your catalog even if it's a picture you took at your desk? Or just larger shoots?

I'm sure you have a lot more pictures than do as I don't do photography professionally yet..but it just seems an overkill to me and very complicated system. I probably watched 200 YouTube on this subject and still don't know what to do. I know everyone has "their" way to doing this while it works for them, it may not work for me. So I guess I just need to find my own way of doing it that works for me because that's all that really matters. 

I really thank you for help me on this Dave.


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## Dave442

I usually give a location keyword at Import and whatever other general keywords are applicable to the full import.  Outside of that I generally do not expand on keywords for shots that do not get a star and/or Exported. Exported shots usually have a Title and Caption added. 

Sometimes you never know what you might want to find. Had some friends that my wife and I got to know at a time when their father was up in age but active. We did a number of things like boat rides and such. A year later he gets cancer and dies and one of the daughters asks if I have a photo of her dad to have at the funeral home. It would have helped to have his name as a keyword, but a search of the trip names turned up some shots with him and then went to the Folders by dates and added his name as a keyword on the shots with him, then did a filter using his name and from that selected the best image that could be photoshopped for their needs.  So while it would be nice to keyword everything, you may find it is not economical time-wise as some basic info can get you close enough later on when you can justify looking for the shot. 

Also, before going off and adding a bunch of metadata you want to read up on that so you include information that people who search for photos look for and to standardize on words so you don't end up with things like Robert and Uncle Bob when it's the same person, I have plenty of cases like that. And use plural form for most keywords; i.e: Desks is better then desk because if someone asks you to bring them some pictures of desks you will not find anything if you only search for desks when your keyword was desk, however if your keyword is desks and you search for desk you will have results.


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## nerwin

I don't export any of the keywords because I like to add those myself when uploading a photo to Flickr.

Right now, I have about 800 photos in a folder for home renovations and half of them were raw files (whoops) so I imported them into Lightroom and during the import screen I added a "Home Renovations" keyword to the photos because I want to make a collection of all the projects that have been done around the house. From there I'll probably go through them and delete any useless ones like out of focus shots or ones that are no longer needed.

I have another folder that has yet been imported and its full of pictures of my dog Clyde, what tags would you use? "clyde, dogs" Or "clyde, dog, pet"? 

Hmm.


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## Dave442

My dogs usually just get: animals, pets, dogs, and their name.

For the home renovations I don't see a problem that it was RAW. I think it is faster to just bring into LR, flag those to delete, rate the keepers. For the keepers I would add a specific Title (i.e.: front entrance, old bathroom, new bathroom, etc) and a general Caption for all, and then in Export I would use the Filename_Title in my Custom Setting for the file name and also check the Put in Subfolder box and put Home Renovations and then export the small jpgs to that directory in my Developed/Year parent directory.


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## nerwin

Dave442 said:


> My dogs usually just get: animals, pets, dogs, and their name.
> 
> For the home renovations I don't see a problem that it was RAW. I think it is faster to just bring into LR, flag those to delete, rate the keepers. For the keepers I would add a specific Title (i.e.: front entrance, old bathroom, new bathroom, etc) and a general Caption for all, and then in Export I would use the Filename_Title in my Custom Setting for the file name and also check the Put in Subfolder box and put Home Renovations and then export the small jpgs to that directory in my Developed/Year parent directory.



The renovation pictures are not even worthy of a rating, most of them are just snapshots I took, some were with a DSLR but only  a few. 80% of them were cropped to 1000px previously so there really isn't much to do with them. I also have similar photos that me and other people took during the restoration of car. They are photos that I don't plan to edit they are pretty much for documentation and to look back on. So I'm thinking about creating a folder that's called "Legacy Photos" and put them all in there and not bother having them inside of Lightroom.

Is your keywords list setup as a hierarchy? 

In case you didn't know, I have very bad OCD. Hahaha


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## nerwin

@Dave442 I have a few pictures of this really nice looking barn here in VT during the summer. I tagged it with "Barns, Vermont, Summer". Would you take it like this? Should I add a Landscape tag as well? 

Here's the picture of the barn by the way..one of my very first pictures! Took this with a crappy Sony superzoom p&s.


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## Dave442

Like the barn shot. With tags you can go crazy. I would add Red as many people only want a Red Barn.


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## nerwin

Dave442 said:


> Like the barn shot. With tags you can go crazy. I would add Red as many people only want a Red Barn.



I tried the folder structure you suggested, but I really didn't like it. So many folders I had to go through. I can't understand if you had tagged everything previously so stuff was easy to find for you..but I didn't and its just a mess. I just prefer to give a folder a name of the subject. 

A lot of my photos pre 2009 has wrong capture date, so photos that were shot in 2008 were marked with 2004 because the internal battery of the camera died and so the date never stayed when you took the battery out to charge it. Most of these photos are from home renovation projects and a car restoration project. I just don't know if I even need these images in lightroom...but then again some people think of using Lightroom has a library for ALL their photos. I just don't know what to do with these images that have wrong capture date. 

Once I get the WHOLE catalog organized, then it will be easy when imported new stuff.


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## Dave442

My shots from before 2010 are just in a 2010 folder and many of those are in folders with names of the event. Only from 2010 and on am I using the Year and then every day folders as that is when I started using LR and taking better care to keyword the images.


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## nerwin

Dave442 said:


> My shots from before 2010 are just in a 2010 folder and many of those are in folders with names of the event. Only from 2010 and on am I using the Year and then every day folders as that is when I started using LR and taking better care to keyword the images.



I suppose I could do that. I made a folder called "#Pre-2009" - I put the pound sign so it would stick above the 2010 folder. I am really making this folder structure thing more complicated than it needs to be I think haha. 

I don't think every day folders work for me, I just prefer to dump all my photos of my cat I took in march into a folder one folder under march. That works for me. But like others have said, I just need to figure out what works for me.


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## Dave442

The problem I have is there is often no one top subject in my photos. So, I may have the cat sitting on the bed, but then the cat with the kid and then the cat with the dog. That is the main reason I moved away from trying to make folders with names, over time I found the main subject changed. 

With keywords I can pull any of those together, and along with a date filter show just that one month of photos of either the cats or the dogs.


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## Braineack

use keywords, dont worry much about the folder name.  Although whatever you name the folder will be added as a keyword.

Naming them helps when you need to go back to a particular shoot instead of having to remember a date.

Keywords worked well fo rme afte rmy cat passed, I wanted to look at every single picture I've taken of her -- I type in Belle and I can see every picture of I have of her since 2002.


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## nerwin

Braineack said:


> use keywords, dont worry much about the folder name.  Although whatever you name the folder will be added as a keyword.
> 
> Naming them helps when you need to go back to a particular shoot instead of having to remember a date.
> 
> Keywords worked well fo rme afte rmy cat passed, I wanted to look at every single picture I've taken of her -- I type in Belle and I can see every picture of I have of her since 2002.



So I could just do the automatic folder naming that LR does on import and if there is important shoot or event I could give the folder a name but if its just random stuff around my house, I can just leave it be and add tags to the photos.

Back to tagging again...if I take a picture of a cake, I can add the tags "cake, food" but if it's a wedding cake, I could add "wedding cake, food"?

I'm still trying to figuring out this keywording thing, its a lot different than Flickr because with Flickr I add tags for SEO and SEO doesn't matter in Lightroom. I think the keywords in Lightroom should be used for you to find the photos you want.

@Dave442 You mentioned earlier that you like to add an S to some keywords like your desk analogy. I tried this, I have many pictures of my desk, and I just keyword them with Desk and searched for Desks and all the pictures of desks with the keyword Desk showed up even though I searched for Desks. So I'm not entirely sure if adding the S will make much difference.


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## JacaRanda

I'm not sure what you mean by automatic folder naming that LR does.  On import, I tell LR where to look and where to put.

Keywords in LR are used for whatever purpose you decide you need them for.


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## Dave442

nerwin said:


> @Dave442 You mentioned earlier that you like to add an S to some keywords like your desk analogy. I tried this, I have many pictures of my desk, and I just keyword them with Desk and searched for Desks and all the desks with the keyword Desk showed up even though I searched for Desks. So I'm not entirely sure if adding the S will make much difference.



Interesting, I just tagged a shot with Table and when I filter for Tables it does not turn up. I am using LR 5.6 in case they made some changes with CC. In general any search the more specific the more you filter out. Are you in the Library Module in Grid Layout and using the Library Filter for Text?

When you put in the filter selections you want you can then use the LOCK to keep the filter selection active as you look in other Folders (remember to unlock when done).


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## JacaRanda

nerwin said:


> Desk and searched for Desks and all the pictures of desks with the keyword Desk showed up even though I searched for Desks. So I'm not entirely sure if adding the S will make much difference.



Because the word desk is included in the word desks.  There are options that can filter exactly what you want to be included or not included (hard to think of where they are since I don't have LR in front of me at the moment).


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## Braineack

keywords arent tags.  keywords will help you find your own photos through search.  tags will help you categorize and organzie your photos online through metadata.

I might keyword a picture Pookie.

but tag it: cat, fluffy, persian





nerwin said:


> Back to tagging again...if I take a picture of a cake, I can add the tags "cake, food" but if it's a wedding cake, I could add "wedding cake, food"?
> 
> I'm still trying to figuring out this keywording thing, its a lot different than Flickr because with Flickr I add tags for SEO and SEO doesn't matter in Lightroom. I think the keywords in Lightroom should be used for you to find the photos you want.


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## nerwin

JacaRanda said:


> I'm not sure what you mean by automatic folder naming that LR does.  On import, I tell LR where to look and where to put.
> 
> Keywords in LR are used for whatever purpose you decide you need them for.



You can have Lightroom to automatically apply a date based folders structure when importing photos. I suspect this is what @Dave442 does.


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## nerwin

Braineack said:


> keywords arent tags.
> 
> 
> 
> nerwin said:
> 
> 
> 
> Back to tagging again...if I take a picture of a cake, I can add the tags "cake, food" but if it's a wedding cake, I could add "wedding cake, food"?
> 
> I'm still trying to figuring out this keywording thing, its a lot different than Flickr because with Flickr I add tags for SEO and SEO doesn't matter in Lightroom. I think the keywords in Lightroom should be used for you to find the photos you want.
Click to expand...


I just wish there was an option to automatically disable "include keywords on export" when every time you create a keyword.


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## JacaRanda

nerwin said:


> JacaRanda said:
> 
> 
> 
> I'm not sure what you mean by automatic folder naming that LR does.  On import, I tell LR where to look and where to put.
> 
> Keywords in LR are used for whatever purpose you decide you need them for.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> You can have Lightroom to automatically apply a date based folders structure when importing photos. I suspect this is what @Dave442 does.
> 
> View attachment 113246
Click to expand...


Okay gotcha.  As long as I know I'm still telling it to do even that.


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## nerwin

@Dave442 I hope you don't me picking your brain.

I'm just curious, how would you keyword a storm photo?

Like this one for an example.


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## Dave442

I would follow with the plural so it would be Stormy and Clouds, to that I would probably add Thunder, Rain and Sky (where I don't use the plural). 

I tend to take more shots of field crops, so my keywords for a photo like that would actually be more focused on that as that is what I would probably search for.


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## nerwin

It seems like a lot of work but then again once I keyword everything and rate most stuff, it won't be so bad when I Import next time. To keyword 10,000 photos it sure does takes a long time, haha.


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## JacaRanda

nerwin said:


> It seems like a lot of work but then again once I keyword everything and rate most stuff, it won't be so bad when I Import next time. To keyword 10,000 photos it sure does takes a long time, haha.



This is just me, but unless you have a gazillion photos that important to you - keyword for the most part going forward.  Not worth spending precious life keywording a gazillion photos you won't every do anything with, or that you will create again likely better than before.  If you are bored and have lots of time on your hands....as you were.


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## nerwin

JacaRanda said:


> nerwin said:
> 
> 
> 
> It seems like a lot of work but then again once I keyword everything and rate most stuff, it won't be so bad when I Import next time. To keyword 10,000 photos it sure does takes a long time, haha.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is just me, but unless you have a gazillion photos that important to you - keyword for the most part going forward.  Not worth spending precious life keywording a gazillion photos you won't every do anything with, or that you will create again likely better than before.  If you are bored and have lots of time on your hands....as you were.
Click to expand...


Well there are a lot of photos that I have forgot about and never shared. So I thought about working on them cause there are some really good shots I just forgot about them. I've been removing a lot of useless junk too. I don't have exactly 10,000 photos, but around 8,000. I did a whole year's worth of photos in probably 45 minutes so not bad.


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## JacaRanda

nerwin said:


> JacaRanda said:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> nerwin said:
> 
> 
> 
> It seems like a lot of work but then again once I keyword everything and rate most stuff, it won't be so bad when I Import next time. To keyword 10,000 photos it sure does takes a long time, haha.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> This is just me, but unless you have a gazillion photos that important to you - keyword for the most part going forward.  Not worth spending precious life keywording a gazillion photos you won't every do anything with, or that you will create again likely better than before.  If you are bored and have lots of time on your hands....as you were.
> 
> Click to expand...
> 
> 
> Well there are a lot of photos that I have forgot about and never shared. So I thought about working on them cause there are some really good shots I just forgot about them. I've been removing a lot of useless junk too. I don't have exactly 10,000 photos, but around 8,000. I did a whole year's worth of photos in probably 45 minutes so not bad.
Click to expand...

Oh 45 minutes.  You are hired. Haaaa.


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## nerwin

I've watched a TON of YouTube videos and read a lot of blogs about how you should organize your photos in Lightroom and a lot of them tell you to avoid the date folder structure because Lightroom already has a way to browse by date. But if you look for photos by date, filter, keywords or collections then I guess why does it matter what your folder structure looks like if you never browse it anyways.?


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## Dave442

I just use the Date format as it just requires a quick check at Import to see that I it is going where it is supposed to. The Keywords could be the name of the event or subject, if various then I will add later. An after selected the photos to process I may add a more keywords to those specific photos.  

This is usually a time to do a bit of photo sorting so I'll probably be doing a bit as well between now and the end of the year.


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## nerwin

Dave442 said:


> I just use the Date format as it just requires a quick check at Import to see that I it is going where it is supposed to. The Keywords could be the name of the event or subject, if various then I will add later. An after selected the photos to process I may add a more keywords to those specific photos.
> 
> This is usually a time to do a bit of photo sorting so I'll probably be doing a bit as well between now and the end of the year.



I've already processed the 2010 folder and almost finished 2011 so far. What I ended up doing was saving the metadata and then remove all the photos in 2011 and then import them back into Lightroom using the data format and I've found more images that I never seen before..like ones that never got imported or shots that I removed, but not deleted from the hard drive. Could of been accidental or on purpose but either way, cool! I've always felt like I was missing photos. 

Its a lot of work, but I think it will be worth it in the end. 

So we have a classic car that we bring to shows a lot and I take a lot of pictures of it. I'm trying to figure out how I can keyword the car so when I search for photos of our car, I only want to see ours not someone else's car that's the same make and model. Any ideas? 

I'm still on the fence about what to do with our home renovation photos. I'm thinking to just export them as JPG and remove them from the Lightroom catalog.


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## Dave442

Now when I delete I delete from disk, otherwise you have photos that remain on the disk, but are not in LR.

My '68 442 I had as Dave442 (hence the name here). Just need to give your car a name.

The Home Renovation photos can just be JPG in a directory on an external disc. I would take them out of LR. I guess an option would be to leave one photo and in the Caption note the location that you stored the JPG's at.


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## nerwin

Dave442 said:


> Now when I delete I delete from disk, otherwise you have photos that remain on the disk, but are not in LR.
> 
> My '68 442 I had as Dave442 (hence the name here). Just need to give your car a name.
> 
> The Home Renovation photos can just be JPG in a directory on an external disc. I would take them out of LR. I guess an option would be to leave one photo and in the Caption note the location that you stored the JPG's at.



68 442 is a nice ride, we got a 76 Ford Torino. You know..the Starsky & Hutch car. Haha.


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## nerwin

@Dave442 How would you keyword travel photos, like say if I visited a small city with a big lake with the family for half a day. Took pictures of the lake, boats, downtown, birds, etc. Would you just use general keywords for the name of the lake, town/city and state?


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## Dave442

For Travel I often include word as one of the Keywords. Then the general location is also added to all the photos and possibly the main landmark, so Lake, Town, City, State is usually good. Sometimes I add the County if it is something that I may use in a search as it often covers a day of travel while a small town doesn't.  I also add Country to photos outside the U.S.
I usually don't expect my Keywords to get me right down to the photo I am looking for, but if I had some decent bird shots from that trip I would add Birds (and BIF if really lucky) as a keyword at least on the picture or two that were Rated. Later, if looking for a bird shot I would see one or two from that trip and may take a look at the Folder(s) of that trip (which are just by date).


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## nerwin

Dave442 said:


> For Travel I often include word as one of the Keywords. Then the general location is also added to all the photos and possibly the main landmark, so Lake, Town, City, State is usually good. Sometimes I add the County if it is something that I may use in a search as it often covers a day of travel while a small town doesn't.  I also add Country to photos outside the U.S.
> I usually don't expect my Keywords to get me right down to the photo I am looking for, but if I had some decent bird shots from that trip I would add Birds (and BIF if really lucky) as a keyword at least on the picture or two that were Rated. Later, if looking for a bird shot I would see one or two from that trip and may take a look at the Folder(s) of that trip (which are just by date).



I think I'm slowly getting the hang of this.

I created a parent keyword called Subjects so all subject keywords like, flowers, shoes, sunglasses, animals, etc all go under that parent keyword. I kind of like this because I can easily find photos when browsing the keywords.

I like the fact that I don't have to worry about naming the folders anymore..I can just import them..then cull the best, rate, edit and keyword and I most likely won't ever have to go back to that folder again.

I created a Temp folder for shots that I don't plan on keeping..these maybe test shots or just shots for eBay, Facebook or Craigslist etc. If I do plan on keeping them, its just a simple drag and drop process.

Do you keep videos in Lightroom? I personally don't. It makes me install Quicktime and I hate Quicktime, haha. I just deselect videos when importing photos into Lightroom and manually take them off the memory card and into the proper video folder I've created. From there I edit it using Vegas Pro.


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## Dave442

I use the Keywords Test_Shot and For_Others on shots that were just brought into LR for checking something or maybe a quick test edit of someones photo for critique. Then I go back an delete these images. 

I do go back to my date Folders, just because I just don't get around to adding  complete Keywords to every photo. So if I have a photo with the Keyword I may check some of the date Folders that did turn up with photos that had the Keyword for other similar shots.


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## nerwin

Dave442 said:


> I use the Keywords Test_Shot and For_Others on shots that were just brought into LR for checking something or maybe a quick test edit of someones photo for critique. Then I go back an delete these images.
> 
> I do go back to my date Folders, just because I just don't get around to adding  complete Keywords to every photo. So if I have a photo with the Keyword I may check some of the date Folders that did turn up with photos that had the Keyword for other similar shots.



@Dave442 Do you add photos taken with your phone to the Lightroom library? I know some create a separate folder for those shots. Just curious what you do with them.


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## Dave442

I rarely import my phone or P&S the photos into LR. I used to use ACDSee, then IrfanView and now just use Photos on the Mac. I do have a set of Folders for importing these photos, but usually only for select photos or a group that needs to be whittled down for a slide show of a trip.


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## nerwin

Well I'm almost done..half way through the 2015 folder now. Figuring out proper simple keywords for the photos are harder than it sounds. I had some that I just coulden't figure out how to keyword so I just gave them a "Misc" keyword and I'll sort them out later. 

How would you keyword a nature macro shot like this? The only thing I can think of is adding "Macros" keyword to it.


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## Dave442

What I would put on that macro shot is Macro, Flora, Plants, Pine Cones, Seed Scales, Lichen (or whatever is on the end of the seed scales). Of course if your interests are elsewhere it could include Abstract, shallow DOF, bokeh.


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## nerwin

I am in way over my head with keywords..oh my goodness. I don't know how you do it..must have super powers hahaha. I'm sorry, but dang it's really confusing. I'm sure it will be worth it once I figure it all out. Still watching YouTube videos and reading blogs to gather ideas. What a chore.


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## Dave442

I know Lew has done much more than I have with Keywords and he posted a couple links you should check out. They are in last post in this thread from last year:
LR5.6 synchronizing folders | Photography Forum


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## nerwin

Well pretty much done..now its just finishing things up. I have quite a few shots taken from my phone..not sure if I should organize them like the others or keep them all in one folder.  Anyways, here's my keyword list so far.


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## Dave442

Looks like it was worth the time, ready for 2016.


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## nerwin

Dave442 said:


> Looks like it was worth the time, ready for 2016.



Well still not 100% done..though I don't think any of us will be 100% done with organizing Lightroom.

I still got to weed out my MISC images and then keyword keepers from my phone. After that, I gotta work out on collections.


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## andysmom

I am reading this thread with interest. 
My lightroom catalog is also a disaster and since pictures have been moved around on my hard lightroom cannot find them and I think the only way I can fix it it is to start over.

I am a Mom and just take pictures of family functions etc. I have decided that I would like my file setup to be by date, pretty much exactly like nerwin posted above in post #7....  year, month with folders in each month with a specific events.  Am I correct in thinking that if I don't remember the date of a specific event I can search my keywords to find something?  As an example, I am very active with the Boy Scouts of America and I take many pictures at campouts, etc of the boys in our troop.  When one of our scouts reaches the rank of Eagle, many parents do a slide presentation and I am often asked if I have pictures of their son I can send them.  If I use my keywords properly and attach the boy's name to a picture I should be able to search that keyword and find all the pictures of that boy I have, correct?  Is a keyword different than a tag?

So I guess my question is how do I get all my 22,xxx pictures out of lightroom to start over and how can I develop a good workflow to get my older pictures in one folder at a time so I can keyword/flag/delete as my time permits?    I should add that the reason I have that many pictures in lightroom is because my husband imported them all at once with no regard for any file structure.


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## Dave442

The file structure may not matter and you can just build a good Keyword hierarchy. 

You need to think first how you want things grouped together. 
I might try People, and that put Boy Scouts, and then under Boy Scouts have the name of each kid. Under People you could then add other Keywords like Troop Leaders, Parents, etc.
Then another Keyword for Events and under Events add Keywords for each Event you have pictures from.

Look at the link in my post #65 and then at the links in that post where there is some good information on how to plan to set up a good Keyword system and further links from those pages.


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## nerwin

Here I am again..struggling with this same topic. I was doing good, then I got lazy and didn't want to tag anything. 

It's not easy keeping up with it. But its soo worth it in the long run I think. 

A while ago, I needed to find a certain photo and I just searched for it in Lightroom and boom, found it within seconds. So I totally see the advantages, its just whether or not I'm able stick with this method. 

I think I'll wait for a rainy day and work on it some more.


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## KmH

Keyword templates.


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## Dave442

Keep at it. If I have a photo of a cat I do not consider that I have that cat photo until it has the keyword. On those that are exported I try to include a title and description.


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