On April 10th, I gave a presentation to the ALL PhotoSIG group on photo management. The Academy for Life-Long Learning (ALL) is managed through the Cy-Fair College which is part of the Lone Star College system around Houston, Texas.
Because of County and State social distancing rules and shelter-in-place orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the PhotoSIG meeting was conducted online. The following is an outline of what I presented.
Photo Management
- Photo management is a subset of digital asset management.
- Photo management is the organization and classification of photographs as digital assets.
- Digital photography has allowed us all to become professional photographers in terms of the cost per image.
- Digital photography has also allowed us to lose all of our photos with a single click, software upgrade or hard drive crash.
Photo Management Software
- Google search ”what is the best free photo management software?”
- Adobe bridge. Bridge CC is a free photo organizing software that provides central access to all files and resources that are needed to work with creative projects. …
- Google photos. …
- Picktorial. …
- Google picasa. …
- Studioline photo basic. …
- Jetphoto studio. …
- Xnviewmp. …
- Faststone.
- My recommendation: Adobe Bridge
- Adobe Bridge is a core product of Adobe’s Creative Suite which is used by thousands of professional photographers
- I use Adobe Lightroom to manage over 150,000 images

Adobe Lightroom for Photo Management
- Incorporates all the features of Adobe Bridge plus extensive additional bulk photo management and editing features
- Used by most of the professional photographers I have met
- Saves Metadata from Catalogs into each Image File
- Can manage thousands of large image files effectively
- Can sync GPS Track-log to insert geospatial metadata
- Cost US$9.99/Month Subscription
- Lightroom on desktop (PC & Mac) and mobile
- Lightroom Classic (Cloud based)
- Photoshop on desktop (PC & Mac) and iPad
- Your own portfolio website and social media tools
- 20GB of cloud storage (about 4,000 JPEGs)
Photo Management Workflow
Professional photographers recommending establishing a workflow to follow to organize your photographs on a regular and consistent basis.
My Photo Management Workflow
- In the Camera
- Ensure all cameras are set to the correct date and time
- Memory Card Management
- Shoot RAW & JPEG
(You have two copies of every image in camera) - Use High Speed Memory Cards. Essential for high speed, HDR and video photography
- Multiple memory cards in some cameras
- Swap out memory cards if possible
- Shoot RAW & JPEG
- Cloud Synchronization
- Turn on My Photo Stream on iPhone/iPad. Photos will sync with your Mac
- Android? – Sorry, I don’t know.
- Make sure your data plan can afford synchronization, particularly Internationally
- Every Day
- Swap out memory cards in Camera
- Copy images from card to external drive and/or laptop Mac/PC
- Export images from MacOS Photos to filesystem as JPGs
- Make at least two copies of all photos in different folders
- Ideally have one copy on multiple devices
- Retain one as ORIGINAL (Remember Negatives!) and make READ ONLY.
- My recommendation for travelers:
Western Digital My Passport Pro- 1 to 4 Tb Hard Drive self-contained with USB battery and WiFi Hub
- Automatically copies photos from SD Cards, USB drives and Phones to hard drive
- View and manage photos on Tablet/Phone over WiFi
- Post-Processing
- Organize, annotate and categorize one copy of all images
- File System Organization
- Recommend Year and Month Folder Organization
- 2020 – 2029
- 2020
- 01 – January
- 02 – February
- ……
- Recommend Year and Month Folder Organization
- Copy today’s photos from all cameras to this month’s folder
- Synchronize folder to import photos in Lightroom
- Quick view and delete obvious bad photos
- Organize, annotate and categorize one copy of all images
- Photo annotation. Editing Photo Metadata (EXIF and IPTC)
- Copyright
- Photographer
- Title/Caption/Comment
- Capture Date and Time (If necessary)
- Face Recognition
- Geospatial (GPS) coordinates
- Rating (0-5/Color)
- Photo Categorization
- Use Keywords
- Save Metadata to Image Files. Stored in EXIF and IPTC data fields
- Bulk Renaming of Photo filenames
- Recommend:
YYYY_MM_{1-9999 Sequence}
- Recommend:
- Photo annotation. Editing Photo Metadata (EXIF and IPTC)
- Cloud Synchronization
- Use WiFI Internet Connection
- Synchronize to Home Computer
- Editing (Non-destructive, with bulk file capability in Lightroom)
- Spot and Red Eye removal
- Crop, Rotate, Transform, Lens Correction
- White Balance, Exposure, Highlights, Shadows
- Contrast, Vignette, Saturation, Clarity
- Photoshop
- All the other image editing stuff!
- Organize Favorites
- Display / Share / Publishing / Printing / Blogging
- Backup your Photos!
- Multiple Local Copies
- Automated if possible, at least every day
- Cloud Synchronization (not storage)
- Microsoft OneDrive, Apple iCloud
- I use SugarSync to synchronize across multiple PCs and Macs
- Avoid single file backups
- Single large backup files can be corrupted and everything is lost
- File copying is slower but safer. Use incremental file copy so only new images and changes are copied.
- Store at least one copy of all your images offsite
- Remember Harvey!
- Recommend:
5 Tb Western Digital USB 3 Hard Drive
A PDF copy of the presentation is here!
Thanks, I hope you find these ideas useful!
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