File naming conventions?

[Round Tuit]

I’ve had good luck using a simple date-project-sequence format, like 20240512-Landscape-001. It keeps things sortable and easy to scan. I also tag versions with v1, v2, etc. if I do multiple edits. How do others handle versioning or separating selects from rejects?

Welcome to this forum. .
It seems that you have reached the stage where you could use a digital asset management software. However if your volume of photo is small enough, you could always add one or more decimal fraction to your version tags i.e v1.0.3

[Manfred M]

I’ve had good luck using a simple date-project-sequence format, like 20240512-Landscape-001. It keeps things sortable and easy to scan. I also tag versions with v1, v2, etc. if I do multiple edits. How do others handle versioning or separating selects from rejects?

This is a very old thread and the originator has not visited the site in about 3 years.

[DanK]

This is a very old thread and the originator has not visited the site in about 3 years.

Yes, it would be better to start a new thread with an appropriate title. That would get more responses. However, the question is still a good one:

How do others handle versioning or separating selects from rejects?

Unfortunately, I don't think there is an easy answer. What works depends both on how you shoot and how you like to organize, as well as what software you use. I use Lightroom classic as my home base. I have one master directory labeled "photos" that is backed up twice (one local mirror, one cloud backup). Under that, level 2, I have categories, e.g., "dessicated flowers" and "architecture". Under these, level 3, are subfolders, usually one per shoot, labeled by date and topic, e.g., "2020_07_25_salmon falls rocks". If a level 2 folder gets too big, I start a new one, with a start date added to the directory name.

That's easy. The hard part is what to do with the photos within the final directory. Clear discards I, well, discard. If there are a lot of images that are similar, I use the star system to flag the ones I think are better. I usually end up with some that have been edited on a trial basis, some that have been finished, a number that are flagged as having some potential, and a lot that have no stars and that I would have deleted if storage weren't almost free.

One issue is that raw files are small, and the parametric edits from Lightroom or ACR are in tiny sidecar files. The only storage issue arises if you move images into a pixel editor. Extensive photoshop edits can create huge files.