How can I best organize my digital photos, which I put on the hard drive using various programs.?

Question

My computer has Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0, Adobe Album Starter 3, Picasa2, FinePix, HP Image Zone, ArcSoft PhotoImpression 4, and probably others. I've confused myself, but each one seemed an improvement at the time. I like the way Picasa arranges the pix and I like the versatility of Elements. To make things worse, I don't always give file names, so most of them are called DSC something. The instruction manuals seem to be written by aliens from a former planet no longer recognized by our scientists.

Answer 1

Here is what I do .... I am a photographer with well over 20,000 photo's. not to mention digital art.

Each time I save photos from my camera, i create a file by date. I put it in this format, so that it is in sequence: 2006.10.08 for todays date. if i have more than one memory card for one date, I add "a", "b", etc as in 2006.10.08a . If it is a particular subject, for reference, I will put 2006.10.08.zoo. For me, with such a huge number of photo's, this system works. You could set up folders for varying subjects, or in some programs you can tag photo's , but I found that too time consuming and fussy.

I use Picasa2 to download the photo's from my memory cards. Also, when looking for a particular set of photo's, i can quickly scroll through the thumbnails.

I don't use the album feature on any of my other photo programs, as Picasa is fast and uses few system resources, while the rest of the programs are sluggish.

Hope this helps some.