Smugmuggers, how do you organize your photos ?

[mill4023]

I decided to put all my photos on Smugmug. I've been uploading 24x7 for the last few days, but it's clearly going to be unmanageable to have 5000 photos all in one gallery.

When I want to share, I can create a gallery for something specific (Disney, 2007, etc.) That part is easy. But for storing my entire collection of photos, there are just way too many to go through them all and organize them by subject. I'm used to storing them by date on my computer and in Photoshop, so I thought that would make sense on Smugmug as well.

Right now, I'm thinking of creating a category for each year, then creating one gallery for each month in each year category. So I'd have categories: 2003, 2004, etc. Then within each of those, I'd have a gallery for January, February, etc.

What do you think?

What kind of organizing scheme do you use for yours ?

 

[NostalgicDad]

I know it does seem cumbersome at first when trying to organize thousands of pictures on SmugMug. But it seems to have gotten fairly intuitive for me on my pro level account. I just have some major categories on the home page which includes family, various, and a category for ones I intend to sell. I also try to use one for new photos uploaded within the past 2 weeks or so. Beyond those top level categories I use sub-categories that really help you break out into different topics before going to the actual galleries. At this point I've got upwards of 10,000 photos on my site and I guess it seems pretty manageable but of course I'm used to navigating it all the time. Sometimes my wife tells me she can't find a new gallery so I tweak it a bit to make things easier such as featuring a gallery or 2 or 3 on the home page. One thing I like about SmugMug is that the site is quite flexible and they seem to continuously be adding features here and there. Their support is super responsive when you need some assistance as well.

There are a lot of configurations that look and work great. You might look at the other sites from smugmugger's on this board who have some really nice ones. Here's the link to my site......

NostalgicDad's SmugMug Site

 

[Josh125]

By major categories.

Family
Travel
Wedding
etc
etc

Here is a little tool that helps a ton to load pics.
http://www.shahine.com/garage/content/SendToSmugMug.aspx

And last but not least, the smugmug (dgrin) forum. Lots of great people and information. I couldn't imgaine using another service, smug is top notch. They have a whole section devoted to smugmug site operations, hacks, etc..just great
www.dgrin.com

Here is my basic site, I beta tested smug many years ago and have recieved a free basic account ever since. However, I would gladly pay if they cut me off....Andy if you happen to read this, please dont' cut me off
Link

 

[MICKEY88]

I use Zenfolio which is similar to smugmug, I chose Zenfolio because it allows ordering prints from mpix as well as ezprints,


you can check out my system here..


www.starrrshots.com

 

[Lizziejane]

I'm sure going through 5,000 pictures would be daunting! The thing to ask yourself with your smugmug account, is who will primarily be using it? If it's just you, then it makes sense to store your pictures whatever way makes most sense to you.

If, on the other hand, your intent with the smugmug account is to share with family and friends, you need to look at it from their persepctive. If aunt Bertha is looking for that photo you snapped of Freddy Jr. 2 years ago, chances are she won't remember the "when", only the "who". From personal experience, it only makes sense to others to file them by subject rather than date. More work for you initially, but much more user-friendly for those you are sharing your pictures with.

I file mine by categorty - people, nature, animals, general - within general, I have vacations, events, etc. You can take a peek at www.ceejanerun.smugmug.com

 

[LMarge]

I have around 8 to 10 galleries, but within those they are broken down by event/year -- the flow would look like this:

Family>Holidays>Christmas 2006, Christmas 2007

Family>Holidays> Easter 2007

Family>Everyday 2006 (for those goofy shots that don't fall into any particular area)

Gymnastics>QCG 2006>Girl Power Meet

Steven's Sports>Baseball 2007

Steven's Sports>Basketball 2006

I also have Disney, Travel, Adirondacks, and several others. Hope this helps!!
Blessings,
Marge

 

[mill4023]

I'm sure going through 5,000 pictures would be daunting! The thing to ask yourself with your smugmug account, is who will primarily be using it? If it's just you, then it makes sense to store your pictures whatever way makes most sense to you.

If, on the other hand, your intent with the smugmug account is to share with family and friends, you need to look at it from their persepctive. If aunt Bertha is looking for that photo you snapped of Freddy Jr. 2 years ago, chances are she won't remember the "when", only the "who". From personal experience, it only makes sense to others to file them by subject rather than date. More work for you initially, but much more user-friendly for those you are sharing your pictures with.

I file mine by categorty - people, nature, animals, general - within general, I have vacations, events, etc. You can take a peek at www.ceejanerun.smugmug.com

I agree that creating galleries by subject makes more sense for the stuff I'm going to share. But a lot of the photos are older ones that I probably won't be sharing. So I was really thinking of it as two different organization schemes. One for sharing and one that would be made up of private galleries and would hold every picture I've ever taken. That's the one I was thinking of doing by date since it would mainly be used by me.

After playing around with it a bit though, it seems like it's kind of a pain to copy photos from one gallery to another. Is there an easier way than choosing the "Make a 2nd copy", then doint a "Move pictures"?

 

[Lizziejane]

Are you using the "move photos, expert" option? I agree, it's a pain, but the "expert" option is much easier than the one by one method.

Sorry, just re-read your post - try the "move photos expert" option - you'll find it in the drop-down box for "photo tools" in your gallery. Much quicker and easier than the make 2nd copy option.

 

[mill4023]

Are you using the "move photos, expert" option? I agree, it's a pain, but the "expert" option is much easier than the one by one method.

Sorry, just re-read your post - try the "move photos expert" option - you'll find it in the drop-down box for "photo tools" in your gallery. Much quicker and easier than the make 2nd copy option.

Yeah, I tried that. But it still moves them, rather than copying them. I'd like to be able to copy, so the photo would be in the new gallery I'm going to share, but would still exist in the private galleries where I'm going to store everything. I haven't found a way yet to copy photos without doing it in 2 steps.

 

[MICKEY88]

it might be easier to create duplicate folders on your pc, copy your pics to them, then just upload each folder to it's corresponding folder on smugmug

 

[WickedWench]

I created my own "Disney" category. I group them by type and by year, such as Polynesian Resort 2007, Disneyland 2005. My 2007 ones are only half done tho, and I really don't have that many yet. Sorting only by date won't be very easy for others browsing your galleries.

Also, be sure to join the Disney community on smugmug, and submit your galleries! I love browsing the communities and giving people's photos a .