How do you organize your personal folders and files on your Mac

[evanfuchs]

@TranquilRetiree

Now, although the native Mac/IOS Photos apps are very useful in countless respects, the organizational concepts embodied within them of “Moments,” “Memories,” “Locations,” “Years,” etc. for a picture I digitalized on a scanner in Windows in 2005 of my paternal grandfather taken in 1938 are less so. To be sure I can do a face recognition search and find some pictures, but that is limited in countless ways - like finding out “What did grandma’s house look like after the 1952 flood”.

It’s like you are in my head! I do insert/correct date and location in these cases, but even for photos only 15 years old it’s not feasible.

[Jonathan_Davis]

Along with all my quoting below, I’m torn on this. I use Devonthink to organize my current files I’m working on. Have gotten into tagging too which is nice. Hesitant to just index stuff but also would it be bad to import too? Would I just have automation to auto place and tag this in the right place? I can post this elsewhere in a DevonThink thread as well as maybe that’s be more appropriate to answer my question.

@bowline

I continue with a folder system I initiated in the late 80s, and I now have 50,000+ articles and other files based on topics inside Documents

I’d think over the course of 30 years this could be cleaned out right? Seems like a lot saved and I’d imagine some of it might not be relevant anymore.I do admire your organization though of things being compartmentalized.

@Meredith

I have a series of level one folders but try not to create too many sub-folders under them - mostly because the spotlight search is powerful enough to find whatever I need. I used to have a complicated set of folders 3-5 deep but ran into a similar problem with not being able to find things. Now, I tend to store bills etc by financial year.

I completely agree!

@tomalmy

I keep most things on a server computer. There is one share for statements, one for documents, and one for archival storage of projects (active projects are kept local, and typically synced between my iMac and MacBookPro using Resilio Sync).

That’s a cool system! Are you running a bunch of VM’s or using a UnRaid/Freenas system? Really curious!

@maennig

If you have a large amount of data and want to get an even better organization of your files, you could have a look at DEVONthink, that has been mentioned in this forum multiple times already. It would allow you to sync your data to your iPhone and iPad as well (using DEVONthink To Go), giving you access to your complete archive wherever you are. You will never want to know again how the folder structure on your Mac really looks like.

I love DEVONTHink but am not sure where it quite fits in my life. I’m using it for new things but part of me wants to through old things in too so it’s easier to find. Thoughts? It would be great for me to have everything in one system but I’m hesitant to just index everything though maybe I could separate into several databases and then merge them when done tagging and organizing.

@TranquilRetiree

The point to this is not the specifics but the underlying principle of how to organize personal files of any kind. As much as I love them, my photographic collection is not dependent upon anything Apple did yesterday, does today, or decides to do tomorrow. It is not dependent upon any proprietary software. It works on a Raspberry Pi running Raspbian/Linux, and (I hope) will “work” with whatever comes next in this ever-changing world.

This is a really good point to bring up. Additionally I’ve been meaning to do something similar but am not quite sure given Lightroom or Apple Photos could fall by the wayside in years from now. Then is all the time and work tagged faces and such wasted?

@tomalmy

Do all of my backups (particularly in the cloud) maintain the tags. Embedding information into the file names and folder structure is cross-platform for any system or storage of the past couple decades.

True, though I intend to use Mac for some time.

[OogieM]

I’d like to speak to the photo metadata issue.

I’ve got a huge photo collection both in the process of being digitized and many existing digital files from various digital cameras. (currently 20,000 digital files, about another 20,000 film images to scan) I am using LightRoom to collect and annotate all the metadata. Because it’s an SQLite Database if you are willing to you can always recover all the info from it. I’ve poked at the database structure, it’s complex but not that bad. My LambTracker program has a much more complex database schema. So I’m confident that even if LightRoom goes away I can still recover the metadata info I put into it.

[bowline]

@Jonathan_Davis

I continue with a folder system I initiated in the late 80s, and I now have 50,000+ articles and other files based on topics inside Documents

I’d think over the course of 30 years this could be cleaned out right?

Not really. But thanks anyway.

[ibuys]

Also, Dr. Bunsen has a series of posts where he goes into great detail about his file naming scheme. I’ve taken a bit from those posts, a bit from MacSparky, and a bit from my own experience to come up with a system that works for me. But, if you are serious about the longevity of your system, his posts are worth a read:

• Part 1: http://www.drbunsen.org/naming-and-searching-files-part-1/
• Part 2: http://www.drbunsen.org/naming-and-searching-files-part-2/
• Part 3: http://www.drbunsen.org/naming-and-searching-files-part-3/

He uses a strict file naming scheme and one big archive folder to organize his files.

[dfay]

@Jonathan_Davis

Do all of my backups (particularly in the cloud) maintain the tags. Embedding information into the file names and folder structure is cross-platform for any system or storage of the past couple decades.

True, though I intend to use Mac for some time.

I’d recommend you check whether you can restore a tagged file from backup and actually get the tags back. Only iCloud among the major cloud services maintains tags on iOS ( see Finder tags on iOS ) - Dropbox will transfer them from one Mac to another but not to other systems. Checking Backblaze now…

Update: the ZIP file from Backblaze when unzipped does not have the tags that were on the file I backed up. Interestingly zipping and unzipping on the Mac itself does preserve tags.

Another thing to test which I can’t do at the moment is whether external HD that are not formatted in AFS or HFS retain tags. I doubt it. If you haven’t been reformatting external drives before using for backup, they may be in NTFS or even FAT32 & hence not preserving tags.

[Lars]

@OogieM

… I am using LightRoom to collect and annotate all the metadata. Because it’s an SQLite Database if you are willing to you can always recover all the info from it…

I store XMPs with the raw files. So, every XMP-capable photo manager is able to read the metadata.

[tomalmy]

@Jonathan_Davis

@tomalmy

I keep most things on a server computer. There is one share for statements, one for documents, and one for archival storage of projects (active projects are kept local, and typically synced between my iMac and MacBookPro using Resilio Sync).

That’s a cool system! Are you running a bunch of VM’s or using a UnRaid/Freenas system? Really curious!

Neither. It’s a Mac mini running Server.app. Some shares are set to be only accessible by my wife and myself. Some are publicly accessible for reading by anyone/anything on the LAN, such as the media files. Project archives are accessible only by myself. By using shares instead of just making the entire drive public I can move the share’s files around without having to change anything outside the server.

[OogieM]

Most of my stuff is not RAW format so no sidecar xmps are made.

My archival scans are TIFFs most more recent digital photography is JPEG

[OogieM]

Yep, those posts are some of the info I used to develop my own slightly modified version of naming. Works great once you decide and implement it.

[jsingh]

I have toyed with the idea of digitalizing our photo albums as well and really like the idea of your system. Do you feel like the image quality you got out of the scanner was durable (i.e. did the resolution hold up)? This is my biggest concern.

[OogieM]

Long term archival quality scans is a huge issue for me becaue I’m working to scan a lot of stuff for the historical society as well. For a really good book on how to determine what resolution to scan at get the book

“Digital Imaging A Practical Approach” by Jill Koelling

https://smile.amazon.com/Digital-Imaging-Practical-Approach-Association-ebook/dp/B00F1RHPVE/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1534250759&sr=1-1-fkmr0&keywords=koelling+jill+digital+scan+photograph+historical

It goes into detail about how to determine what is suitable.

This resource has a lot of good info too https://dpbestflow.org/node/633

And of course the venerable DAM book by Krogh and its children. http://thedambook.com/the-dam-bookshop/ I have all the books and his one on using a high end digital camera instead of a scanner is great, if you already have the camera. I’ve actually put the scanning of slides on hold until I can test some of his ideas.

Getting a proper scanning target to fine tune your individual scanner is also a really good idea.Individual devices of the smae make and model wil have different scanning characteristics.

And once you have the files plan on how to migrate them to new storage media over time as technology changes.

[TranquilRetiree]

I suppose the actual viewing experience is in part dependent upon the size, quality, resolution, and scaling of the screen you view them on and your distance from it. There are many variables. But fundamentally the underlying file can’t have more information than the original print. I know I can see the pictures I scanned in the mid-2000s today on my iPad Pro/iMac far better than my family can see the same yellowing prints in paper albums behind plastic with the adhesive turning brown.

Historically I used a simple flatbed scanner set on 200 ppi scanning in the JPEG format. We view those images in a copy of the collection imported into the Photos apps on Mac/IOS, but as I said do not use those apps to either organize or store the actual collection. We use Photos only for the purposes of displaying them on our array of Apple devices. We very much like how they display.

Currently I scan very few pictures as everything new to me is already digital. Were I to start the project today, I suspect I would scan 300 ppi JPEGs to take better advantage of current Retina displays, though I wonder whether that wonderfully-hued Polaroid from the 1970s would look better to me if scanned at 300 ppi than 200 ppi on a 5k iMac scaled normally. I have not tried it so I do not know. But the downsides of a larger file size to me in 2018 are far less than they were in the mid-2000s.

All I can say is that for me personally this works very well, and has for over a decade now.

[Jonathan_Davis]

I’ve heard that the Epson flatbed scanners are really good for this. Honestly I’ve been torn given the time commitment needed and organization to complete this project.

[OogieM]

I’m using an Epson Scanner with the VueScan Software. I scan most things at 2400 dpi because even though my scanner claims to have optical scan resolution of 9600 dpi it does not in fact actually perform at that level. 2400 is a compromise between file size and resolution. A few things also get scanned at 4800. For most of my material my scan resolution is far poorer than the original and I am losing data when I scan. However, scanning at a higher resolution than the optical resolution of my scanner won’t help much. For me 2400 is the minimum I am willing to accept, anything less and I lose WAY too much quality. I’m focusing on a true archival scan to Library of Congress standards. YMMV

The organization is what takes the time. I can strongly suggest you document your procedures once you figure them out.

The time commitment is an issue as well. I have considered sending items off to a scanning service. The only one that has made my list is digmypics.com because they keep everythign in house. I am considering sending a sample of the color negatives, color slides and odd size black and white negatives off to them for scanning at several resolutions to help in deciding what makes sense. I figured that if I sent everything off to them that I want to scan it would cost me about $15K or so. That’s not exactly in my budget.My plan at this point is to scan and catalog everything and then select subsets that need the higher resolution scan and send those off.

The glass plate negatives take about 12 minutes per image to scan and another 2-3 minutes to finish the post processing and save. The files are about 380MB per image. 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 Color slides I can scan 6 at a time in about 15 minutes. Files are about 70MB, 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 B&W same time to scan but files are closer to 60MB. I haven’t done scanning of color negatives yet and also not much of the odd size B&W negatives I have. Also not scanned any of the 35mm film we have yet as it really does need a higher resolution scan than 2400 to be archival quality.

[Jonathan_Davis]

Also the file size is something to consider and be aware of as well.

[jec0047]

I’m trying out my friend’s Nikon Coolscan 5000 ED with VueScan. It does very well with slides and negatives. I was disappointed with prints, though. I’ll try upping the resolution as you’ve suggested.

$15k? Ouch! I was gonna go this way with some 126 negatives. Looks like that needs to be rethought.

[OogieM]

Depends on how many items you have. I have several thousand medium format items and over 8000 slides and negatives to scan.

[Jonathan_Davis]

I wish there was a service to just rent out a nice high quality scanner. Especially useful for negative scanners.

[Ben_Lincoln]

I find that even after all the years I have been using a computer I don’t really have many files that don’t live in there own buckets.

I keep 2 folders in my documents folder, one for code and one for “documents” called actual documents, inside documents is a small collection of different projects which use whatever fold structures make sense for that project.

Receipts at the moment are stored in an S3 bucket broken up by year and I have a speadsheet to serve as a file index while I finish building a system of management for them.

I don’t like everything buckets, and so I don’t like treating my filesystem like one, most of my other documents live in there respective cloud services only