Grant's File Naming Scheme, including a hierarchical branching structure.

[GrantRobertson]

I have written up quite a lengthy description of my own file naming scheme, which I have devised over the years. It is the scheme I am now using in IMatch. The document is a lucky 13 pages long and very detailed. It has special formatting that would not translate well to a forum post, so I posted it up on Scribd.com, here: https://www.scribd.com/document/465143359/Grant-s-Photo-File-Naming-Scheme

I am sure the system will seem far too convoluted for many people. That is fine. I don't need you to tell me that. If you don't like my system, feel free to ignore it. I am posting it merely because I think it may help some people think through their own system. I will also be referring to this system in future posts where I describe how I created Relation Definitions and set up the Renamer to be able to handle my file naming scheme reliably. When I am finished, someone would be able to completely copy what I have done and have a reliable organization system within IMatch and on their hard drives.

If you have any legitimate questions, feel free to ask.

[sinus]

Thanks for sharing.

[mastodon]

Very good work. Thank you, I might rename all my files with a fancy name at last.

[sinus]

Very good work. Thank you, I might rename all my files with a fancy name at last.

Yes, GrantRobertson did  a lot of work for his filenaming-scheme.
I have been using a very similar system for years and am glad to have "developed" it at some point.
And it has proven itself over the years.

Maybe this thread here will help one or the other to think about a good system for naming photos.

And I think the most important thing is to be consistent.
If you ever want to change anything, IMatch makes it very fast.

[ubacher]

You are just adding metadata info into your file name. This seems completely unnecessary when using
Imatch.
Mind you, in a way I am also doing some of this: when I create a version of a file I append
words like cropped or B&W to indicate the type of change I made from the original.
But this is because I have to give the version a different file name - so it is logical to indicate the type
of change rather than to record this in a category.
By being consistent in my naming I can filter for these files by name or I can have a data driven category
based on the naming.

[GrantRobertson]

You are just adding metadata info into your file name.

I explained my reasoning for that in the first few paragraphs of my document.

[thrinn]

Thanks for sharing! It is evident that you put a lot of thought into your naming scheme. Yes, it looks a bit overwhelming at first, but you made some points I not even have thought about. Some details are less relevant for me (because I don't have rolls of film or slides to manage, for example), but the reasoning behind is easily adaptable to other questions.

I would also be interested to hear how you will manage to automate your workflow as much as possible. There must be a good part of automation, I suppose, because performing the naming manually would be very labour intensive.

[Jingo]

Wow.. thx for sharing that document - it is always interesting to read how other manage data and filenames/directories.  For me, the simpler the better... when I share images with folks that don't have access to internal metadata (or don't want to deal with looking) - I create galleries and/or PDF shares with this data automatically pulled and displayed in captions via Indesign... 

I can't imagine having filenames that long in my system unless you truly are burning them to CD and never looking at them again..   

[GrantRobertson]

I can't imagine having filenames that long in my system unless you truly are burning them to CD and never looking at them again..   

The filenames are that long only so someone who may come upon my files later can sorry them out. Even if all the files are dumped into a single folder by some idiot, they will still sorry properly and be "figure-out-able." I'm a former technical writer and former network manager, so I know the importance of leaving things where other people can easily use them. Remember, other people don't have to name the files. But they will appreciate having them always sorry in a useful manner.

I, personally, will almost never even worry about the file names once they are assigned and IMatch is set up the way I want. I will depend on IMatch to find images by keywords and categories.