15000 images in need of organizing

[LanceLars]

Hello, new Imatch user here. I'm completely lost . I added 14965 images from an external hd to a catalog on Imatch ( and I optimized as well ) . How do I begin organizing ? These images are from every computer that's been in our household since 2004 ( and we've had a lot since then). Everyone would just plug their phone in, and drag all pictures into a random folder just so there's space on their phone to take more pictures so you can imagine how scattered and mixed up the folders are  . I want to make folders such as 'Dads pics' 'moms pics' 'Loretta's pics' . Please tell me if there is a better way than 1 by 1. I can learn fast! Thank you !   

[mastodon]

Every camera add a lot of info to the JPG files. One of them are the camera "Manufacturer" and "Model". IMatch sorts your jpgs into categories. One of the is: Image files/Make and Model.

[Mario]

Of course IMatch cannot know how to figure out what "Dad's pics" or "Loretta's pics" are. Unless you added titles, descriptions or keywords to your files already...probably not.

The first thing I would check is the Timeline View in IMatch. The timeline arranges your files by the day, month and year they were created (assuming that the devices used to take the photos at least added a minimum of EXIF data which will be utilized by IMatch.

Seeing your images arranged on the timeline is a good way to start organizing them by 'events' or similar. Like, birthdays or holidays. Just select all related files taken on a day and assign one or more keywords to them in the Keyword Panel.  See the tutorial videos in the IMatch learning center to learn more about keywords and metadata.

Then I would look at the IMatch Standard Categories section in the Category View. Expand the Make and Model child category under IMatch Standard Categories | Image Files. Here, IMatch groups your files by the device used to create them. Unless you have used real 'dumb' hardware which did not even record a minimum of metadata, this should help you to quickly organize the images by their 'creator'. Maybe do the right thing and enter the name of the creator into the corresponding field in the Metadata Panel. This way it will be recorded in the image for the future. And will be usable by all applications which support XMP metadata.

If you look at the timeline and see 500 images taken on a single day, use the Category Filter in the Filter Panel to filter by the creating camera (see above). This allows you to break down the 500 files taken on a day by creator.

This all depends a bit on how much metadata is contained in your images and if it is useful. You can see all the metadata (titles, descriptions, keywords, camera info, ...) contained in your files in the Metadata Panel in IMatch. Switch to the Browser layout to see all the data in your files (see the video tutorial for details).

15,000 files is a bit much for one day, but IMatch allows for a very efficient workflow and adding keywords, titles and descriptions to that amount of files is doable. Many IMatch users start with 50,000 or even 100,000 files without any kind of organization...

The ideal outcome would be: every file with a handful of keywords (Keyword Panel in IMatch) to organize them. IMatch automatically groups your files by keywords in the special @Keywords category If you assign the keyword WHO|Loretta to any photo of Loretta, you can see all photos later with one click under the @Keywords|WHO|Loretta category.

Maybe add a title or description to explain what the image is showing.
A rating to indicate how 'good' the image is.
Cull ruthlessly to reduce the overall number of images.
Use the Search menu > Duplicates command to find binary duplicates for all selected files. No sense in keeping the same file multiple times. See: https://www.photools.com/help/imatch/#hdi_dupes.htm
...

[ubacher]

I want to make folders such as 'Dads pics' 'moms pics' 'Loretta's pics' .

That is what you would do if you did not have Imatch! With Imatch you just assign the pictures to albums - which in
Imatch are called categories.

After more than 10 years I am still struggling with what is the best way of organizing my pictures. Here a few things which I have already learned:

Use Categories and not Keywords. They are identical in use except that keywords are stored in each file and so changing/renaming a keyword involves
re-writing a lot of files. Initially, as you develop you catalog, this would be cumbersome.

First about dates: IM lets you display a timeline. Now, if my experience holds true, you will find a lot of images which have the wrong date/time because the time in
the camera was not set correctly. Use the timeline  to find those pictures, filter out the camera involved and then, if you can figure out the proper date adjust it with
Im's tool: Modify exif date/time. The date is probably more critical than the time.

There will also be images without date/time stored in them.  (I find images received via Whatsapp have no exif data whatsoever!) Similarly images from scans
will miss the correct date. I suggest you start with a category tree entry called WORKING with child category BadDate and NoDate, GuessedDate- then you work on them later

I have one category tree called CONTENT. Here I catalog what is shown in the picture. My sub-entries are ACTIVITY, Architecture, Plants, Animals, People, Scapes, Themes and Things.
For PEOPLE I can recommend starting with OurFamily, MyFamily, HerFamily, Friends, Other.
(For all the sub-categories I recommend having an OTHER entry - When not absolutely certain where a picture fits assign it to OTHER. Later you can go thru the OTHER category and
split off what you find should be in a separate category. )

The basic idea is to be able to whittle down your collection to a few hundred images when you look for something.
To decide how to catalog an image ask yourself: "Under what category/term would I look for this picture"
Start with a few hundred pictures and try assign categories - but not very detailed! Just try to find what main categories will be the most useful for you.
So if there is a person in the picture just assign PEOPLE, if a PLANT just PLANT, if  an ANIMAL just that.  This will let you find the overall category which will make sense for you.

Here some of my categories - see if some make sense for your kind of pictures:

THINGS: Signs, Rocks, Transport (with subcategories for Cars, Boats, Bikes.....), Machines (for man-made stuff), Clocks&Sundials, Squashed cans (I have collected pictures of squashed pop-cans, as one finds on the road, from all over the world).
EVENTS: Birthdays, Weddings, Concerts, Parties, Parades, Holiday-Trips....
THEMES&Topics: Fire, FogRain, SunandSky, FOOD, FrostorSnow, Health-Medicine, Old-Antique, Water and Wateruse, Arts&Crafts,
SCAPES: Landscape (that is my most used default), Cityscape, Streetscape, Gardens, BeachScape (I use also for all shore related stuff), Farmscape, Mountains, FieldAndForest.
Architecture: Houses (i.e. Buildings) Houses Interiors, Churches (includes Temples etc), Monuments (includes statues, Sculptures..), Fountains.
Animals: Pets, Farmanimals, WildAnimals, CreepyCrawly, Birds, Fish
Activity: Sports, Hiking, Beekeeping, Photography, Play, PerformingArts
TYPEofFoto: PartofPano, Pano, Collage, PartofHDR, PartofSequence, STEREO (several subcategories here), Mattedetc (When I put a frame/description/title etc on an image)
  (the Partof... categories I usually filter out since they are not of interest)
WhereUsed: Here I record if I post a picture somewhere on the internet, If a picture was used in a book (here I DO use a separate category for each book), Used in a Calendar, Sold, Given away....
WhyTakenWhatfor: Docu (This is my most used cat in this tree),Experiment, PhotoIdeas, WorkingMaterial, ....
                            This would also be a logical place to record which "client" one took a picture for.
WORKING: Here I assign temporary categories while I work on something. Overlaps with a category tree I call PROJECTS.


A mistake one tends to make is to assign categories to each individual event "Johns Bday 2017". This is NOT needed and not recommended.
If you need to find Johns B-day pictures from 2017 you select the category EVENTS|Birthdays and then filter out the images from 2017 and also filter for the category PEOPLE|MyFamily|Uncle John.
You do this using Imatches Filter panels. Or you use the timeline, select the images for 2017 and then filter for Birthdays which might be enough to find the pictures. Even simpler might be
to just filter all pictures for the time period around Uncle John's birthday.

You are also likely to look for pictures based on who took them. I use a category tree labeled SourcePhotographer with categories: Mywife, Mydaughter, SCANS, other.
You can probably select pictures by camera (as mentioned in the previous posts) and have it stand for the photographer.
Select all images and filter, using the Value Filter, for camera make/model. Or filter by the built in category Make and Model.

I probably would not reorganize the files/folders on the disk - doing this is more likely to cause confusion - especially when dates are missing and the proximity
of the image to others provides critical information. For newly added images I recommend a chronological arrangement of folders. FOTOS\2018\2018-04-00 SPRING\2018-04-02 First flowers\
I rename all my files like 2018-04-02 123.jpg. This will keep them in chronological order in Windows basic sorting order. Imatch won't need this - in Imatch you can select the display order
by time taken or other criteria. Keeping files in chronological order also provides a form of grouping.  I use the old Win7 Photo and Video Import function which puts the images in folders by date
of taking or by date of import. Very reliable and can be made to work on Win 10.

If you ever do rename/move folders do it inside Imatch!!! - this will keep all you categories in place!

It will take you a while to see all the possibilities of Imatch. Be assured there is little which can not be done with Imatch as regards organizing
and finding your images (and also other files!)

[Mario]

Thanks for sharing 

Every user has a slightly different workflow. IMatch is flexible enough to support them all.
Starting simple while learning about IMatch is the key I think. Try a few things out and see what works best for you and your family.

[Jingo]

Starting simple while learning about IMatch is the key I think.

Couldn't agree with this more Mario... in fact - I was going to suggest to the OP that he/she start with a group of 100 images across a few different locations on their drive and test out the program before diving into a real database with 15000 images.  As you learn the software, you'll start to figure out the best way for YOU to manage your images... ie: categories vs keywords, panel layouts, etc.

For my own workflow - I use keywords exclusively because I WANT all entries written back to the images.  This ensures my files are always stored with the full XMP records so whatever software I use that can read the data - will have that info available.  Sure - backups may take a bit longer... but, I typically don't go back and revise my images after initially establishing metadata and all this activity is done overnight and automatically anyway.

Finally - while I don't have an elaborate file structure on disk and agree with ubacher that is not necessary if using a modern DAM like Imatch - I do recommend a date folder system and file naming system that is easy to manage.  There are many times where I want to quickly find an image where I know the date and camera used - so I just pull up xyplorer (which is always open on my 2nd monitor) and can quickly locate the image in that fashion (ie: I:\Photos\2018\2018-09\S9+_20180902_194336.jpg).  For ALL other times, I only use Imatch to find images based upon keywords, date, ratings, or other advanced combinations.

Good luck with your project!

[jch2103]

Lots of good advice here, although everyone's needs are different. The primary advice of keeping it simple is very sound.

You are also likely to look for pictures based on who took them. I use a category tree labeled SourcePhotographer with categories: Mywife, Mydaughter, SCANS, other.
You can probably select pictures by camera (as mentioned in the previous posts) and have it stand for the photographer.
Select all images and filter, using the Value Filter, for camera make/model. Or filter by the built in category Make and Model.

One simple variation on the above comment is to assign Creator name (XMP::dc\creator\Creator\0). You can set up Metadata Templates with the creator names you may use or use the Thesaurus with alternative names. That will let you easily assign Creator names to files and then set up a data-driven category based on Creator. Just another example of the flexibility IMatch provides.