Where and how to Start?

[cthomas]

I'm start out with about 15,000 pictures(.jpg, cr2, and E4300, buddy fies ) and about 1,000 word docutments and .pdf files. Now Where and how do I to Start orginzeing? My files in my IMatch database?  Should I use keywords and If so what is a simple way to do it?

[Mario]

IMatch offers many organization features. Depending on your requirements, keywords and/or categories should be used. Data-driven categories enable you to automatically categorize your images based on metadata. The IMatch help contains quite a number of tips on when and how to use categories and keywords.

IMatch ships with a set of sample data-driven categories (IMatch Sample Categories in the Category View and below that Image Files). These group your images by ISO, Lens, Location and camera make and model. Good for a start.

The time line arranges your images and Office documents automatically by the date they were taken.

But you have to make up your mind first. IMatch is more powerful than most systems out there, and this allows you to use whatever keyword schema or organization you can come up with. Whether you use the 5-W's (WHO, WHEN., WHAT. ...) or you need a scientific taonomy or just a simple way to organize family photos.

We have discussed similar questions many times here in the community, and the Internet is full of "How to use keywords" tutorials. We discussed this just a week ago in this thread:

https://www.photools.com/community/index.php?topic=5581.msg38586#msg38586

Some pointers:

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/imagedatabases/

This guy has apparently never heard about IMatch (or another DAM) because he says that LR is the only program to setup a proper keyword structure (Hah!) but he has some very useful info collected about keywords :

http://www.organizepictures.com/2010/04/efficient-keywording-controlled-vocabulary

Note that everything you read about using keywords in Lightroom or other software can also applied to IMatch.