[Digikam-users] [?OT] Image organisation query

[Andy Choens]

> What do those more experienced than me find works best for
> them?

I structure my photos by year only, and I am thinking about dropping even that 
simple file-system structure. Digikam can organize your photos by date 
automatically, and if you structure your tags right, you won't need to have a 
filesystem organization to help you find them. I think it is unnecessarily 
redundant to tag your photos AND maintain a carefully structured filesystem 
organizational system. You can also have Digikam save your tags to the photo 
itself, so your metadata can be recognized by other programs.

As for backing up my photos, I use a very simple system. In my root Pictures 
directory I have a text file called dates.txt. In it I record the date of 
every back-up I do. The latest back-up is on top, and I back-up approximately 
once a month. Thus, it looks something like this.

----------------------------------------------
dates.txt
----------------------------------------------

07/04/07
06/01/07
05/02/07
04/12/07
etc.

------------------------------------------------

When I want to do a new back-up, I just do a custom search that shows me every 
picture / video taken since I last did an update. I then burn these to a CD. 
Make sure you maintain your directory structure, or this is a PITA. I also 
make sure that I burn the latest copy of digikam3.db to the CD or DVD (media 
type depends on the month). digikam3.db is where Digikam keeps track of your 
tags, and other important metadata. Thus, you want to make sure you keep a 
recent copy of this file saved with your pictures.

If I need to restore from my back-ups, I pull out my CD / DVD collection and 
start copying pictures onto the hard-drive. This is ~1 CD per month. When I 
get to the last CD,I copy the pictures AND digikam3.db, and I'm done.

I really want to buy one of those USB/FireWire external hard-drives and start 
backing my photos (and other stuf) to that, rather than to CD/DVD. I hope 
strigi and KDE-Neopomuk will make it easy to locate all files changed or 
created past a certain date, so they can be mirrored to an external 
filesystem.

That's my ten-cents.

--andy