Lightroom: Photos Directory Structure
category: Lightroom • 1 min read
When you install Lightroom. it install itself onto the C, local drive. The structure is fixed and decided by Adobe’s programmers. But the directory structure of where to store your photos is up to you. Proper directory structure is extremely important! Without proper directory structure you can’t:
- Do proper backups
- Process the photos
- Find photos
- Use photo processing software: batch…
- This is based on my 32 years personal experience.
- This fits in my workflow.
I store my photos on the network. Here’s my directory structure:
- Photos
- Photographer. I don’t use it, because, I’m me, the loner.
- General topics like: people, place, customers…
Photos Directory Structure with Lightroom
- To backup my photos, I only have to backup the whole PHOTOS directory.
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The photographer directory is implied since I’m the only one, right now, I can always add it later:
- I can scale, the structure does not change if I have to process the photos for another photographer.
- Not useful for single photographers.
- I do not have a directory for the year/month, I prefer to deal with the subject. I’ve never understood people doing it by date. Was this done in December 2008 or January 2009? Means nothing to me, but New York or Amsterdam or that customer means something to me.
- You must make sure that, when you import photos from a photo card, that you never overwrite existing photos.
- For Windows you can use: Rename Master to rename your files and it’s free!