How do YOU organize your photos?

Jimmerz

I'm a recent Phanfare refugee and was just wondering how some of you organize your photos in SmugMug? In particular I'm interested in the people that also use SmugMug for their personal/family photos, but anyone is welcome to chime in.

I have over 15 years of photos that I migrated over from Phanfare using Smugglr. It seemed to work pretty well (MUCH better than when I tried to use it a year ago). It created a folder for each year, and put the Phanfare albums as galleries in the appropriate folder. It seems to make sense to do it that way...but maybe not?

One thing that Phanfare had that I really liked and can't seem to replicate with SmugMug was the ability to create 'Subsites'. I could create a subsite for say, 'Family', and then one for 'Friends', or one for 'Softball Team', etc. Then I could "publish" an album to one or more of those subsites. I did see that SmugMug has Sharegroups, and I played around with them, but quite honestly they seem kind of hokey getting them organized. For one it's a major pain moving the galleries around in the order I want them in. It would be nice if there was an option to sort by 'Date Taken'. Also, it doesn't allow you to add a folder to a Sharegroup, which is a bummer. The other issue seems to be that when navigating a Sharegroup as an anonymous user, navigation is really terrible, to the point where unless there is only a gallery or two to view, it's not even worth it.

So I'm looking at other options. I tried creating a folder for each "group" but that doesn't work because I can't attach an album to more than one folder.

Perhaps creating a separate page for each group?

SmugMug seems to have so much more customizing ability than Phanfare, but it seems it's not ideal for sharing to multiple groups where the same photos may overlap between the groups. I think Sharegroups are a step in the right direction, but leave a lot to be desired.

Any advice would be appreciated!

(OFF TOPIC - Why is it that if I try to submit a thread with the word 'SmugMug' in the title, it craps out?)

Teach

I can tell you how I sort my daughter's photos. She has her own site that is organized by year (folder) and then by month (folder)and then by specific galleries.

www.graciegraywalker.com

I have kept it simple so that when you click on a year folder you only see the folders for each month of that specific year. Some people do more sorting than that but in the case of my daughter's site. I hope that gives you some ideas for your own site.

The idea of subsites may be accomplished by using folders and collection. You could use our collecting feature and collect the images into multiple galleries so that they appear in more than one gallery at once.

http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93310-can-i-display-a-photo-in-multiple-galleries-?b_id=1644

You could also try out the page option and still use the collecting feature.

As for why it is that if you try to submit a thread with the word 'SmugMug' in the title, it does not work I am perplexed as to why it won't work.

Jimmerz

Thanks Teach, definitely something to look into.

The problem I've found with collections is that you can only "collect" at the photo level, which would create a ton of work for hundreds of galleries and thousands of photos. It seems it would be a lot better if you could collect an entire gallery and not just individual photos. This would also prevent you from having to have copies of a gallery for each "subsite".

It does seem that creating custom pages for each group is the direction I will have to take. Although it seems using that method I will need to set all folders/galleries to public to allow anonymous users to see the galleries.

AceCo55

I shoot sports, so at the top folder level I have the sport type (Football, Netball, Cricket, Karts etc).

Each folder then has sub-folders of the different grade levels (A Grade, Under 17's, Under 15's ... or classes of karts)

Within each of the sub-folders I have galleries of specific matches.

In one folder, I have year levels but for most of my sports I only keep the galleries for matches in the current season. When next year's season starts, I delete the previous year's galleries.
I could easily have sub-folders for each season (2012, 2013, 2014 etc) ... I just choose not to.

sarasphotos

My background organization/folder structure is always year/month but I use Lightroom and am fairly anal about keywording my photos so making smart galleries based on keyword combinations is fairly easy. I do ALL of my keywording, geoencoding and photo editing in Lightroom (except for the occasional Photoshop pimp). Photos are exported out of Lightroom in basically the same folder structure to SM and then in SM Organizer I make Smart Galleries for my Public Galleries.

Have fun!

Sara

Darter02

My photo organization at home is year>month>day. My display organization is by subject so users can navigate to what interests them.

denisegoldberg

My organization is by subject and then within subject by year and month.
This is both on my home computer / backups and on my web site.

--- Denise

HaraldE

Morning,

My key SmugMug objective is to make available galleries for friends and family. For this I use Subject (like Travel, Event, ...) on the highest folder level. There are no entries on my HomePage, just a text telling the viewer to contact me for further information.

Below Subject I have a structure that varries according to what is required. For example beneath Travel I use folders that will indicate country and year (like 2009 France).

With the above organisation I can tailer the entry points to whatever purpose I have. Purpose of this is to avoid giving groups of people access to galleries they are not interested in. It also enables me to shield off galleries of specific purpose (for example Family Private ones).

I also have many Subjects related to my work on old memories, like family photo albums from past generations

Regards, Harald

rainforest1155

HaraldE wrote: »

Morning,

My key SmugMug objective is to make available galleries for friends and family. For this I use Subject (like Travel, Event, ...) on the highest folder level. There are no entries on my HomePage, just a text telling the viewer to contact me for further information.

[...]

With the above organisation I can tailer the entry points to whatever purpose I have. Purpose of this is to avoid giving groups of people access to galleries they are not interested in. It also enables me to shield off galleries of specific purpose (for example Family Private ones).

Harald,
Just note that as long as you have the folders / galleries set to privacy public, they're not inaccessible even if you choose to not display them on your homepage. They may still come up in search and will appear in apps, like the SmugMug iOS browsing app and any other apps that use our API, if a person accesses your site from an app or service using our API.
If you wish for a gallery to not show at all unless you give out the direct link to the gallery, you'd need to make that gallery unlisted.

HaraldE

Thanks Sebastian,

I would like to explain a bit further what my thinking is but not here. Can I send you a memo somehow with some questions?

Regards, Harald

Smug Eric

You can shoot us an email at help@smugmug.com and we'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.

photosbygerry

My phto organisation
On my computer I store my images in a directory structure as follows (-- indicates one directory level down - postign here removed all my blanks!):

My lightroom photos
-- Camera name (eg Nikon D700)
-- -- year (eg 2014)
-- -- -- date (eg 2014-02-25)
-- -- -- -- location/event (eg Sydney - holidays)

I rename all my photos after importing (not during) to Lightroom so they have a filename structure as follows:

yyyymmdd-hhmmss-original camera filename (eg 20140608-160215-SPO5696.nef)

I make fairly extensive use of keywords in Lightroom (eg include year, location (city or suburb etc), venue (for events), event name or occasion, type of shot such as landscape, portrait etc).

Mostly I use lightroom features to manage my photos and create backup duplicates (with the same filenames and same directory structure as above).

For my Smugmug site I have a public structure something like this (example structure shown):

photosbygerry
-- Volleyball
-- -- FIVB World Volleyball League
-- -- -- Australia v Finland
-- -- -- etc
-- -- Australian Volleyball League
-- -- -- Men
-- -- -- -- 2013 Canberra Heat v Vic Volleyball Academy
-- -- -- -- 2013 AIS v Vic Volleyball Academy
-- -- -- -- etc
-- -- -- Women
-- -- -- -- 2013 Canberra Heat v Queensland
-- -- -- -- etc
-- -- Australian Junior Volleyball Championships
-- -- -- 2014 day 1
-- -- -- 2014 day 2
-- -- -- etc
-- Cycling
-- -- 2014 CORC Gravity Endure
-- Places
-- -- Canberra
-- -- Qld Sunshine Coast
-- -- etc
-- Fireworks
-- -- Skyfire 25 - 2013
-- -- Skyfire 20 - 2008
-- -- 2013 Canberra Centenary Fireworks
-- Events
-- -- Table Tennis book launch
-- -- etc
-- Family (visible at top level but requires a pwd)

I also have an unlisted gallery which holds the gallery feature image at 4:3 crop so that it displays correctly in the folder views.

Tylle

Darter02 wrote: »

My photo organization at home is year>month>day. My display organization is by subject so users can navigate to what interests them.

My photo organization at home is year>month>day. My display organization is by subject so users can navigate to what interests them.

Very nice site, Ron