Organizing reference/swipe files

[bdfoster]

Like many people, I have a reasonably sized collection of reference photos and clippings, both physical and digital. My problem is this: organization.

How do people keep their files organized? For all you digital reference people, can you recommend a way to make a searchable reference database on a local drive? (ie, assigned keywords to each photo) I know there was some reference in another thread (about trying to upload and share an 11gb collection) to categories people use, but I'm curious how people break out their collection to make it quick and easy to get what you want.

[Interceptor]

I have quite a large collection. refs from CA, some magazine scans and photos of artist works. Organized usually by artist name. I also have locations: nature and industrial. and life refs for male and female.. and animated male and female.

[Prometheus|ANJ]

I just place everything in the porn folder.


Actually, it would be nice with an OS that allowed me to checkbox and type in keywords, like (human, back, standing, panties). Doesn't Google has some thingy that runs locally?

[Blue]

i just keep my folders organised by subject matter. All cats in one folder, all women in another, and all plants in another etc etc. I do subfolders if i have photo sets.

[Snowsfall]

Google has a thing called google desktop or something like that. It creates a database of everything on your HD so you can search for stuff i guess, I've never tried it though. I just throw things into a couple of different folders (female, male, environments etc etc) and everytime i need something I get the fun task of slowly searching through everything :dead:

[_Mario]

yup, google has something: http://picasa.google.com/index.html

I have a dying Athlon 500 so it takes some time but under normal conditions it should only take some time to create the "database".
Picasa will sort your pictures in two categories (don´t know why and how because I can´t use it that good with that piece of Computer history) by folder name. You can add categories and add all pictures in any of these categories.
So if you have a pictures from Craig Mullins in an folder called "Craig Mullins" then the you can find the picture in one of the two categories (mentioned above) or in any category that you added the picture.
Let´s say it´s a big city/landing dock with some space ships. then you could add it to the categories (that you have to create) space ships, landscape(city)/cityscape, rusty vehicles, cool lighting, whatever.
A click on a category will scroll you automatically to the category and list all the thumbnails (you can define size,...) by folder/alphabetically (not sure what). The whole programm is more or less just a big window that has a lot of thumbnails underthe categories And the big pictures load pretty fast (even on my PC)


It´s really nice but in the end my PC is too slow/old.
The only problem that I have found is that all the categories are sorted alphabetical so you can´t sort them by "type" like:
vehicles, characters, space ships, props,
For that you need some category organisation before you start to create the categories. Probably like this:

concept_character
concept_props
concept_space_ships
concept_vehicle
concept_vehicle
concept_weapons

The programm works in the background and normally does´t use much of your PC´s CPU/RAM. it´s just adds new downloaded pictures that you put in the folders that you specified to it´s database. So if you don´t browse with it you won´t see much of it (just a little icon).

IIRC then ACDSee has something like that too but I like the Picasa browser more and Picasa is free

[BlackGuy]

It's really not that hard to just organize it yourself. Here's how mine works.


Pics--->Artist folders-------> Creon, Ryan Church, Feng Zhu, Lesean Thomas, Kevin Chen, Craig Mullins,
Reference----> 360 poses, Air vehicles, Land vehicles, Hand to hand weaponry, firearms, hands and feet, Male Anatomy, Female Anatomy, Mechs, Interior rooms,
My Work
Photo Album(personal photos)


I hope that makes some sense

[tensai]

iview media (pro) can do a lot for you. you can do searches and have the original file on an external drive or dvd and it will still point you the way.

maybe you should check it out.

[figure2]

Like many people, I have a reasonably sized collection of reference photos and clippings, both physical and digital...How do people keep their files organized?For your clippings, I would recommend a file cabinet with hanging folders. Depending on the volume of pics you have the categories could be as simple as: Animals, sub-categories: Animals-Farm, Animals-Pets, Animals-Wild. If you really have a lot of clippings in each category, you could break it down further: Animals-Farm-Bulls, Animals-Farm-Chickens, Animals-Farm-Horses, etc.

For your digital images, you could organize in the same way as above, then use Photoshop's "Contact Sheet" feature to create & print out thunbnail index files of each folder. This way you could see at a glance what image you might need. The thumbnail sheets could be kept in their own hanging folder of the file cabinet. You will also want to periodically back your digital reference onto CD, just in case your hard drive suddenly went south.