Hi Everyone,
I'm hoping there is someone here that can help me finalise my workflow and/or point me to somewhere that can help me. It frustrates me that I've been a Mac/Apple user for 7 years and still don't use it for photo curation...
My main goal is to have an efficient workflow for organising my and photos from contributors in a way that avoid duplicates, uses the minimum space, keep the originals for later rework/access, reduce clutter in my main photo library and share better curated content with my other devices and contributors.
Apologies for the long post but it turned out to be more complicated than anticipated.
What I have so far is the following...
When receiving photos from someone I place it in a folder (on an external disc) where the name is a date followed by an event description, i.e. 2018-10-13_Barging_Holiday. Inside that folder I will create a folder with the name of the person or device the media is coming from. I then use ExifRenamer to rename the images using the following template, YYYY-MM-DD_HH-Mi-SS_(original filename).original extension. This way I can trace the image back tot the original but I can also combine all media together with a high degree of certainty that I will not have duplicates.
Once everything from everyone is renamed and in my folder structure with each contributors files in their own folders it should be easy enough to replicate only new events to the various backup discs. As soon as I have a second back I should now be able to delete the originals from the sources where applicable, I.e. erase/format the camera memory card.
To continue, my idea is to create a new photo library for all original files/images. This photo library is not shared with iCloud. It should also resides on a removable external disc as it will grow quickly.
So it will be min 3 discs. One smaller SSD's that is used to do all the curation in the master photo library. This is also the disc that can be used to copy new event files on while still on holiday so as to have a backup as soon as possible. The other 2 discs can be normal larger HDD as they will be backup discs only. It will contain all original event files as well as a copy of the latest master photo library on the SSD. The cloud can of course also be used as a third backup but for now it is still cheaper to simply buy a third disc. I'm also not considering placing the main photo library in the cloud as the cloud is not everywhere I might want to use it, yet.
The idea with the master photo library is to import all the media from the new holiday/event folder into it. I'm thinking that it is better only fixing the outstanding meta data at this point as it should be easier doing it in Photos. These are things like adding missing location data and adding other comments/tagging I want. Even adding the photographer info can be linked to each individual import if you do not import the parent/event library but rather the source folders individually. It is not foolproof, as a lot of camera sharing happens, but a good 80/20 rule.
(I'm not sure whether it is worth exporting all the photos at this point to replace the originals. The whole point of the originals is to allow you to "start over" but I would hate to have to manually add all that meta data again. I'm leaning towards not overwriting the originals as at what point are you guaranteed that you will not touch the meta/exif data ever again. Also depending on how important the originals are to you, you should either delete unwanted photos before of after overwriting the originals should you decide to go that route.)
Once the media is tagged and I have at least one other backup, I can then start editing and creating curated albums from the event. The idea being to provide everyone with a copy of a curated album. It would probably have to be an export of all the photos in the album as well as some sort of slideshow and/or movie as very few contributors are Apple users. My idea is to use a similar naming convention for the albums to make it easier to find once you have hundreds of albums. It also reduces the risk of having duplicate album names. I would need to add additional information to the name though as you would probably have more than one album of the same event. Maybe S, M and L as most people you show albums to only have the attention span for a small (S) album. The large (L) album would most likely be for own use only and/or permanent slideshow in the background.
As for myself, the plan is to then copy the curated album into my main Photos library which is synced with iCloud so I have my albums available on all my other devices. As I have the originals elsewhere I would also be more likely to allow Apple to store lower quality photos on my devices.
Advantages:
- I keep my iCloud library a small as possible with all the benefits it brings
- My iCloud library contains more high quality curated media that is easier to find
- My Mac also do not require unnecessary storage to keep all my originals
- As the originals are already on an external disc I only need one additional external backup disc
- As I prefix my folders with the date of the event it should make keeping the 2nd and/or 3rd backup in sync a lot easier
- Using Photos will allow me to create smart albums to assist with curating my photo library
Unknowns:
- I presume I will create duplicates in my main iCloud library if I import two different albums of the same event unless there is a way to import it at the same time.
- Support for .nrw is still outstanding so not sure what will happen to these files in my album as they are not currently seen as the raw version of the jpg with the same name.
- Does exported media from an iPhone/Android strip meta data?
- Face information also most likely will have to be added in both photo libraries.
- Will movie clips have to be handles separately, especially when having to edit them
Disadvantages:
- Finding photos not included in albums will become a pain as you must switch libraries and also plug in the external disc.
- Backup of the originals and master photo library no longer included in Time Machine so need to be managed manually.
- As the master photo library with the originals duplicate the original files you will require an external disc of twice the size what is otherwise needed if you did not wanted to keep the originals as well.
- The photo library with the originals will also grow quite fast so making a backup of it will become cumbersome over time.
- New/additional photo albums will always have to be created in the master photo library.