How do you organize your plants photo archives?

Just out of curiosity, how do you organize the plant photos you have in your computers? Oh, and how many pictures and species do you have (or do you think you have)?

I am neurotic. I personally name all my files with the scientific name of every species, complemented by an indication of what the photo features (foliage, flowers, habit, fruits, etc.). When I don't know the species, I name them after their families, or just create a nickname for them until I get them correctly IDed. All those files are organized in separate folders, according to their respective families, under a major folder called "Plants".

Because of the Plants Database, I only store these pictures on their family folders after I submit them to the PDB, and keep the others in another folder, so I have the control over what I have posted there and what still needs to be posted. Otherwise, I am sure I would get lost easily, and the mods would have a bunch of work deleting the pictures I would submit more than once :^P

I must have photographed something around 350ish species, in around 850ish pictures.

And all that organization and work is what makes a UBER so great :~)

I am afraid that if it were not for those of you who are more dedicated, the PDB would be an awful mess!

I must admit to being very unorganized and it really takes it's toll in this department. If I want a certain photo, I would have to go through my files and search for it one file at a time since they are all in one folder titled "Garden/Plants"

I keep saying I'mm going to get organized.... and then get sidetracked and never get to it. ~Manana~

Organized? Well, somewhere between Dsc00001 and Dsc00650 (now) are plant pics, interspersed with dogs, landscapes, snowstorms, etc. Anything resized to send gets a name. Stuff I pull off internet usually has a name or I give it one. From there it goes to documents or briefcase, depending on which has more room.

Mono, it's funny you should ask this because I was just looking at my picture files this weekend, wondering ...where on earth do I even begin?? I realized that I am getting too many plant photos, to just 'know' where they all are, like I could when I first started.

I'm so glad you posted your method, because it gives me an aim for when I try to tackle mine this weekend. I think you've got it down!

organized???/since maid and gardener got sick i put all my garden things, pic,maps, ect on big chief tablet and pic in shoeboxs some with shoes still in them ,ORGANIZE .HA,HA. GIGGLE,IF YOU HAVE TIME TO DO THAT YOU HAVE WEEDS IN YOUR PETUNIAS.I am a slob lots of luck hee hee i can rember when i was doing that same thing then i rembered ther are no 30 hour days.GOD bless you.
patricia

Mine are organised by the month/year. Makes it interesting to compare what is blooming at any given time this year compared to last year. Kind of makes it like a journal.

Well my pics are not organized and I STILL have weeds in my perunias. Pics are in 2 month dated chunks. Someday when I have no children to take up what little spare time I have left. Maybe? Possibly.

Same here frogs. I download and download to the computer lately, continually adding new folders (ie Temp4, Temp5...) to My Pictures main folder. I have folders for previous occasions, but now I just take to much to keep up. Recent kids pics are mixed with flowers right now. I really need to clean it up and transfer to disk for back up. I would much rather take that extra time and garden or take more pictures, though.

One question for everyone. If you shrink a picture to put in the database, do you keep the shrunk version along with the original? I have been, though there really is no reason to.

tazzy I'm with you - organized?? heeeheehee

I've spent my life trying to organize it. No luck so far. in any way. electronic pics are in computor in folders with names that used to help find pics.. Now there are so many folders and I search the same way I search for 35mm pics. Only it's actually harder 'cause I can spread the 4x6's all over the floor. and see them all at once.

It is really hard to keep them organized. I start by having my own personal folder. Then I sub-out folders i.e. Spring 2004, Summer 2004. Under those, I sub out the dates I download them. But before putting them in there, I change the names so I know what it is, rather than being a digital number.

Karrie
-------Summer 2004
-------------------------7-8-04
--------------------------------------KarrieandFish

I have made folders for each month & then subfolders for categories. For example, July 2004 has subfolders Jenns Bday, First Blooms, Yard Pics and ID's where I store pics of leaves & seedpods.
Sometimes I get lazy & don't name the pics right away, and it is such a pain later when you need one. Plus it seems like it does not take long for that to become overwhelming to the point that you have more unnamed then named! LOL So the old "stitch in time" is really true.

I am in the process of figuring out a format for printing out pictures of all the stages of a plant on a single sheet. Every program I have though uses its own extension so it makes it hard to share a whole sheet with friends unless they have the same program.



This message was edited Jul 14, 2004 3:53 PM

As a new digital camera owner, this is something that I am trying to figure out.

I don't like the idea of fixed folders or directories. Sometimes you might want to look at pictures for a specific event or a specific month, but sometimes you will want to look at pictures that span multiple events or dates.

To help with this I purchased Paint Shop Photo Album from JASC. It was cheap (free after rebates) and it is decent. I keep all my general photos in one folder and then use the filtering to pick what to show. I do have separate folders for garden and home improvement photos. JASC just came out with an upgraded version that looks to have a nicer interface and improves the filtering.

- Brent

ok - i have separate folders by date - but i'm wondering if it's better to 'folderize' them by plant type [like in the pdb] or by garden area - or by season. just can't seen to find what i'm looking for when i need it

handhelpers:

That is where software like Paint Shop Photo Album comes in handy (there are probably better programs and I hear that iPhoto for the Mac is pretty good). You can set up these categorized "keywords". I don't use anything this sophisticated, but you could set up keywords such as:

- Flower Color
---- Red
---- Blue
- Garden
---- Front Garden
---- Shade Garden
- Plant Name
---- Rudbeckia
---- Salvia
- Season
---- 2003
---- 2004

This makes it possible to run searches like "all pictures of my Salvia during 2004", or "all pictures of my shade garden". There is some overhead of setting up the keywords and marking each picture, but it is pretty easy.

- Brent

Do you have to have a digital camera to include pictures? Can you use a scanner on a regular photo? Any advice on how to include pics is appreciated. Chuck and Loida

This message was edited Jul 25, 2004 1:45 PM

Brent - that is really neat - something that allows you to run "searches" .

I have a digital camera. I take the pictures, copy them to a provisory and rename them (when I upload them to the PDB, I throw them into their respective family folder). I used to have a scanner to digitalize my older photos, but it doesn´t work anymore.

Depending on the quality of the digital camera, it might be better (and cheaper) to have a scanner to store the photos in your computer.

Thanks a lot, Monocromatico. Chuck and Loida

Brent,
............is Paint Shop Photo Album from JASC a stand alone software or do I need to but a Photo Shop program to get it to run ?

Digidummy in Wisconsin

JASC Paint Shop Photo Album is a standalone application (I think that also sell a bundle that integrates with Paint Shop Pro). As a standalone application Photo Album has basic photo editing tools (touch up, red eye, resizing...). It is not a perfect program, but it helps. Adobe has a competing program called Photoshop Album (I have not tried it). Somewhere I read a review that liked the Adobe program better, but the JASC program seemed to fit my needs better.

About scanning photos...I purchased a fairly cheap scanner 5 years ago or so for under $100. For viewing pictures on your computer, emailing them, or posting them the quality will be more than enough. Also, the cheapest digital camera that you can find is likely to produce pictures that are excellent for posting or recording in an electronic garden log (I spend $99 on a Fuji A205, 2 MP camera this year).

- Brent

I usually edit all my photos from a single day in one sitting. So for me, it makes sense to keep all the photos in directories labelled by date. Then, I print a low res contact sheet of all the photos in the directory, and put it in a binder. I have about 4 years worth of contact sheets. Normally I'm not one to keep hard copies of anything, but it's WAY faster for me to flip through these hard copies than click on directories searching for something! For photos older than about a year, I burn them to CD and wipe them from my hard drive to save space.

I'm definitely not hardcore enough to label them by scientific name yet. =)

I try to keep oraganized but...there's so many plants and soooo little time...

Mine are either in folders for a family group like AV's, Philos, Broms,Begonia's etc or they are listed by date and description like 8/4/2004 Garden front, Gardenback ,side etc...then I move them where they "might" belong if I have time.
I have a few groups on PowerPoint shows with some info added on the slide...

MsC

Ours is very simple since we've only been taking garden pics since March, though I can easily see how one could quickly become inundated! The initial name for vegetable garden pics I might take today is 'garden20040804-xxx', where the xxx is the frame number. Eventually, some of the better ones get labelled/captioned; I've been trying to include the date on those, as well. Haven't started creating sub-folders yet, though I imagine we will before the year is over.