I print contact sheets for all of my files and download the files to DVD's which are then labaeled with the fikes that DVD contains.
Briefly comment on the organizing software you currently use, or how you track and catalog your digital images.
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Whatever solution I choose, it's going to need to be beyond easy. My problem (in addition to just being lazy) is that in my 'real life' I'm a software engineer so the last thing I want to do as part of my hobby is to sit down and fiddle with my images on a blasted computer. This is part of the reason I still shoot film almost exclusively and I refuse to Photoshop anything. However...I admit that I have been scanning old negatives and prints and I'm gonna have to come up with some way to organize the files. Soon.
An image database is vital if you take more than a few hundred images a year. Last year I shot about 4000 images and they would be fairly useless to me without a system to catalog, rate, and tag them for quick searches. I currently use IMatch from photools.com, which is fast and configurable, but not very camera-centric. I anticipate that Adobe Lightroom (when it comes out on the WinXP platform) will deliver a more integrated workflow.
I organize as much as I can without any software, but I know I need organizing software. Right now all I can do is rename the scanned images into folders: new one per roll, by date and roll and place or event. I haven't been regularly filling in the File Info because it is so time consuming, but I will probably be sorry.
Images are downloaded to specific folder named for the job, month and year. After the necessary manipulation in PS and returned to folder the job is burned to a cd and stored with a hard copy with file numbers. It is a little more complicated than that but this is the basic outline.
I currently use ACDsee. I can track and organize all my hard drives, internal and external and also files archived to DVD. I am about to upgrade my computer and am thinking about upgrading to ACDSee Pro or Extensis Portfolio. It's time to do some research.