Workflow
Posted: Thu 10 August, 2006 Filed under: Geeky, Getting Organised, Photography, Technology, Thinking About... 7 Comments »Yes, I’m afraid I’m going to be banging on about iTunes, Picasa, JPEG vs Raw, and so on again. Because it’s all come up in the last week, Workflow has been on my mind a bit (and there’s some work-related stuff behind the scenes as well) so it’s all ending up as a bit of a brain dump.
Personally, I can be bloody disorganised. Well, that’s not strictly true. I usually know where things are, what needs to be done, when it needs to be done by, and how I’m going to do it. It’s just that I can be very “last minute” about things – particularly when it’s all to a deadline. It’s something I know – and acknowledge – about myself, and that I know I need to fix, or at least learn to handle better.
So anyway, I working on organising myself a bit better. But that’s not what this post is about. Oh no. Instead it’s about file structure, and file organisation instead. You lucky people.
You see, Gordon has said a couple of times that certain bits of software (iTunes, Picasa etc.) mean he no longer needs to know where files are – the software keeps track of it for him, and – for him – that’s fine. Unfortunately, doing that kind of thing drives me utterly fucking crackers.
Because I know where I put stuff, and I know (pretty much) what is where. I know that all my music sits in c:/music, but then I know that under that it’s kept in a file structure, so it goes c:/music/[band]/[album name]/[tracks] , and I never, ever have a problem finding where the stuff is that I want. To me, that’s organised, because I don’t need to fuck about thinking “is it in that folder? Or is it (iTunes, I’m talking about you here) in ‘compilations’? Or in some utterly random other place?”. I don’t need to use Google Desktop Search, I don’t need to Search for files. I think I use the “Search for files” function in Windows maybe once a year. If that. I know where my stuff is.
With photos it’s similar. Everything sits in c:/photos. I know, it’s unimaginative. But it’s easy to find. Then I name folders with where I was, or the subject of the photo series, and all the photos from that session/day/trip go in. If it’s been a holiday, you’d find it in c:/photos/[trip name]/Day [number] . I’m bad in that I don’t rename the files individually to say what’s in them – I should, but I don’t. But I know what’s where, and I can usually find the images I want when I want them. And again, to me that’s what being organised is about.
Yesterday, Gordon wrote
WHERE the files are doesn’t matter. HOW iTunes structures the folders doesn’t matter. As long as you can find the MP3s in iTunes (which is where the ID3 tags come in) then why do you care that an album is stored in ‘compilation’?
To me, it does matter where the files are. I want to be able to find them, to use them outside of that one specific application. For my music stuff, I can play it on the PC using RealPlayer, but I also use another program to write the music files to my MP3 player, or yet another one to write them to the phone so I can use that. For my photos I can use one program to view the thumbnails so I can select what I want, I can use Photoshop – or Paintshop Pro, or ImageMagick, or Corel, or whatever – to edit those photos, I can write them to a CD/DVD as backup, or I can transfer them using FTP to another site. Because of the way I work, I do need to know where the files are. I don’t want to be wasting time figuring out where Application A has stored them so that I can find them with Application B, C or D and use them in that.
So yes, it’s my workflow. Maybe I should be more flexible, or something. But because I do use different programs for different things, I want the files that I use to be in the same place, in my own organisation. Not in some arbitrary thing that one program uses, and then insists I have to use because it uses it. It’s a personal perspective, but I don’t like having workflows and decisions forced on me, whether it’s by Arsehole Bosses, or programs.
Maybe I’m a dinosaur. Maybe I’m a control freak. I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that at no time soon am I going to be letting a fucking program tell me it’s storing stuff according to its own structures where I can’t find the bloody stuff easily without using a search to do so.
Ur stubborn and pigheaded Lyle, but there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, especially when you know what you want and you go and get it!
I’m glad I’m slightly ignorant about Itunes and stuff like that, one less thing to worry about. I also use the c:? system, but only because I am no more technologically advanced than that.
Yes, it’s definitely you.
In saying that. I used to be the same. It’s a hard leap to make. Ohh and, for the record, YOU can tell iTunes how to store things… honest. And I too use MP3s in other places, copy them to my phone and onto the cheapy MP3 player Louise has… top tip. iTunes is just like explorer, you can drag FROM it as well!
Anyway, I feel I may be fighting a losing battle..
Aye, you may be.
I dunno, maybe I’ll give it another go. Maybe on the computer at the new job, when I eventually start there. But maybe not.
I guess I’m just a control freak who doesn’t like programs telling me where they’ve put stuff, as opposed to me telling programs where to find it.
Lyle, I’m with you on this. I use the same system of storing music and pics (although my pics are much more generically stored.) I installed iTunes when my Mrs got an iPod for her birthday but the first thing I did was tell the fucker what the situation was and where I wanted the file and how I wanted the names. I had to anyway because my C: is used more or less solely by Windows, my D: is my Program Files and my F: is my music drive.
A program that doesn’t let you choose where to put files and so on is poorly designed IMO.
I’m somewhere in the middle.
I’d like to be on Gordon’s side and in some things I am.
I could argue that del.icio.us is the prime example – I don’t need to remember where a link is just what it is, I can always find it from there.
I use iTunes for music, it did require a lot of setting up all the tags first, (for which I didn’t use iTunes) but I needed the tags sorting so I knew what I was listening to on my (3G) iPod. Later when I got my lovely Sonos system I ***had*** to go back through and add album art to all my (60Gb+) mp3s. If I ever get a newer iPod I’ll reap the benefit there.
Once it’s all sorted though adding a new album is simple, check the tags, drag into iTunes (I’ve told it where to store stuff) add album image. Overnight it gets copied to my NAS and is available on Sonos. Simple workflow. NB if you change something in iTunes it will move it on disk (‘keep library sorted’) so if you uncheck compilations is will put everything back where you expect them to be.
In some ways I’d like things to be more virtual – if a track is on more than one album (original and greatest hits for example) I don’t really see why I need to have 2+ files on disk. (I could go on, I’d really like within a playlist to be able to set start/end times for track, eq, etc.)
For photos I’m more with Lyle. I do always shoot raw, they’re my negatives. They are stored on 2 hard disks in different buildings and synced overnight. (I have too many photos of my children over the last 6 years to take any risk of loosing them). They are stored in a simple yyyy\mm\dd directory structure (I wrote a little toy some years ago that copied them over for me and sorted them). So I can always find my originals. I don’t rename the files.
I am still looking for the right software for me to manage them. Picassa didn’t work for me as I’m convinced tagging is not the right approach for pictures. I’d like to be able to find pictures based on location/people/subject etc. (You could arguably do it with tagging but my taglist would be unmanageable). Elements had some of this but it didn’t feel right.
I’m currently using Adobe Bridge, but it still isn’t quite there. I want to keep processing away from originals. I want the processing information and output separate from my negative. In Bridge I have to copy into a collection and process there (I was caught ought the first time when it moved the originals).
If I want to bulk print after a trip I run a batch conversion to JPEG on the images I want in minutes. Special/arty/difficult pictures I can process by hand. (White balance is one of the things that until you play with you don’t realise how often cameras get it wrong).
I think what I actually need for my processing is an attached GPS unit (which I could in theory do with my lovely Nikon D200 but it would cost and be awkward – internal is what we need) with a link to google maps and face recognition software for a start.
I’ll just mention that you can (and like others I do) tell iTunes where to put the files. YOU control that… and once it’s all set up, like thom says, you can let iTunes ‘keep things organised’.
thom – Picasa also works with a folder structure… that’s how mine are.
I’m with Lyle in my need to know where stuff is. I have a pretty similar filing system for music and photos. Furthermore, I might have multi versions of photos – I do like to keep the pre-processed version and post processed may have different sizes – most obviously I make em smaller for the web.
Also with music, I might have different versions by the same artist, or by different artists, and quite a lot of mine is in foreign and I don’t know the name of the bloody track, but I generally know at least one of who the composer or the singer is and vaguely where it might be on the disc(s)/folder(s), and sometimes things go by different names, so if I’m looking for a Pearlfishers Duet I know also to keep a look out for Au fond de temple saint even though I’m not sure I’ve spelt correctly nor whether the person who entered it into the database did.