We were asked a question by reader @franckhertz via twitter, wondering how others manage their digital files. He said, “I’m producing ~40GB a year of photos… I’d love a post on how people manage their (ever-growing) photo libraries.” The new year is always a great time to start better habits, so we thought it was a great idea to tackle this often confusing subject. We reached out to several professional photographers to see how they manage their large catalogs.
Their answers are as varied as their work, and as with most things in photography there is no one size fits all answer. While they may use different techniques and software, the common theme is a thorough system of file naming and backing up files on more than one hard drive. We hope that learning from them can help you organize your own system. We also encourage you to spend some time on their portfolios, because there is a lot of inspiration on their websites.