How Files Are Named and Stored
When you take a photograph with your digital camera, it is assigned a file name by the software in the camera. In addition, the picture file is usually tagged with the date and time that it was shot. When you download these pictures to your computer, the assigned names will be saved to a folder on the hard drive of your computer.
The photographs that come directly from your camera are originals and should never be touched, unless you decide you want to delete some that you don't like. Any you save you should keep in a separate folder that is clearly labeled as holding originals. In addition, before you have too many photographs, devise a clear system that will allow you to quickly and easily find any image.
To avoid confusion, construct a logical filing system that allows you to do several things:
Avoid any danger of accidentally erasing any original files.
Put the pictures under one main folder that you can easily back up.
Make it easy to find pictures months or years from now.
No file can have the same name in the same folder. If you save a new file with the same name, it will overwrite and erase the old file, which will be lost forever. Therefore, give your modified file a different name from the original so that there will be no chance of accidentally erasing the original picture.
To start off, choose a basic folder name such as “Photos.” You should then create subfolders under this folder. These subfolders, in turn, will have other subfolders. Keep in mind that it can be confusing to go more than three levels deep with subfolders in the computer tree structure. However, there is no technical reason to stop you.
Your main folder will now have the address on your computer of:C:Photos.
You might have one main folder for originals (with subfolders as needed) such as C:PhotosOriginals.
You might have one main folder for photos that you rename and work on in your digital darkroom or image-editing software, such as: C:PhotosBest.
Under the folders Originals and Best, you might have other subfolders as your photo work grows.
Later, when you back up your photos, you can easily back up all of these images in the main folder C:Photos(including all the subfolders) with one simple command in the appropriate software, described at the end of this chapter.
