Newbie question about organizing

[RonA]

Hi, folks. Brand new here.
I have several thousand photos that I am starting to organize for our local historical society. Right now, the photos are in folders named for the person donating them, or some other mass grouping name. I would like to eventually put all the photos in one large group, so that a search would cover the entire collection, and not just one folder. I was thinking of creating an "album" for each folder, so our current organizational structure would not be lost, but rather incorporated into the whole collection.

I hope that made sense. To you experienced users, what would you suggest we start with? I have an entire list (and growing) of categories to use for the metadata tags.

Thanks very much!

[jkm]

Welcome to the forums...

You should start by making sure you have the Catalog enabled in XnViewMP, and are leveraging it for your activities. When you properly use the Catalog and Metadata, where you have your files located becomes irrelevant.

I'm not sure what you mean by "put all the photos in one large group" but it is not necessary to move them at all. Once your files are all imported into the catalog, simply use the Catalog Filter to see them all. There's an "All" item in the Catalog Filter pane. Click it, and you will see all your images, no movement or Albums necessary.

You could create Albums for each donor, but I would suggest you use Categories instead. Categories are just tags.

You can create hierarchical categories, like this:
Donor
..Bob
..Mary
..Sam

Start by assigning your images to these categories.

You can then create other categories, or hierarchical categories, to describe any other quality, and assign those to the images as well.

When you search, you should search against the entire catalog, not a particular folder, drive, or location. That way you search across all of your images, regardless of their location. Again, when using the catalog, physical location of the image files is irrelevant. The catalog is a database. Use it, and search against it.

Hopefully this helps...

Good luck.

[RonA]

Thank you! I will look into your suggestions, and perhaps change my approach.