How do you keep daylily pictures organized?

13 years ago

I am looking for ideas on how to get my daylily pictures organized on my computer without spending hours sitting and renaming each picture. Is it possible to not spend a lot of time renaming, cropping, resizing, uploading, organizing, etc?

When I take pictures, I first take a picture of the name tag, then a picture of the flower. When I upload the pictures to my computer, I save them all in a folder named with the date on it. Then I go through and rename each picture with the daylily name and date. The date not only tells me when the flower bloomed, but also keeps me from having duplicate files for the same daylily and getting the dreaded "do you wish to replace" message when I put all the pictures together in my "Daylily Diary" folder. Then I delete all the pictures with just the name tags on them.

Then all the pictures that I want to post on this forum have to be uploaded to Photobucket, which means I have to make the pictures smaller in order to make that go faster. And you can only upload a few at a time. I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 for cropping and resizing, which can also eat up a lot of time.

Well, now I am about a month behind. All the pictures are just sitting in the folder waiting to be named and I am wondering if there isn't a better, quicker way to get things in order.

Maybe I have just overwhelmed myself by taking too darn many pictures, but I like to get pictures of FFO's and the last blooms so I can have a record of how long of a bloom period each daylily has. Then of course other blooms of the same daylily turn out to be much better, so I take more pictures. And I only have 150 daylilies. I know some of you have many, many more than that and I don't see how you do it. Do you keep more of a spreadsheet for record keeping and take pictures of only the very blooms of each daylily to post?

I know everyone goes to a lot of trouble to get pictures posted to the forum, and I really appreciate seeing all the beautiful blooms. I hope to get mine in some kind of order so I can contribute more this year, but it looks like I have dug a pretty big hole.

Vickie

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Comments (8)

njmomma
13 years ago
I gave up trying to put them on a blog. I now just keep them in photobucket files. It's free, it's easy, and I can access it from any computer no matter where I am.
shive
13 years ago
I crop/resize my pictures the same day I take them and upload the ones I want to post right away to Photobucket. I put seperate days photos in seperate folders on my hard drive which are kept in a 2010 Daylilies Folder. I do not upload everything to Photobucket since I have about 700 daylilies. Some pictures I take just for documentation purposes.

Don't worry about being "behind." Now that most of us don't have blooms anymore, we'll love to see your photos - whenever you post them. By next month and this fall, we'll be like hungry wolves - dyng to see some fresh photos on here.

Debra
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mizellie
13 years ago
Vickie, I am just now posting pictures I took this summer. I got so far behind that I just gave up trying to do everything in one day. I have PE3 but use the old Adobe Photo Deluxe. I size and crop them there then I put them in a folder I call ( ready for water). Then I do the watermark and put them all in a folder I call bucket. I can upload them all to a folder there in just a few minutes. I had a late folder called ( not posted ) that I started putting the ones in that I had not posted yet. It's a lot of work but I actually enjoy it. I have very few blooms now so am able to catch up!! Ellie BTW, I date my camera but I just write the names on a notebook so there are fewer pictures.
Julia WV (6b)
13 years ago
I wish there was a fast way of doing it but haven't found it yet.
I upload the photos to my pc from the camera card and do all the crop/resize (typically resize to 800 x 600 or 640 x 480) and naming and save them to a folder I call My First Daylily Blooms 2010 (have to admit all blooms whether first or last go in there). If I have another photo for the same daylily already in the folder, I just add a 1, 2, 3 etc to the name so I don't get the "replace" question. I've also noticed that when I go to save a photo with a name, the program will bring up a box which shows which ones are already in the folder. I, like you, then delete all the files I've loaded from my camera that are no longer needed.

I don't worry about dating the photo as I've learned that when I mouse over a photo when viewing the DL folder on my pc in thumbnails it gives me the date, size and time the photo was taken. I have 3 picture programs I can use. Microsoft Picture (very basic), FastStone Image Viewer and Resizer (freebies and the ones I use the most),Picasa 3 (basic also).

I don't delete my hard drive files from my pc when I upload to Photobucket. And I've found that sometimes Photobucket gets a bit quirky and I don't want to lose everything. I also backup my picture files on a memory stick. I have Plantstep software which keeps track of all the daylilies and any other plant I wish to track. This I will update in the fall when things calm down. I did at one time have just everything on spreadsheets but finally got too many to keep doing it that way. I also can track crosses I do or seeds I buy. It is a very useful program.

When I upload to Photobucket, I don't resize or crop but just have to title the photo again. I wish Photobucket would just ask if you want to use the file name for the title and then be able to save to whatever photobucket folder you want.

Post when you can and don't stress it. Some days I'm so far behind and then start catching up when I have some downtime.

Julia
leo_5313
13 years ago
If you are OK spending some money, Plantstep software is a good way to go.

Here is a link that might be useful: Plantstep flower software
mizellie
13 years ago
I have plantstep flower software but haven't used it yet! One day when I have time, I will do something with it...Ellie
floota
13 years ago
I download them directly from the camera into Photoshop. Once they get resized and cropped, they are then placed in folders on my computer. Since there are so many images, they are stored alphabetically - cultivars A, Cultivars B, etc. Then special categories are kept also - 2009 National, 2010 Regional, companion plants, etc. Everything is then backed up on an External hard drive and most are moved off the computer to external hard drives and jump drives since pictures take up so darn much memory on a computer. I am looking at storing them online at a place called Box.net. I have a couple thousand images stored on Photobucket and Flicker but would feel safer to have everything stored offsite in an online storage area. Hopefully EVERYONE backs up their images and stores them somewhere besides just on their computer. Don't have to learn this the hard way like I did a few years ago! Once you've had a computer crash, you usually become paranoid about backing up all files!
blue23rose
Original Author
13 years ago
Thanks so much everyone! For the advice and the encouragement:) I was getting somewhat discouraged, but your feedback was very helpful.

Leo, I had heard of the Plantstep software before, but didn't feel like I had enough daylilies to make it worthwhile buying. It certainly has received high praise from the ones I've heard use it.

Debra, I started out doing the uploading every day, and then when I got behind that's when I felt overwhelmed. It pays to stay on top of the daily photos!

Julia, I agree about Photobucket. It would be nice if it would just use the same name as the file.

Ellie, sorry to hear you are behind on your pictures too, but it's nice to know that I am not the only one:)

Julie, thanks for the reminder to back up the hard drive. I am afraid that is something that I haven't done yet! It would be awful to lose all those pictures.

Vickie

How do you keep daylily pictures organized?

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njmomma

shive

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How do you keep daylily pictures organized?

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njmomma

shive

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