having a bit of trouble finding out, what the “best” Datastructure would be. I’ve got A LOT of unsorted Photos, many RAW Photos and so on - a lot of Chaos, some Photos nobody except me should ever see and some other i’d like to share with my family, wife and friends.
I’d like to have most pictures on my Samba file share, but i’d like to use the power of my desktop for photostructure.
I would like to also have a “sorted” and “shareable” folder (or use another Gallery-Docker Web-Thingy… but have it easier in terms of configuration).
Is there a “best practice” Datastructure for having photostructure on a desktop pc and a NAS? Is it “better” to just use the samba folder?
By “datastructure,” do you mean how your folder hierarchies should be laid out (and maybe where they’re stored)?
For the directories you don’t want PhotoStructure to import at all, mark them as .NoMedia:
You’ve actually got a lot of flexibility with how you set things up.
Where do your files go?
My only main recommendation would be to set things up to make backups as easy for you to do as possible. If that means storing everything on your NAS, because you have that backed up already, then go that way.
(Also: please don’t make the same mistake I made a long time ago and think that a RAID “counts” as a backup. RAID isn’t a backup.)
I’d recommend just using your NAS HDD as your PhotoStructure library, and only switch to hybrid if you need more speed in the future.
What hierarchy should I use?
Every photo and video you’ve taken has a “captured-at” time. There isn’t really any other attribute that’s ubiquitous.
Because of this, PhotoStructure’s automatic organization copies your photos and videos into timestamped subdirectories (if you opt-in).
All other attributes can be then added to your assets via hierarchical tags. Some of these tags are automatically extracted by PhotoStructure, and (many!) more “curators” will be added to PhotoStructure in the future.
I am in the same boat as you are. Historically I kept all my Photos in “Pictures” folder on NAS. Inside this folder there is YYYY/YYYY-MM structure of folders for photos taken by ME. There is also “Doc-stuff-reference” dir with YYYY subfolders. In here go random bits and pieces captured, but not worth “artistic look”. Then there is directory called “Received photos” with subfolders of people names whom I got a set of photos from. Under that there might be YYYY-event directory or not. There is also separate directory for home videos, that I am migrating now under the same directory tree. And few other random directories, that are less or equally organized (like drone captured videos and photos). Messy, eh?
But, this structure gives me at least “some level” of control even if I give up all and any DAM software. Just simple plain dir-files structure. This does not solve yours (and my) “some Photos nobody except me should ever see and some other i’d like to share with my family, wife and friends.” problem, I guess we all are hoping that Photostructure will.
I’d love to hear what other people do with their “media”.
but have it easier in terms of configuration).
This number of dups would freak me out big time and trip my OCD for sure.