The DAM Book, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4. Organizing and Naming Files and Folders

In this chapter and the next, I present strategies for organizing and storing your digital assets. I find it’s very helpful to break this discussion into two topics: the directory structure and the hardware configuration. The directory structure is the organization of files into a hierarchy of folders. It should be stable and scalable; it should not fundamentally change, only be added to. The hardware configuration is simply the configuration of the media that happen to be hosting the directory structure at any given time, and this will change as you add storage or move to entirely new media.

• Organizing Your Image Files: An Overview

• Working File Directory Structure

• Archive Directory Structure: An Overview

• Archive Directory Structure: Making Buckets

• The Fine Art of File Naming

Organizing Your Image Files: An Overview

In the previous chapter, we saw you can use metadata to organize your images in robust and flexible ways. In this chapter, we’ll see how to name your files and how to divide them into a folder structure that takes the data lifecycle into account. Let’s start with a basic overview of the organizational structure and tools, and then move to some specific recommendations.

Folders: What Are They Good For?

In the physical filing world, folders are very useful for organizing lots of documents. Since a piece of physical film or paper ...