Bridge? Lightroom? MY Overthinking Is Having a Party! It's Time To Organize 30 Years of Photoshop

[kathydannelvitcak]

For decades now I have started and quit organizing my Photoshop & InDesign files. I am selling my business and cannot give this hot mess of files to the delightful young woman to dig through. I know if I could just get started I can do it...I'm just not sure where to start.

I've watched a LOT of Adobe videos, and creator videos and takes a couple of classes, but I don't feel I ahve a handle on how I should get started. I went to Fiverr and a couple of other places to try and hire someone to get me started, but didn't have enough caffeine in me.

It is about 8-9 TB of images and Indesign files with a fair amount of duplicates, I am sure. Where do I start? Does anyone have any ideas? Or can you point me to somewhere that has Adobe folks for hire? I considered contacting our local college, we are in a very rural area, but there is a college 45 minutes or so away.

If it helps anyone wrap their brain around it. The business is pet skin care products and I started it with multiple dog breed options on many product labels, which ends up to be a lot of variations when you factor in sizes of containers, product listing for lots of different websites. 

Ideas? Stop laughing, I can feel the organized lucky souls snickering!

Kathy

[Trevor.Dennis]

Blimey Kathy.  8 to 9TB?  I think there are tools out there that would recognise duplicates, which would simplyfy the task to some extent.

My DAM (Digital Asset Management)) is to use Groups (Windows) with:

Year_month_Day Meaningful name

Because that will list them in date created order.  I leave the files within with the name the camea gave them, if they are photographs, but they will have project names if appropriate.

I'm a big fan of Creative Cloud Libraries. When I did client work I would have a CC Library group for each client. Tht contained fonts, colour swatches, gradients, layer styles, often individual image elements.  I liked the view in web option as a way to see the whole thing.  It is like cloud storage of course, and viewable anywhere.  Not so good with 8TB though.

Bridge has a useful rename tool.  (it won't show unless you have files selected.

I hope you get some better ideas posted, because I don't envy you this job.

[kathydannelvitcak]

Thank you SO much for taking the time to answer me! I have started and fizzled out on this Herculean task many, many time. My hoarding is creepy because no one can see it but me! I'll keep y'all posted!

Kathy

[Conrad_C]

The place to start is the reason why you need to organize them. If it’s for the business, then you might start by deciding what would be the best organization for the business. How do people need to find stuff? For example, do they need to find the images and InDesign documents by breed, product, containers, brand, etc? Also, do you need to organize the files in a way that works well with your existing accounting or inventory/sales system, like SKUs or Amazon ASINs?

You can think through this stage of organization with a pencil and paper before you do anything on the computer. 

Then you can use the Keywords panel in Adobe Bridge to create a set of keywords based on the organization you worked out. So you could assign keywords to a picture like “dog, powder, flea” or something like that. Another image might have keywords like “cat, ointment”.

Once keywords are assigned in Bridge, a lot of other things become easier. For example, you could use the Collections panel in Bridge to create lists of related files. You could use keyword searches to help you find pictures and InDesign files to drag into different collections named “cream” or “powder" or "beagle". Even better you could create a Smart Collection (like a saved search) so that the images gather themselves: For example, create a Smart Collection that looks for images and InDesign documents with the keyword combination of “cream” and "beagle" keywords, and the Smart Collection will become an automatic list of all files of skin creams for beagles, collected from all folders on the computer.

A possible book that might help: The DAM Book by expert Peter Krogh

DAM stands for Digital Asset Management

[Trevor.Dennis]

I held off mentioning Bridge because I find it slow to index, and with 9TB of data, I thought that would slow the process to an unbearably long time.   Kathy is using a Mac, which I have limited experience with.  Windows 11 File Explorer is super quick at sorting file structure,  and reasonably fast at indexing drives.  Faster than Bridge, at least, I suspect.  

@kathydannelvitcak is that data on multiple drives or a server?

What OS will the new owner be using?

This forum might not be the very best place to ask these questions.  You might also need to ask the new owner what their plans are. They might decide to use a 'Data Warehouse' in which case you could speak to a supplier or that service to find the best way to go.

Or are we over thinking this?  Is this data for reference only, for when doing work for a particular client going forward?  I'm basically guessing, and I think you need more informed advice.

[kathydannelvitcak]

What y'all are suggesting is exactly what I needed...somewhere to start! I've gone old school and printed everyone's responses so I can make actually notes and proceed! We sell physical products and some of them we do multiple dog breed label options AND product size/container types. Plus, secondary and hero images and it can be thousands of images per product. I know, I created this monster and I am sure it won't last forever! I am to learn how to do Smart Collection TODAY! Thank you again!

Kathy

[Conrad_C]

I forgot to address the fact that you mentioned Lightroom in your thread title. I organize all my photos in Lightroom Classic, and the book I suggested (The DAM Book) is built around Lightroom Classic, but the reason I didn’t mention it for you is that you also mentioned InDesign. Lightroom Classic won’t work then because it catalogs only photos and videos.

That’s what makes Bridge potentially useful for this specific scenario: Because Bridge needs to support many Creative Cloud apps, Bridge works with a wide range of file types including photos, videos, HTML files, and documents by InDesign, Illustrator, After Effects, and more.

You tagged your question with “macOS” so I’lll also mention that there are some other Mac apps such as Neofinder that work sort of like Bridge, in that they can help organize many file types. But they won’t be as useful with Creative Cloud features as Bridge. For example, when you select an InDesign document in Bridge, the Metadata panel in Bridge can list what linked files, fonts, and document color swatches are used in that document.

[kathydannelvitcak]

THank you so much! We're in a very rural location in far northern Minnesota (close to Winnipeg) and an hour from a gas station...so it's easy for me to feel I am all alone. Every year I send our local phone co-op Holiday gifts for keeping us going with high speed internet! I'm going to check Neofinder out, just to see. I agree, I create labels for each product and the files go to the printers we use, so I am used to packaging everything for print. My work is mostly Photoshop, then InDesign and the rest in Shopify's platform, so Photoshop there. Thank you again, so very much!

Kathy

[Glenn 8675309]

Selling the business?   I'd put everything on a hard drive or two and say "Good luck"---- seriously- if you are selling your business just step away- if after 30 years your "hot mess of files" is just that- a hot mess- it's nothing you need to worry about.    Anyone buying a business probably has the skill, or knows people how to fix / organize the data.

On the low end you would pay about $50 and hour to have someone do it for you.   Now think of the time you would spend trying to fix 30 years worth of your graphics--- you wouldn't fix it-- you will spend time trying and kinda sorta get things a little bit discombobulated- but they probably would be a hot mess.

Me?  As is all the data-   Could be worth lets say $5,000 of the selling price of the business.

When I sold image sets on my website I  had everything ortganized, catorgorized, grouped, and have backups of it to this day- and It's been 7 years- but it's  just a little ober 22,000 images.   9TB   is more like three or 4 average public libraries of data.

 Bottom line:  Just walk away- 'hand the buyer the keys"  and walk away.   

[kathydannelvitcak]

I hear you, Glenn! I had offers from some pet industry biggies, but then my assistant and her husband came forward and expressed an interest. I decided my business baby would be best with them. It can stay a small business with the identity we've built and they can raise their two boys in it! Plus, then all the local jobs stay intact, etc. I have no human kids and they swore if I outlive my dogs they will be cared for!  So, I am staying on as some kinda Emeritus Adviser.

My rational brain knows what you said is 110% true, but my I Can Do It brain is gonna give it a try. 

It's all on my Mac Studio with three external hard drives. Only one stays plugged in for Time Machine and the other two I plug in on scheduled dates and backup new stuff.  I know they won't need all the images I have hoarded, but at least they won't need to spend a penny at any stock photo place for a while. 

Thanks to each of your generosity I'm going to start with a rock sold Duplicates Search! That will probably take all weekend (at least), bbut will give me time to bone up on how to use the Smart Collection tools Bridge gives us. Maybe I'll contact Adobe and see if they want to organize it all for me to use as an example of what NOT to do! When I turned 65 I did a big Swedish Death Purge so my assistant would not have to plow through 30 years of dog show ribbons, etc. I donated a LOT to dog rescue groups and it felt good. Too bad there are no rescue groups for photos! 

I'll keep y'all posted, I'm off to be sure I have plenty of strong tea for this upcoming adenture!

Kathy

[Glenn 8675309]

adobe bridge is the way to go.

[kathydannelvitcak]

This was my "Let's Do This" weekend and I am patiently waiting (kinda patiently) running my duplicates finder. I've got Duplicate Finder in Mac Cleaner Pro and dumped 2gb yesterday. There were images I had 8-10 of and I'm not sure why. In my over-zealousness to never ever lose anything EVER it looks like I saved multiple copies of my 5th grade report card on external hard drives. 

So, one more thing I did was unplug all the external hard drives until I fix this and then I will go from there! I will load two of them with everything and then do manual back-ups on set dates. Actually, as I typed that I realized I'll have someone here at the office do my manual backups! 

As I reread this before I hit post (something I have learned to do the hard way), I realized I can use one hard drive and put ALL of the "2nd tier save stuff" on there!  

Again, thank all y'all for helping point me in the right direction. I think a lot of us have the mindset that we can do brain surgery if we had a YouTube video and a check list! Glen, you are my Valorous Hero!

Kathy

[Glenn 8675309]

My oncologist hates it when I talk about "Dr. Google".

[rayek.elfin]

I'd use a chatGPT script in Python to assist me in organizing all that. Huge time-saver. 

[jane-e]

@kathydannelvitcak 

One thing to remember is when you place images into InDesign, you're placing a link to the original image with the original name and the original location. If you rename or move the image, you will break the link and cause more damage. One thing you might consider is to package the InDesign files and include the fonts, images, a PDF, and an IDML file.

Jane