Reddit reviews The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers

Before getting into photography, my background was corporate IT (with a heavy emphasis on asset management, disaster preparedness & recovery).

First, I strongly recommend getting a copy of The DAM Book for Photographers. The latest edition is from 2009 so some of the software references are probably dated, but the concepts aren't bound to using any specific software.

Next - based on the content of the DAM book, I really recommend creating a folder structure for organizing your projects that don't rely heavily on software. (Cataloging software is great, and I love it, but you want a system that's scalable so that you can move to different software in the future if you want, and that's easy enough to stick to that you're not dead in the water if your catalog dies)

Unlike many photographers, the approach I use relies on assigning a serial number to each project rather than by date. This is not a new idea, and not mine by a long shot. But essentially, all of your files have metadata in them. If you want to organize by date, just sort the files by date.

By assigning a serial number to each project you're able to:

• Quickly see if things are missing because folders & files wil be out of order.
  
• Easily be able to organize images that were shot on different days but might belong to the same project
  
• Immediately know where something belongs if it gets moved to the wrong place by accident.
  
  Each project gets a folder like so: [Serial Number]-[Project Description] such as:
  
  00001-Project 1
  
  00002-Client headshots
  
  00003-Home Depot Campaign - Spring
  
  Each image file has the project number, and then a frame number like so:
  
  00001-0001.cr2
  
  My RAW processing workflow is all in Capture One Pro, which lines up well with this project folder idea since that's basically a session - but it's easy to integrate this into Lightroom or ACDsee or Bridge et.
  
  Once your structure is in place, then just pick a catalog system to index the directories as you add them for new shoots/projects and you're all set to go.
  
  I really like NeoFinder (AbeMedia if you're a Windows user) since it's literally designed to index multiple hard drives, DVDs, and network drives to be searched offline... but if you stick to this folder structure then it doesn't matter what application you're using.
  
  
  

It's a book on digital asset management.