The World’s Best File Naming System

You were a rock star on the shoot and the client is very happy. You did an amazing job retouching and finishing the image and, not only is the client happy (maybe ecstatic!), but their client is even happier. If you’re a wedding shooter, the whole family loves you!

Now they call to do additional licensing or make a huge print. They love you so much they want to make sure you are compensated well for the added use or for the print. You're thrilled, but when you look for the image, but you can’t find it. Where did it go? What did you name it? What folder did you put it in?

Excellent, you forgot what you called it or didn’t store it properly. It’s buried in a pile of unorganized hard drives with a generic file name that the camera gave it.

In a matter of seconds you go from being so thrilled about making some easy money to spending two whole days looking for the file. In the worst case, you lost the file because it was not Archived correctly. You vow to never let this happen again!

Watch the video and use this File Naming System to save you from hours of headaches and panic. Don't let this happen to you again.

Please note: Insults are not tolerated in the comments to anyone!

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Video tutorial by Michael Grecco

[jimsmith]

At last, someone who understands that YYYYMMDD is the ONLY correct way to put dates on filenames. It always sorts properly no matter the operating system.

[JavierMercedes]

I love that there is a whole YouTube channel around this concept.

[PhilippUnterreiner]

What about "dashes" vs "underscore"? I've read an article stating that dashes are better for web indexing and search engines. Personally I prefer dashes, because it allows to "alt" (on Mac) or "ctrl" (on PC) + shift + arrow keys quickly move and erase or relabel parts of a file name. With underscores this doesn't work, because the whole name will be interpreted as one string (both mac and pc).

[OskarBravo]

A Linux technician told me (around 10 years ago) to only use underscores when naming my files. Good to see that advice is being passed on in this video too. It's kinda crazy that simple stuff, like naming conventions, is so infrequently taught.

[jrtube]

Clever as hell. A bunch of good ideas from a professional.

[MarkSRiddle]

Such a great video !! the final touch would be adding a QR code (once you are printing those labels to stick on drives) that leads directly to the screenshots !

[garychap]

I take a snapshot of the files on the hard drive, using an old polaroid ... then scan the polaroid and add it to the drive. Then I snapshot the archive with the polaroid I just archived, for archival purposes.

Duplication is important. Most of my working set are on SD cards carefully arranged around my home, such as behind the fridge or down the back of the sofa.... however, I also maintain duplicates - probably on that flash drive I lent to Peters' moms new BF.

Typically I try to put the duplicates on the same media they're duplicating... which is handy because then you can't lose 'em and you know what they go with.

My file naming system is a little more advanced than the one in the video. I mostly shoot weddings and portraits... so I first sort them into 'bangable' and 'not bangable' on a shot by shot basis. The 'not bangable' simply aggregate in that folder ... however, the bangable ones get further refined by hair colour or most attractive physical feature.

Thus when a portrait client walks in for copies, I know exactly where to find them.

Getting copies for weddings usually involves gathering a little more information : "Mr. and Mrs Noakes? June 2013? ... Oh, wait, wasn't she the short brunette with the ridiculous ass? ... GOT IT !"

By not sorting the uglies you save a lot of time - besides, nobody ever wants late copies of those anyway.

Oh, and finally ALWAYS keep the originals archived separately from the photoshop retouches ... nobody want's to find a picture of their mother-in-law being banged by an octopus, or their wife and niece in a three-way with a gorilla ...

... I'm not making THAT mistake again.

[SeanKelly]

That date format is ISO 8601. If you use dashes instead of underscores, it works better with searches, as does all lowercase in file names.

[santasl]

The only point I really disagree is with the last topic regarding "taking screenshots of the HDD contents" That is fine but I would rather use something where it is possible to let the computer search for me, e.g. Text file containing the HDD contents. I don't want to look at pictures just to find a persons portraits.

[ziomalZparafii]

1:56 it's not a "reverse order", it's ISO 8601! It's the only logical way to write the date in digital world.

[stephenpearce]

Been doing this (reverse date) for my whole career. It's a UK project management standard. It sorts everything by date beautifully. The American date format is totally illogical & confusing when working on International projects

[dennisvanmierlo]

For images I use YYYYMMDD-9999 in the beginning of the file name, where 9999 is a sequence number, followed by info of the file in a same way as mentioned in the video. This way, the image file has a ‘unique’ label independent of the text in the file name. This allows for publishing the image file only by it’s unique label and keeping track in my archive. For other documents types I use YYYYMMDD at the end.

[myhandlehasbeenmishandled]

I've been doing this (more or less) for the past 18 years. Relying only on software to keep things straight is asking for trouble.

[JaredRibic]

I've been doing very similar for a long time. It truly is the best system.
Why would anyone *not* use YYYYMMDD at the beginning of their filenames? It's so logical and simple.

[stevenparker]

I’ve been using essentially this system since working on a national advertising campaign circa 1989 where I HAD to get serious — absolutely rock solid advice! I don’t understand how anyone could give this advice a thumbs down.!

[ibdense]

I've used the YYYYMMDD file naming since the 1990s. I doubt that many of you have done much or had files from before the turn of the century. I sometimes question whether the first two YYs are necessary, but for safety and consistency I still use all four.

[googleit]

Finally! Someone else understand the whole yyyymmdd file naming system. I tried explaining this to a few friends (designers) and they couldn’t understand it at all. I typically do this for folders instead of the files themselves since I use a program to lock files to folders, but I love this technique. I just don’t understand why photographers are the only ones who do this...

[jaysilence]

There is only one correct format for a data stamp and that is ISO 8601: YYYY-MM-DD
See also XKCD 1179

[steveshepherd]

This is what I’ve been waiting for ... a logical method of storing/filing ....l thanks 🙏

[rosiefay]

Another aspect of organising file which he didn't mention is structuring directory trees and naming the directories.