Folders and naming

Learning goal

You will be able to build a folder and file name system in which you can find what you are looking for among thousands of photos within minutes. You will explain why date-based folders work; you will see that the ISO date format, which writes year, month and day from largest to smallest, lines folders up in the right order by itself; you will calculate why the camera's file counter goes back to the start one day and why files with the same name clash; you will rename files with a consistent pattern while importing; and you will know why keeping edited copies under a version suffix, without writing over the original, is a lifesaver when you later need to revisit the color or tone of a face.

The question

A year later your aunt calls: from the evening when you celebrated your grandmother's eightieth birthday, she wants to have the frame where she blew out the candles enlarged and framed. You open the computer. On the desktop there are folders named "New folder," "New folder (3)," "from phone" and "backup final"; inside them are hundreds of files, and all their names look alike: an abbreviation, an underscore and a four-digit number. In one folder you find two different photos carrying the same name; one from the birthday, one from last summer's seaside holiday.

Ten minutes later you are still searching. How do we not get lost among 10,000 photos? In this lesson we will talk about two simple habits that will let you find a photo within seconds even years later: date-based folders and consistent file names.

Context

Think of a library. If the books were lined up on the shelves at random, you would have to scan every shelf one by one to find the book you want; what makes a library useful is that every book finds its place according to a rule known in advance. A photo archive is the same: if you decide from the start where each new shoot will go and what its name will be, searching stops being a scan and turns into going to an address.

The most important feature of these decisions is consistency. Which system you choose matters less than applying it the same way every time. This lesson suggests a system to you; but the real goal is that the system you build today stays the same ten years from now.

Simple explanation

Why are folders opened by date?

The only feature of a photo that never changes is the date it was taken. Subjects overlap, a single shoot can have family, landscape and street in it; but the date is one. That is why many photographers divide their archive by years, and the inside of each year by shoot days: first a year folder, and inside it a folder for each shoot. The shoot folder's name starts with the date and ends with a short event name.

How the date is written matters here. The ISO date format, which writes year, month and day from largest to smallest with hyphens between them, for example 2025-06-14, also lines folders up in chronological order by itself when they are sorted alphabetically. In a format that writes the day first, on the other hand, the fourteenth of a month comes after the second of the next month and the order breaks. Always writing the month and day with two digits, that is, writing the sixth month as 06, keeps the sorting right.

Why do file names clash?

The camera gives every frame a name made of an abbreviation and a four-digit number. When this number reaches 9999, it goes back to the start and begins counting again from 0001. Someone who shoots two hundred frames every weekend reaches this limit after about fifty weeks, that is, in a year. The same numbers are used once more, and photos from different days start carrying the same name. If you use two cameras, or a camera and a phone, the same names clash much faster.

When two files with the same name are copied into the same folder, one can be written over the other. That is why renaming files while importing is a good habit: renaming is putting the date, a short event name and a sequence number into the file's name. Such a name is both unique and tells where the file came from even when it is taken out of its folder and sent somewhere else. The RAW and JPEG files of the same frame should carry the same name, with only different extensions.

What do you watch for when writing names?

In file and folder names, spaces, accented or non-English letters such as é or ñ, and special marks like a slash or a question mark can cause trouble on some systems, disks or internet services. The most trouble-free way is to write names with lowercase Latin letters, digits, hyphens and underscores. Keeping the event name short helps too; for the evening you celebrated your grandmother's eightieth birthday, "grandma-80" is enough.

You also need to set a rule for edited copies. If you edit a photo and save it over the original, the original file is lost. Saving the edited copy separately by adding a version suffix to the end of the same name, for example "-d1" or "-print," both protects the original and shows which file comes from which. This matters especially with faces: an edit where you opened the shadows of dark skin too much and shifted its color toward gray, or suppressed the redness of light skin too much and left the face pale, can be done again from scratch and with more care, as long as the original file is there.

Visual evidence

You set aside a weekend for your archive. You open a single main folder named "Photos" and put folders by year inside it. You open the scattered folders on the desktop one by one, look at the files' shooting dates, and move each shoot into its own day's folder. Your grandmother's birthday now sits inside the "2025" folder, in a folder named "2025-06-14_grandma-80"; the seaside holiday is in the "2025-08-02_seaside" folder.

You rename the files with the same pattern too: "2025-06-14_grandma-80_0087". The clash between two photos carrying the same name disappears. You find the frame where she blew out the candles next to an edit you made in a hurry last year, which brightened your uncle's face too much and shifted his skin toward gray; luckily that edit was saved separately with the "-d1" suffix, and the original RAW is in its place. You make a new edit from the original: your uncle's skin is warm and deep, the child's freckles are in place, your grandmother's face is in the candlelight. You save it with the "-d2" suffix and send it to your aunt. This time the search takes a minute.

Common mistakes

Summary

What makes thousands of photos findable is a system in which it is decided from the start where each new shoot will go and what its name will be, applied the same way every time. Folders opened by year and shoot day, whose names start with the ISO date format, line up in the right order by themselves; files renamed while importing with the date, event and sequence number are spared the clashes caused by the camera's counter going back to the start. Keeping edited copies separately under a version suffix protects the original and makes it possible to revisit the tone or color of a face later, again and with more care, on every skin.

Mini assignment

In this assignment you will build the foundation of your own archive.

1. Open a single main photo folder on your computer and put year folders inside it.
2. Move your last three shoots into folders that start with the ISO date format and end with a short event name.
3. Rename the files of one of these shoots with a pattern that includes the date, event and sequence number; check that the RAW and JPEG pairs carry the same name.
4. Edit a photo and save it not over the original, but separately with a version suffix.

Check yourself

• When your folders were sorted alphabetically, did they also line up in chronological order?
• Can you tell on which day and at which event a random photo was taken just by looking at its name?
• If you don't like the skin's color in a portrait you edited, can you go back to the original file and redo the edit from scratch?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. Which folder name also keeps chronological order in alphabetical sorting?

• A) 14 June 2025
• B) 14-06-2025
• C) 2025-06-14
• D) June 14 2025

2. What happens when the camera's file counter reaches 9999?

• A) The camera stops shooting
• B) The counter goes back to the start and the same names are used again
• C) The card is formatted by itself
• D) File names grow to five digits

3. Which are the most trouble-free characters in file names?

• A) Lowercase Latin letters, digits, hyphens and underscores
• B) Spaces and accented letters
• C) A question mark and a slash
• D) Emoji and punctuation marks

4. You notice later that you shifted the skin's color toward gray in a portrait you edited. Which habit lets you fix this mistake?

• A) Saving the edit over the original
• B) Turning the photo black and white
• C) Not renaming the file
• D) Saving the edited copy separately with a version suffix and protecting the original

Answers

1. C — Year-month-day order makes alphabetical sorting equal to chronological order.
2. B — The four-digit counter goes back to the start, and files from different days start carrying the same name.
3. A — Spaces, accented letters and special marks can cause trouble on some systems.
4. D — As long as the original stays in place, a spoiled edit can be done again from scratch and with more care.

Summary card

• Folder: year / year-month-day_event.
• ISO date format: alphabetical order = chronological order; two-digit month and day.
• The counter goes back to the start after 9999: rename while importing.
• In names, lowercase Latin letters, digits, hyphens, underscores; the same name for RAW and JPEG.
• A version suffix for the edited copy; never write over the original.

Bridge to the next lesson

While sending the candle frame to your aunt, you notice something: inside the file there is much more information than its name. Which camera it was taken with, which aperture and shutter speed, maybe even the exact location of the garden, travel to your aunt's phone along with it. What else is hidden inside a photo, outside the image, and what do you need to watch for when sharing it? The next lesson talks about metadata, EXIF information, location and keywords.