The World’s Best File Naming System
590,605
Published 2014-12-10
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
All Comments (21)
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I love that there is a whole YouTube channel around this concept.
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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.
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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.
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Clever as hell. A bunch of good ideas from a professional.
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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.!
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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.
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This is what I’ve been waiting for ... a logical method of storing/filing ....l thanks 🙏
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I’m SOOO Excited I found this video!! Starting my first larger project and I knew I wanted awesome organization from the get go. But didn’t know what strategy to use. THANK YOU!!!
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Learning about why to use an underscore was worth watching this video. The rest of the info was not only doable but also super easy to incorporate. Thanks!!
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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...
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ive been using this method for a few years now never looked back-and recommend it to all!
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Very good tip that will help me re-think my filing system. I used to only name my folders in this way. Now I will also rename my actual files
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Thank you Fred Armisen! Didn't know you had such practical skills!
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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 !
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This is very helpful - will try it out and organise my files over the next few weeks with this system.
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Professor, thank you. HATS LIFT UP.
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Great tips here still very relevant - I have been searching for a simple way to name my folders thanks for this
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Awesome advice. Going to start implementing your method from now on.
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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.
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This video is so wonderful! Thank you for taking the time to make this...I'm subscribing immediately!! :]
