Many photographers use a photo organizing system built entirely around folders. It’s simple, it’s direct and it’s easy to understand exactly where image are stored. But it’s also a pretty crude system with some profound limitations for more advanced cataloguing.
The alternative offered by many photo organizing and cataloguing tools is ‘albums’ or ‘collections’. These bring related images together ‘virtually’ so that you don’t have to move images around at all. This sounds great, but this too has some limitations which aren’t immediately obvious.
Using folders to organise your photos: pros and cons
+ Your organisation system is obvious. Every photo and folder has a definite location on your computer. If you move a photo or rename a photo, there’s no ambiguity. Changes you make in your cataloguing software are reflected in your operating system’s own folder display and vice versa.
– Photos can only be in one folder at a time and you have to plan a rigid organizing structure, perhaps based around dates, for example. A photo can’t be in both a ‘Landscapes’ folder and in a ‘2025/03/06’ folder, for example. You’ll need to use a keyboarding system to find images that match specific subjects, genres, cameras or other criteria, so even with a folder system it’s likely you’ll need some kind of cataloguing software.
Using albums/collections to organize your photos: pros and cons
+ Albums and Collections are ‘virtual’. You don’t need to change the location of a photo to add it to an album.
+ A single photo can be added to any number of different albums. With folders, a photo can only be in one place at a time. With albums, it can be in lots of places at the same time. A single photo can be in a ‘Calgary’ album, a ‘Landscape’ album, a ‘Winter’ album, a ‘Canon EOS R8’ album and many more.
+ Many cataloguing programs offer ‘Smart Albums/Collections’. You don’t have to manually add photos at all. Instead, these use search criteria to find and show matching images automatically.
– Albums and Collections are software-specific. This is a big downside that’s easy to overlook. Collections you create in Lightroom are visible ONLY in Lightroom. They have no existence outside of Lightroom in other software or anywhere in your OS. The same is true of Capture One albums and equivalents in any other organizing software.
– If you lose, delete or mistakenly alter your image catalog, you will lose not only any non-destructive edits you’ve carried out but your album/collection organizing system too. The ‘virtual’ nature of albums is their greatest strength but also their greatest weakness – they have no existence outside that software or its catalog database.
Can you get the best of both worlds with both folders and albums?
You can, but it depends on the software and how you choose to use it:
- Lightroom Classic offers both Folder and Collection organization, and you can use both or either. But the Folder view won’t just show you what’s there, as you have to Import folders into the catalog first and Synchronize them manually if you change things outside of Lightroom.
- Lightroom offers a Folder view but with only basic options. It’s really designed for cloud storage where folders don’t exist at all, only Collections. The Folder view is ‘live’ and shows you what’s on your computer, and when you copy it to the cloud you’re effectively ‘importing’ it.
- Capture One Catalogs work just like Lightroom Classic where photos and folders must be imported first.
- Capture One Sessions offer live folder browsing but with keyboarding and albums too, provided you understand the differences and their limitations compared to regular catalogs. Sessions combine the simplicity of folder organisation with limited but valuable cataloguing tools too.
- ON1 Photo RAW offers two approaches. It offers regular folder browsing with added organizing tools, like Capture One Sessions, or you can opt to include folders in its catalog for more advanced search tools.
- Other programs like ACDSee Photo Studio, Corel PaintShop Pro, Skylum Luminar and DxO PhotoLab offer a similar hybrid approach to photo organization.
So which is best, folders or albums?
Unless you’re using a fully-managed setup like Lightroom or Apple Photos, where images are sucked into the software’s own storage system, folders are likely to remain at the heart of your photo organization, and that’s great. Folder systems do have limitations, though, that Albums/Collections do not. You just have to remember that while your folder filing systems will be the same for whatever software you use, albums and collections exist only within that specific application. You get more organisational capabilities but only by committing to a single software solution.
Personally, I find the Import process needed for Lightroom Classic and Capture One catalogs to be too restrictive. It’s fine if that’s the only software I’m using, but often it’s not. I prefer the more limited hybrid approach used by Capture One Sessions and ON1 Photo RAW. I can still see what’s in my folders ‘live’ without having to re-import or synchronize after adding images outside of these programs, yet I still get some limited but adequate cataloging and search tools.
If you are happy to commit to a single organizing tool at the center of your photo-editing workflow, then I think Lightroom Classic and Capture One catalogs are the way to go… but make sure you back them up regularly!
