[thelist] file management practices for design shops

[Andy Warwick]

On 2001-11-02 at 14:16, bart at archrival.com (Bart Johnston) wrote:

> Hey everybody,
> 
> Lately, I've been trying to establish some solid file management practices
> for the design firm I work for, and I'm curious about some of the solutions
> that some of you out there might have come up with.

<snip>

>but what I'm really more interested in are naming schemes

Big can of worms this, and will probably generate a lot of replies. For what
it's worth, over many years we've come up with the following naming scheme.

  Photoshop file, saved in native format with all layers intact and in RGB:
  
    example_file_name.psd
    
  'Flattened' image, saved as CMYK and sharpened:
  
    example_file_name_HC_20.tif
    example_file_name_HC_20.eps
    
  'Flatterned' image, save as RGB and shrunk to 72dpi
  
    example_file_name_HS_01.jpg
    
In the flattened images, the coding is at follows:

    example_file_name_<quality><color mode>_<size in MB>.<filetype>
    
So for the 'quality' position we have a subjective statment of a file's quality.
This allows up to grade a file we didn't create, or have rezzed up from a
low-res original.

    Quality
    --------
    
    H - High, usually generated on site or scanned from good original
    M - Medium, usually supplied by third party or from 35mm trannie
    L - Low, maybe a 72 dpi original changed to 300 dpi, or from a print.
    
The 'color mode' indicates what the file's color mode is.

    Color
    -------
    
    C - CMYK
    S - Screen (RGB) - for multimedia, web and powerpoint
    G - Greyscale
    M - Mono - black and white
    246 - Pantone 246
    
The size is in MB, and is the size as indicated in photoshop after any
decompression. A JPEG may be 200K on disk, but once opened it may be a 15MB
file; it would be coded as '_15.jpg'

This allows us to look at a filename and get a rough idea of how large it can be
used. A '_01.jpg' file, for instance, would be fine on a website, but not on a
poster.

Using this coding, the filename stays the same for all versions of the file, and
the suffix section changed depending on size, color-depth, resolution and
filetype.

  Small, web logo in greyscale
  
    logo_name_HG_01.jpg
  
  Same logo in hi-res CMYK for print
  
    logo_name_HC_12.tif
    
  Same logo in vectorline as pantone color
  
    logo_name_H246_V.eps (V is a wildcard to indicate a vector file)
    
  Same logo in hi-res CMYK for print, but from a poor original
  
    logo_name_LC_12.tif
    
The advantages of this are we can use applescript and isolate portions of the
filename (working from the back to the front), to automate conversions and
renaming tasks.

Of course, the exact coding can be whatever you want; you might want to use 'P'
instead of 'C', for 'Press' instead of 'CMYK'.

The key to the system is isolating sections to make searching easy, and
revealing info about the file without opening it when you are looking through
backup catalogues or printed file lists.

HTH

Andy Warwick