Advice for naming and organising your media files

Decide on one location to hold all of your video/photo files relating to your family memories:

? Do not use the default folders recommended by your computer (e.g. ?C:\Users\mark\Pictures?), because apps often like to automatically add/edit files in these folders for their own purposes and may complicate or undo your organising efforts. Better to avoid all of that by choosing a custom location unknown to those apps.
? Instead, use an external solid-state hard drive, because storing your memories on an external hard drive is a great way to store them separate and away from the rest of your computer (which could break).
? Do not encrypt the hard drive, because that would make it possible to forget the password and lose access to your memories. Better to buy a solid-state hard drive that does not force you to encrypt it and choose to keep the drive ?open? to more easily use the files on other devices too.

A folder for each year (e.g. ?2021?)
A folder for each special event (e.g. ?2021-03 Alice?s Wedding?)
In some cases, you might have photos that you want to separate out under their own theme because the date doesn?t really matter. In these cases, create a folder with a # prefix (e.g. ?#food?, ?#screenshots?, ?#work?). This means the themed folders will appear at the bottom when you browse your media library and reverse-sort to show the most recent events first.

Avoid putting folders inside folders. Instead, keep just one level of folders so that each media file is only two clicks away.
Give every media file a date prefix (e.g. ?2023-10-03.jpg?)

It is better to safely store this information in the file name itself. Unfortunately, you cannot rely on different cameras and systems to consistently manage Created, Modified, and Date Taken information.

If there is more than one media file for the same date, then use a suffix to make them different (e.g. ?2023-10-03 (2).jpg?)
Lastly, add a + prefix to your favourite photos so they appear to the top of each file list

My Objectives

What I wanted:

? Let's us choose which photos are backed-up to a shared family photo library we can both access

? Lets us favourite photos on any device

? Renames files to preserve the date taken in the filename itself

? Identifies and removes duplicate photos

? Without any reduction in the quality of the photos

? As cheap or free as possible

What I did not want:

? Duplicate photos

Where do we want to show these photos?

Social media
Collect photos into albums to share with family through a semi-public link (e.g. sharing holiday pictures)
Show on TV screensaver
Digital photo frames
Our yearly photo book
Our custom framed wall prints

Who?s done this before?

What tools are already available?

Routines

Every month on the 1st:?Use SlideBox to sort photos and Apple Shortcuts to convert any HEIC to JPG and auto-upload to Dropbox
Every month on the 1st:?Favourite photos in the collection
Every October on the 1st:?Finalise yearbook in OnceUpon app
Every October on the 25th:?Send the OnceUpon yearbook for print using the Halloween discount (~25% off)
Every January on the last Sunday:?Backup photos to external hard drive and delete already backed up photos from mobiles

Automation

Process

"Memories", which should be backed-up and protected
"Stuff", which could include screenshots, legal documents, and/or receipts that can be safely ignored in this process

Apple Shortcuts will regularly upload any new "Memories" photos to Dropbox with the photos' original names and quality

Convert all iPhone HEIC photos to JPG
Rename all photos to follow YYYY-MM-DD format and use Apple Shortcuts to upload to Dropbox
Apple Shortcut is configured to not replace any existing files
Same-named files will be renamed YYYY-MM-DD (1) and so on to avoid overwriting