Keywords and naming photos

Question

I know this has been asked before but I'm still searching for a solution.
My fiancee and I are both photographers and we take thousands of photos for our business and I'm still trying to find the best workflow to minimise work and time wasted.
At the moment after a shoot we download our photos to a folder, appropriately named, on the desktop of our i-Books.
Then we import the photos to i-Photo and then the photos in the folder on the desktop are copied over to external hard drives and the original folder on the desktop is deleted.
Thus far we now have photos in i-Photos and back-ups safe and sound on external hard drives.
The problem arises with naming and keywording photos in the back-up folders and i-Photo. We use multiple libraries using iPhoto Buddy, but I think our problem would be the same even if we used i-Photo to create multiple libraries.
Here, at last I hear you say, is the problem. How do we name and keyword the photos just once without having to re-name or re-keyword anytime/everytime we move a photo from one place to another?
Most files for other things in our business I can sync without problems but photos are causing a lot of wasted time due to having keep re-naming and keywording photos in different locations.
Any ideas, thoughts etc greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

John
How do we name and keyword the photos just once without having to re-name or re-keyword anytime/everytime we move a photo from one place to another?
The naming first:
You copy the pics onto the Mac. Then import them into iPhoto. Title them in iPhoto then Select the pics and go File -> Export. In the export dialogue you can opt to name the exported files with the title you gave them in iPhoto. So, do this, then export them to your back up. Result, two set of pics, one job of naming.
Alternative: Name the pics using a bulk file renamer like File List before importing them into iPhoto - same result.
As to keyword, do you want to write them as exif data? Have a look at this website
http://highearthorbit.com/289/
which uses an AppleScript and a command line tool to achieve this.
Old Toad also has a tutorial on using iView Media Pro in conjunction with iPhoto.
Is there a particular reason why you're keeping the back up entirely separate from iPhoto? Why not just copy the iPhoto Library Folder to an external and keep it up to date with an incremental back up tool like DejaVu ?
Regards
TD