Tips for Organizing Digital Photo Memories
By: Dorothy Kern
That’s where I come in!
I take photos on a daily basis for my blog. Now, granted 90% of the photos I take are of food. BUT I still want to have them organized. There’s nothing I dislike more than trying to get photos ready for a post…only to not be able to find them. Or, worse, I hate when I have to delete photos off my memory card to make space for new ones…only to realize later I never downloaded the original ones in the first place.
Does this sound like you? Then you’ve come to the right place.
Let’s get started!
Download from your camera regularly
This may seem simple, but it’s important. Get yourself on a schedule and download your pictures often. If you don’t take very many, make it once a month. If you take a lot, try once a week. However often it is…put yourself on a download schedule. Otherwise you’re importing 500 photos for 12 different events and it gets overwhelming.
Create Folders
It’s the New Year, so this is the perfect time to start. Create a folder wherever you put your pictures. (Is it a folder called “pictures”? Is it on your desktop?) Name it 2013, for the New Year. All of the pictures you download this year should go in this folder.
Even better…make a folder for each month. Then, when you sit down to download photos on schedule, put them in the folder for the month you took them in. That way you know that, two years from now, when you want to find the picture from the first day of school 2013, you just need to look in the August (or September) folder.
If you take lots of photos of events, like recitals or sports games, consider creating a folder for each event as well. Then you can easily find the picture of your child at her ballet recital that happened in June, by looking for 2013 > June > Ballet Recital.
Naming Photos
If the program you use to download your photos has the option, import your photos with a special name. This way all your Christmas photos will start with “Christmas” and will be easier to find.
Tagging Photos
A lot of photo programs these days offer a way to tag your photos with who is in them. This makes your photos more searchable, so when you’re putting together a photo album of your Grandma Rose, you can perform a search on your computer for “Grandma Rose” and all her photos will come up for you.
Don’t Forget Your Phone
Do you have a cell phone with a camera? I take almost as many photos (or more!) with my iPhone than I do with my real camera. Don’t forget to download them occasionally and place them in the correct folders according to the month and the year!
Delete Photos
I know. I’m bad at it too. I keep everything! But, digital photography has changed the way we take pictures. We can take 50 in a few minutes, of the same thing, and only one is a good shot. Those extra 49 blurry pictures you don’t ever plan to use take up space on your hard drive. If they aren’t good, are blurry, or your thumb is in the photo, delete them to free up more space for more.
Back Them Up!
If I can stress nothing else in this article, it’s to back up your photos. Do you store ALL your photos on your computer? What happens if your hard drive crashes? That’s right…you lose them all. (They also take up tons of space and can make your computer slow as molasses!)
It’s always good to have your photos backed up in a few different places. Burn them to CDs. Or, get an external hard drive just for backing up your computer. Keep a second copy on the external drive.
It’s also good to keep (at least the most important) photos outside your house, just in case. This is where the internet comes in. Do you use Shutterfly or Snapfish? Uploading your photos to these services store them for you (but you will probably have to purchase something at least once a year to keep the storage up). Picasa and Flickr are also good options. (You must pay for storage once you get to a certain amount.)
Make Photo Books
This is something else I’m horrible at; dealing with the photos on my computer. Sure, they’re all organized…but they’re on the computer. No one sees them but me. I hardly ever print photos anymore and I don’t really scrapbook. A good option for someone like me is to occasionally print photo books with my photos. Most photo sharing sites (like Snapfish, Shutterfly, Picasa) offer books, and if you’re uploading pictures to those sites anyway…why not order a book? Do something with your memories…don’t just let them clog up your hard drive.
There you have it! A few easy tips to organize your photos. I bet you can get started in no time at all. So go ahead – cross one of your resolutions off your list. Then go settle down with your family and enjoy some of the memories you made over the holidays!
Source: Marie Callenders Smeals
The holidays have just come and gone. You probably took a hundred photos on Christmas Eve alone, not including dance recitals, class performances and holiday lights. Now your camera is full of photos…and you don’t know where to start.
That’s where I come in!
I take photos on a daily basis for my blog. Now, granted 90% of the photos I take are of food. BUT I still want to have them organized. There’s nothing I dislike more than trying to get photos ready for a post…only to not be able to find them. Or, worse, I hate when I have to delete photos off my memory card to make space for new ones…only to realize later I never downloaded the original ones in the first place.
Does this sound like you? Then you’ve come to the right place.
Let’s get started!
Download from your camera regularly
This may seem simple, but it’s important. Get yourself on a schedule and download your pictures often. If you don’t take very many, make it once a month. If you take a lot, try once a week. However often it is…put yourself on a download schedule. Otherwise you’re importing 500 photos for 12 different events and it gets overwhelming.
Create Folders
It’s the New Year, so this is the perfect time to start. Create a folder wherever you put your pictures. (Is it a folder called “pictures”? Is it on your desktop?) Name it 2013, for the New Year. All of the pictures you download this year should go in this folder.
Even better…make a folder for each month. Then, when you sit down to download photos on schedule, put them in the folder for the month you took them in. That way you know that, two years from now, when you want to find the picture from the first day of school 2013, you just need to look in the August (or September) folder.
If you take lots of photos of events, like recitals or sports games, consider creating a folder for each event as well. Then you can easily find the picture of your child at her ballet recital that happened in June, by looking for 2013 > June > Ballet Recital.
Naming Photos
If the program you use to download your photos has the option, import your photos with a special name. This way all your Christmas photos will start with “Christmas” and will be easier to find.
Tagging Photos
A lot of photo programs these days offer a way to tag your photos with who is in them. This makes your photos more searchable, so when you’re putting together a photo album of your Grandma Rose, you can perform a search on your computer for “Grandma Rose” and all her photos will come up for you.
Don’t Forget Your Phone
Do you have a cell phone with a camera? I take almost as many photos (or more!) with my iPhone than I do with my real camera. Don’t forget to download them occasionally and place them in the correct folders according to the month and the year!
Delete Photos
I know. I’m bad at it too. I keep everything! But, digital photography has changed the way we take pictures. We can take 50 in a few minutes, of the same thing, and only one is a good shot. Those extra 49 blurry pictures you don’t ever plan to use take up space on your hard drive. If they aren’t good, are blurry, or your thumb is in the photo, delete them to free up more space for more.
Back Them Up!
If I can stress nothing else in this article, it’s to back up your photos. Do you store ALL your photos on your computer? What happens if your hard drive crashes? That’s right…you lose them all. (They also take up tons of space and can make your computer slow as molasses!)
It’s always good to have your photos backed up in a few different places. Burn them to CDs. Or, get an external hard drive just for backing up your computer. Keep a second copy on the external drive.
It’s also good to keep (at least the most important) photos outside your house, just in case. This is where the internet comes in. Do you use Shutterfly or Snapfish? Uploading your photos to these services store them for you (but you will probably have to purchase something at least once a year to keep the storage up). Picasa and Flickr are also good options. (You must pay for storage once you get to a certain amount.)
Make Photo Books
This is something else I’m horrible at; dealing with the photos on my computer. Sure, they’re all organized…but they’re on the computer. No one sees them but me. I hardly ever print photos anymore and I don’t really scrapbook. A good option for someone like me is to occasionally print photo books with my photos. Most photo sharing sites (like Snapfish, Shutterfly, Picasa) offer books, and if you’re uploading pictures to those sites anyway…why not order a book? Do something with your memories…don’t just let them clog up your hard drive.
There you have it! A few easy tips to organize your photos. I bet you can get started in no time at all. So go ahead – cross one of your resolutions off your list. Then go settle down with your family and enjoy some of the memories you made over the holidays!
Source: Marie Callenders Smeals
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