Organizing Your Digital Photos

by michelle on January 2, 2012

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The following post is from Michelle of Tech Geek Girl:

source: R0Ng

One of the greatest things about digital photography is the ability to take photos of just about anything and everything without worry about the cost of film or developing. The downside is that,  if you’re anything like me, you probably have a ton of photos at the end of a busy holiday season of celebrating with family and friends. With the help of some software and easy file organization tips, you can keep your digital memories from turning into digital clutter.

 Naming Schemes


source: Michelle Mista

To help you quickly identify your photos, choose a naming scheme for your photo folders. I tend to take a lot of photos and find it is easiest for me to organize my photo folders by year and month. I also like to include both the date and the event to help me remember what’s what. In this example,I have a folder named “0101-NewYearsBrunch”.  At a glance, I know that these photos were taken on January 1st at the New Years Brunch party I had with my friends.

Cull

I know, it seems sort of counterproductive to delete the photos you spent so much time snapping. But just like physical clutter, holding on to digital photos that you don’t want can make it more difficult to sort through the ones you do want.

Ask yourself: Does this photo capture a memory you want to cherish or share with friends and family? If the answer is yes, keep it. If not, hit “delete” and move on. But you don’t have to be ruthless about it. While professional photogs need to weed out the obviously bad or unworkable shots for their clients, these are your personal photos, your memories. If there’s a shot that’s blurry, under or over exposed, or not well composed, don’t worry about it! All that matters is if you like the photo.

Software

Using a good photo organization application can really help you prevent your digital memories from turning into digital clutter. Macs have iPhoto pre-installed as part of the Mac OS X iLife Suite while Windows users can download Windows Live Photo Gallery free from the Microsoft website.

As great as these two native applications are, my personal favorite is Google Picasa (free, Windows/Mac/Linux) which I have used for years and have always been very happy with. If you want a commercial solution, popular contenders include Adobe Photoshop Elements (Windows and Mac) and ACDSee (Windows/Mac.)

All of these applications have the ability to help you visually sort and organize your photographs. Most of these applications allow you to collect your photographs into different albums and also have some nifty added bonuses too like uploading to popular photo sharing websites, tagging and basic editing functions.

Archive

Storing your digital photographs on your hard drive is great for the short-term but to safeguard your memories, you’ll need a more permanent solution. One of the problems with trying to find the “right” solution for long term digital archiving is that storage technology and media is always changing. (Remember when a stack of 3.5″ disks were the height of portable storage? Anyone?)

For now, optical storage — ie. DVD or CD — is a stable and cost-effective method for long-term storage. Burn your digital photos to disk at regular intervals (6 months is a good round number) and store your archive disks in a safe, temperature controlled spot like a fire-proof safe.

You can also upload your images using a cloud storage services like DropBox or Mozy. Cloud storage is a great secondary backup plan but cloud storage services often have monthly or annual fees. Digital images can also take up a lot of space which can also add to your cloud storage service costs.

What is your favorite photo organizing application? Do you have any special tricks you use to keep your photo collection from taking over your computer?

 

Michelle Mista is an IT professional, freelance writer and blogger. A lifelong geek, she blogs the latest in tech news, tips & tutorials at Tech Geek Girl and muses about motherhood at Mommy Misadventures. She is on the constant quest to balance life, work and geekery.

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Tagged as: michelle

  • Mrsgoosy

    I also sort my favorite photos by month and year. At the end of each month I upload my month of photos to Shutterfly so that at the end of the year my favorite photos are all there for my annual photo book!

    • http://lifeyourway.net Mandi @ Life…Your Way

      Ooh, I really love that you take the time to upload them to Shutterfly throughout the year. So smart!

    • http://www.techgeekgirl.com/ Michelle Mista

      That’s great! I love the idea of making an annual photo book, too!

  • http://twitter.com/ElleneBDavis ElleneBreedloveDavis

    Many thanks for your great post!  Organizing photos is just one more step in the right direction to get my artist office organized and keep it organized.

    • http://www.techgeekgirl.com/ Michelle Mista

      I’m glad this could help you!

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  • bonlyn

    I struggled with the digital photos i want to just keep vs. the ones i want to print for scrapbooking or giving to relatives. When I am ready to print how do i find the specific pics I wanted to print from the various events over the past few months? Solution: I save all my pics in the folders by date/event. Then I save a copy of the pics i LOVE and want to print in a separate !PRINT folder that stays at the top since I placed a ! at the beginning of the folder name. Then when I am ready I go to the folder, edit pics if desired, print away and then delete the folder. Quick and easy :)  

    • http://www.techgeekgirl.com/ Michelle Mista

      Clever idea using ! to help it sort to the top :D

    • erica

      love that idea!! comes in handy when walgreens or snapfish puts out super-coupon deals and you have to print right away–no staying up until 2 AM looking for everything you want to get printed. 

  • http://joyceandnorm.wordpress.com Joyce and Norm

    My hubby just backed up our laptop yesterday so we were talking about going through our photos to delete all the ones that we will never care to look at again….blurry ones, multiple shots of the same thing, people being blocked in the pics, etc. We take a lot so we organize by days too.

    • http://www.techgeekgirl.com/ Michelle Mista

      Love that you guys did a backup on the 1st of the year! Good way to remember when you last did one :)

      • http://joyceandnorm.wordpress.com Joyce and Norm

        Yup, we do a backup every month! Better save than sorry. Although even with the eternal hard drive, we still do another back up (burn a CD). haha =p

  • http://www.northerncheapskate.com/ Christina@Northern Cheapskate

    I save my photos by month & year on my computer and an external hard drive.  I also upload them to Flickr. You can upload up to 2 videos and 300MB worth of photos each calendar month for FREE, or you can do what I do, and pay $24.95 a year for unlimited photo storage… which to me is totally worth it in case something awful happens (fire, theft, natural disaster). I love that I can keep my photos private or share them if I want.  And if I’m at my mom’s, I can easily upload photos to Flickr from her camera to use in my scrapbooks!

    • http://www.techgeekgirl.com/ Michelle Mista

      Flickr is a great service. I don’t use it anymore but it was worth every penny when I did.

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=692027811 Melinda Johnson

    I am a photo holic and have trouble deleting photos. But my tip I would like to share is this: what if all technology stopped working? Like, if the electricity went permanently out, how would you access your photos? I have mine on my computer’s hard drive, an external hard drive, cd’s, and snapfish, and the best ones are on Facebook.  But I decided that I would take advantage of all the great snapfish deals and start printing my photos.  I want to take up scrapbooking again after we move this summer.  But I also want to start some digital scrapbooks, so now is the best time to do it!  And then when all the great December deals hit, I’ll be ready.  Enjoy and thanks for the tips!

    • http://www.techgeekgirl.com/ Michelle Mista

      Very good point! Digital photos are only enjoyable so long as you’ve got the electricity to see them. Going “analog” with your memories is important, too!

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  • http://www.workfromhomewisdom.com/ Judy Heminsley

    Good post as usual, Lisa! A survey I carried out recently on my website showed that overworking and being distracted by demands from family, friends and even neighbours are two of the top challenges for home workers. We all have to find our own ways of dealing with them and recognition is the start.

    • Anonymous

      Thanks, Judy! Those definitely are big challenges and you’re right that recognizing them is the best place to start. Thanks for sharing one of your survey results.

  • Sarah Grady

    Good point! We fall into those traps with two young kids, and my husband working from home. We have opted for part-time daycare, and part-time working around the kid’s schedule. But I think we initially (naively) thought that it could be done easily. 

    • Anonymous

       Working from home with kids definitely seems easier than it is, but you seem to have found a good solution to child care.

  • Anonymous

    Those are definitely big challenges and you’re right that recognizing them is the best place to start. Thanks for sharing one of your survey results.

  • http://aboutone.com/ Tara from AboutOne

    Smalltopia is quite good, too. :)

  • http://www.adjuvancy.com/wordpress Roy A. Ackerman, Ph.D., E.A.

    When our company was growing by leaps and bounds (before we decided that was NOT what we wanted), we ran out of office space in various locations- often.  And, the senior partners decided the best approach was for us to work from home most of the day and wander in and out of the office.  (The wandering also meant we had to be dressed for work, since we sometimes responded to impromptu meeting calls- which meant our 9 minute distance from home to office left little time to spare…)
    We bought the same furnishings we had in the office for our home- so we would know we were working- and not playing.  And, I still had the full time (8 to 6) nanny for my children, so I truly operated as if…

    Great advice, Lisa…

  • http://aguidetopersonalfinance.blogspot.com/ Alicia

    Great tips! Although I don’t have a business, I do work from home as a freelance writer. I fall into the first trap often, but more than often it’s the opposite. I end up thinking I’m going to work but I really sit on my computer doing something else. 

  • Anonymous

    My biggest problem with working from home is that I live in a different time zone from my boss. He is 2 hours behind me and sometimes wants me to do things “after hours” like last night. But this is not as bad as my daughter has it. Some of her “office mates” work in the USSR. Their phone meeting times are a mess for all concerned. Working from home is both good and bad this way.

  • Kristen

    I worked at home for 3 months when I was on bedrest for pregnancy.  Talk about challenging.  I managed to do everything that I needed.  If you suddenly HAVE to work at home like that, it is good to follow the tips that you mentioned and good to have a routine that mirrors what you would do in the office.  And I would much rather have a great computer than good office furniture!

  • http://twitter.com/whoisyourlawyer Robert S. Lawrence

    Completely agree that working at home with the kids around is simply not viable. Every two minutes I hear “Daddy, the show is over” or “Daddy, the toast is burning” or “Daddy, Mom’s on the phone” etcetera etcetera. Maybe it works if you have a tower and a nanny, but otherwise, well, not so much.

  • http://twitter.com/BDRamblings Big Dan’s Ramblings

    Lisa – great article.  When my girls were born we strongly considered my wife working at home and handling the childcare duties at the same time.  But, we quickly realized that the fury of diapers, bottle, changings, conference calls, email and TSP reports would lead itself to burn out and complete chaos.  

    The one tip I would also add is that working in your PJs or even your most casual clothes doesn’t work.  I work from home about 1-2 days per month and notice that I am much more productive on the days that I dress like I would to go to the office.  This little step instills a sense of responsibility and a change in pace for the day in me…I’m more apt to work when I’m dressed like this than surf the web :)

  • http://twitter.com/Dainty_Mom Martine De Luna

    Excellent tips! I totally agree about getting in-house help — totally worth the investment, especially since I’ve got a rambunctious little boy! In between potty training, managing my little writing biz, and attending to the house duties, I’ve got my hands full, so I need the extra set of hands! Even though my husband and I both work from home, having the extra help lets us focus on growing our businesses while giving our son the time he needs with us throughout the day. None of our priorities, then, are compromised.

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