The way that we take and keep pictures has dramatically changed in the past 15 years. First digital cameras became affordable. Then cell phones came equipped with increasingly higher quality cameras. Now, instead of having drawers and shoeboxes filled with photographs, we have countless digital pictures sitting in our phones, cameras, and computers taking up valuable storage space! Here are a few of my best organization tips to help you find the best way to organize digital photos.
When looking for digital photo organizing software there are plenty of options. Lightroom and Aperture are two great professional-level software programs. But if you’re simply looking for something efficient and cheap there are many great free software programs including iPhoto, Flickr, and Photobucket. One free software program is Picasa from Google. Not only does this program edit but it is able to organize and sort your photographs easily.
Now the biggest collection of photos is most likely on your computer. We import our photos from our phones or cameras to free up space but then they are left in a big heap on your computer waiting to drive you crazy! If you’re wondering how to organize digital photos on computer or laptop hard drives one of the best ways is to sort your pictures in folders by month. This way you only have 12 folders a year, as opposed to several different random events. Generally when you are looking for a particular picture you know roughly when it was taken making it easy to locate.
Another key tip is also a simple one: Delete unwanted or subpar pictures! The great thing about digital photography is that we can take endless amounts of pictures to ensure that we can get a few that are acceptable. But when you snap away, you also fill up your camera or phone with unwanted pictures. You should upload your pictures on a regular basis (a few times a month if you snap photos constantly!) Don’t forget to delete the unwanted pictures immediately. If you take a lot of photos you can even set alarms and reminders for yourself to import and delete your photos before they become too much of a burden. Unwanted pictures include unnecessary doubles, closed eyes, blurry images, or overexposure.
Now you know the best ways to organize digital photos: Monthly folders and deletion! But I want to make sure to stress one more important issue regarding your photo library. PLEASE be sure to back up your files! After going through the trouble of taking and organizing all your photos the last thing you want to do is lose them! Once you have your photos organized be sure to save your photo library to an external hard drive, save them to a Cloud service, copy them to DVD’s, and/or have them printed out. You don’t want to lose all of those memories to a computer meltdown!
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