Are you drowning in photos? Do you need to get organized and stay that way? If you have a photography habit, a small business or even a lot of kids, your computer is likely overflowing with photos. Add in school pictures from your childhood, candid photos from your wedding day and random shots from your family reunion and you may end up with more photos than you know what to do with. Organizing your photos will allow you to find what you need when you need it and help you share your favorite images with family and friends. Use some of the following techniques to tame your photo stash for good.
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Edit, edit, edit
Home printer giant Hewlett Packard says the first step to organizing your photos is editing. Start the editing process as you upload by immediately deleting any bad photos. Getting rid of awful images quickly means they never have a chance to take up space on your hard drive. It also means no one will see the less-than-flattering picture of you in pajamas with crazy bed hair, shot by your three-year-old over breakfast. Photos that are too dark, overexposed or just plain bad can be deleted and forgotten, freeing up space for more important and better images. Deleting bad images as you upload them will also reduce or eliminate entirely the need to set aside entire afternoons to edit your photos.
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Tell a story
Showcase old photos in new ways by using your computer, a photo book and publishing site like Mixbook. Need a gift for grandma? A few clicks of the mouse and you’ll be well on your way to the brag book of her dreams. Ready to share your holiday portrait with the world? Design your own holiday cards, calendars and more using your own images. Unlike traditional scrapbooking, digital scrapbooking projects like these won’t damage an original photo since they start with a digital file.
Choose a sorting method
Do you prefer to find your photos in neat chronological order? Consider arranging your photos by date so you can quickly locate what you need. Are you more event-oriented? Sorting pictures in groups under headings like “birthdays” and “vacations” might be best. Name all of your files using the same system so you can find what you need quickly. Avoid using vague names: “First-grade photos” is good; “Kids’ pictures” is not.
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Digitize old media
Create digital images of your favorite photos. Scan and label your old pictures and you’ll capture them in time, preventing them from deteriorating with age. You’ll also be safeguarded against fire and water damage, which make restoration difficult or impossible.
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Protect your pictures
Once you’ve gotten everything organized the way you want it, back your photos up onto CDs or external hard drives and store them in a safe place. Better yet, store your photos online in the cloud and you’ll be able to retrieve them from anywhere whenever you need them.
Sorting your photos to eliminate duplicates and poor quality images, digitizing and archiving your favorites and backing up everything can help you keep your precious memories intact – and available.
Good to know the tips. I prefer dizitize the old pics and save it in pc. Thanks Matt for such a unique article.
Digitizing is great. Make sure you back them up. Learned that the hard way.
Helpful tips. I need to delete some of them.
Judy
You might feel a bit ruthless at the beginning, but do you really need four different angles of the same blurry picture? It sounds harsh, but sometimes it’s the most important step in getting control over your photos before they control you.
I recently received a big stack of old photos in the mail from a relative. They were nice to look at and some of them were very old, and I do mean very old. Some of them ripped when I tried to remove them from the photo album. They used the old sticky back albums back then. I tried scanning some of them, but man unless scanners are faster now then the one I had…it was taking forever. So I set them aside for now.
Don’t give up! Some scanners I’ve seen are pretty fast.
Good luck preserving those photos.
I need to get rid of some of the pictures. Thanks a lot for the tips.
I hope they help! Sometimes the hardest part is just getting started.
Hi Matt! Thanks for the article, it is a very good one but I have a question for you: what is the best method to back up photos? On DVDs, HDDs or online cloud? Thanks in advance!
It’s probably best to do a mix of HDD and cloud. Multiple backup methods are preferred over a solitary one. Plus, if you backup on an external drive, you can take your pictures with you even if you won’t have Internet access.
Thanks for the tips. They will help me a great deal.
Good luck!
I actually don’t prefer storing the photos on cloud.. I personally feel that the world wide web is actually a WILD web… I rather prefer storing photos in compact discs n hard disks..
Hey, Matt! I’m not a picky type of person. When I had enough spare time, I do edit pics, but usually I just let them the way they are. I have a good camera so most of the time they are just fine 😀