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Anyone who knows me knows I love pictures and organization! Since January is often a time that people kick off the year with good intentions on getting more organized, I thought I’d share some tips on how I organize my digital photos in hopes that it might help others.
Tip #1: Collect ALL your photos. Hook up your phone to your computer and download those images in high resolution. (Don’t attach them to emails and download on the desktop, as the phone sometimes condenses the images to a smaller size!) Save all the images passed over in email onto your computer and out of your inbox. Download any of those you want too!
Tip #2: Create a schedule to collect all your photos, from all sources, regularly. The above tasks might be an overwhelming list if you try to do it all at once and you never did it before. Instead, create a schedule to do this every 1, 3, 6 or 12 months. Set a reminder on your smart phone so you won’t forget!
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Tip #4: Create a schedule to backup your photos regularly. Getting an external hard drive isn’t enough, unless you actually use it! I currently back up my photos every month or at least every other month. Do what works best for you, but do it at least twice a year. Perhaps your schedule can coordinate with the schedule from tip #2!
Tip #5: Organize chronologically by making a folder for each year. As you upload new photos put it in the yearly folder accordingly.
Tip #6: Within each yearly folder create a subfolder for each event, naming it by the numeric date first, followed by a short title. Numbers always stay in order on your computer while words are organized alphabetically. Don’t call your November trip folder “Arizona”. Call it “11.01.16 Arizona” so it stays in chronological order!
Tip #7: Include a zero in front of folders representing January – September. Again, since I use a numeric system to organize photos chronologically from each event, a zero is needed in front of months that are a single digit. Otherwise your computer might put October topics (listed as month “10”) directly after January topics (listed as “1”).
Tip #8: Create a separate organized folder section for random single photos. I take A LOT of pictures of Brielle. I send photos to Derek while he’s at work, trying to capture something funny or cute as it happens. I wouldn’t say these “one off” type photos need to be separated out in the dated folder structure I previously showed above. Instead I created a monthly folder and I throw all those random photos in these locations. Within each folder there is a “favorites” folder so I’m able to save the best of images for quick reference in the future.
Just a day after writing and scheduling this post, I came across this awesome post on the same topic from Click It Up a Notch! Check out her tips too!
Do you have any digital photo organization tips you’d like to share? Leave me a comment and share!
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Good idea! If I don’t keep mine organized they get out of hand then it takes forever to try to organize them all! These are great tips to follow! Thank you for linking up this week at Sewlicious Home Decor!:)
Marti
This is so smart! I know my photos could use some organization for sure! Thanks so much for linking up at Hit Me with Your Best Shot! Hope to see you back tonight!
~Abby =)
Thanks for this… I need to buy a external hard drive. Right now I use Shutterfly especially for photos from my phone.
Do it! You will not regret the money spent to help save your photos. Just remember to set some sort of schedule to back them up! :) Thanks for visiting!
Fantastic post! thanks for sharing! This is one of my goals this year – to organise my digital photos, I am currently working on a blogpost about it! :) Such a huge job if you don’t keep on top of it!
Good luck with your goal! My biggest piece of advice is no matter what method of organization you choose make sure you BACK THEM UP when you’re done! :)
Definitely! I have had to pay to a lot of money to recover all my photos off my laptop once and I never want that to happen again! Thanks :)
I do mine a similar way but I have yearly (or sometimes longer) folders for ongoing picture topics but where you often only take a few pics at any one time. Eg 2014 Pets, 2012-2014 Cooking , Me etc so that the photos are easier to find. If I want one of my cat or pet lamb it will be under pets. Single events still get filed in their own folder. I still end up with a few totally random ones that I can’t figure out how to file.
Thanks so much for sharing your system too! I hate all those one offs and your method sounds like a good idea. Right now I have a “misc” for every year which literally are one off items that I can’t even group!