Don't rely on Facebook to organize your images.
How many pictures do you take every day? And then what do you do with them? Do they sit on your computer or do you upload them to Facebook? Last year, 200 million photos were uploaded every day to Facebook. That’s about 6 billion photos per month. With last year’s count at 90 billion photos housed on Facebook, it is by far, the largest photos site on the Internet. If you are like me, most of my photos on Facebook are fresh, shot just that day or maybe over the recent weekend. I’ve never added an old shot and I almost always add them from my phone. That’s a TON of pictures, people!
Organizing photos on your computer regularly will help you remember and relive your memories.
Organizing pictures has been a thorn in my side for as long as I can remember. Not because I don’t know how, but simply because of the sheer volume of pictures I take. Back in the day when we used film, I did a fantastic job staying current on printing pictures because I had no choice. If you wanted to see them, you had to develop your film. Too expensive if you let them pile up, I would drop off my film at my local Costco, do my shopping, grab my photos and be on my way. Once I got home, I’d hold my breath hoping that most of the shots would be good enough to keep, knowing I’d likely have a handful to throw out each and every time.
Thanks to digital photography, we have the ability to take literally hundreds of pictures a day, filling our memory cards to the brim, and only once they are full, finally downloading our pictures to our desktops and in many cases, we never see them again. Oh the pictures are perfectly fine, its the part where we never display them, share them or see them again that’s the real kicker.
No matter if you are on a MAC or PC, here are 5 tips to help you organize pictures that will make them seamless to store and easy to upload into your next photo book, collage or calendar project.
1. Downloading Pictures: Your success to having organized pictures begins with downloading them on a regular basis. It doesn’t matter if its weekly or monthly, just pick a time frame, put it on your calendar, and make it happen. Most phones have calendars and reminders that you can set up. Why not set up a consistent alert? Have technology remind you to use technology!
2. Deleting Pictures: I tend to do this as I go, but it can be easier to delete pictures once you see them on your desktop in full view. Your goal is to keep your digital files clutter free, full of only the most cherished photos just like in the old days when you had no choice but to toss the terrible shots.
3. Filing Pictures: A simple filing system is best and monthly is a great place to start. After years on a PC and now a MAC, monthly has worked beautifully for me in both places. Most of us can easily remember events by month and it gives a natural prompt for easy retrieval of holiday and seasonal special events. If you prefer, you can instead file by the special event forever etched in your mind. Or create a file for upcoming projects. Possible titles could be: Great Pics For Holiday Card, Matthew’s 8th Birthday or Pictures of Our Dog. This will help you better organize and categorize your images.
4. Tagging Pictures: Once you’ve set up your photo files in a way that makes sense for you, you will want to take the next step and plan time right after each download to tag your photos. Tagging is simply applying keywords to help you more quickly search your library with success. I use iPhoto and like to tag both by person and event. This makes it a snap to find photos from just about any angle I might want. One way to tag by person is by using FACES. When you chose this feature, you’ll be given the chance to identify literally every face in your photo library.
Another way to tag is to use KEYWORDS. When you select the Keywords option, you are given the opportunity to add more key words via the Edit Keywords function. You can create as many keywords as you like, giving you the option to search again by name or by special event. Here are some of the keywords I have.
5. Sharing Pictures: We take pictures so that we can remember the memory and share it with others. And when you images neatly organized, you can quickly turn those memories into tangible photo books, cards, calendars and more, in minutes!
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Great reminder to clean my folders in Pictures. I organized pictures in monthly folders, then rename them by date on Mac . For iPhone pictures I add “i” to make sure I remember how it was taken. If some pictures were taken on a special event, just add a subfolder to main folder. I need to start using iPhoto, still have no time to tag all pictures. I think it would be great for my books to have special tags, if I want to make themed books- book of red, book of reflections and so on.
Lena I really like the tip for identifying pictures uniquely that come from your phone. I challenged myself to tag photos at the point of upload so that I don’t have to go back later to do it, rather building in a bit of extra time on the front end. I’m sure you’ll find a good solution that works for you!
I agree with all that was said in this post. It was laid out so well and it is the place to start to getting your “mountains” down to “molehills”. I believe this is KEY to being able to do books and other projects. You must have a starting point and move forward. So, I would add this as a suggestion: If you are overwhelmed right now where you are, Stop looking backwards. Instead Go forward. Get your current photos out of your camera and start your organization where you are at this point. When you have time, you can look at the pictures “in the past”. But at least by not putting off what you have now, you are no longer getting further behind. And that would be the other thing I suggest. Start making your book for this year. If you start now, you will have something to show for this year. Otherwise another year has gone by. And that’s a bummer. You, your family, your children, your friends want to see your pictures! Go forward! People wonder how I find time to do stay current with a busy lifestyle, many children. I do a little at a time and take the time to organize. Putting the books together after that are easy and oh so fun! It’s worth it!
Renee, you are SO right!! That is what I had to do when I found Picaboo….work on current things and then “go back” when I have time in the future. And, making the albums is such fun, I know I will go back to the things before I started using Picaboo. It is easy to put if off because we so many times get focused on trying to start with day one and then never start because the task seems so overwhelming! Reminds me of a quote I love about running, “An imperfect workout today is better than a perfect one that never happens!”
Have you decided where you’re going yet on your cruise??
I think we think a lot a like, Leslie
Thank you for your constant encouragement.
Yes, we have made a decision on the cruise. We leave Sept 20 and we will take a 4 night cruise to the Bahamas. It is so perfect for me to go that time of the year. I love summer and although I love the season of fall, I am always sad to start the school life. This will be such a nice thing to look forward to at the end of my summer. Still pinching myself that I won. I am still amazed and grateful!
That will be a ball–I pray y’all will have a safe and awesome trip!! What a blessing!!
Yeah! You’ve finalized your cruise plans! Great to hear, Renee! We can’t wait to see the pictures! Be sure and say hi to us from the sea, if that’s possible!
Its amazing the positive impact a good system can have on your ability to create projects you love =)
Great post, Molly!!
Thanks Leslie! I’m so happy it has sparked some good conversation among Picablog fans about how you tackle keeping your photos organized in your busy lives. Its all about learning from others and making good strides in our own time =)
My husband has been working on organizing pictures lately too. He has folders organized by year and subject. It seems to be working so far. I’d really love to make a photo book out of some of them so I have something real to look at besides a computer screen. Hopefully I can do that one day soon.
Krystle organizing by year and then month is my baseline. If I never do more than that I am still more than able to retrieve what I need and make good progress to stay on track. Good for you that its a family affair =)
That’s a good idea to at the month too. It takes my husband forever to organize them though because he does not do it on a regular basis. Instead he does it in spurts lol.
I use Adobe Photoshop Elements to organize pictures. If it is a special event, I will put them in a folder by that name, otherwise, just folders by month and date of upload. The real organization comes from the keywords and categories which apply attributes to the pictures, so I can easily get to all the pictures of my cat, husband, flowers, birds etc… And it is nice that one picture can have many tags, so it can be sorted many ways. With the tags, it does not matter what folder they are in.
Molly – thanks for sharing your process/system! I’m wondering how you use events & albums in iPhoto? I used to use a year > month > event folder structure that worked great on my pc. I got a Mac for Xmas & feel like I’m not using it to it’s full potential. Any tips would be appreciated!