5 Tips for Organizing Digital Photos

If you are like most people, you have digital photos. A lot of them. And you want them organized. What if you aren’t sold on your computer’s AI for organizing digital photos?

Or you want better control and access to your images. Photo organizing will help. Creativity is much easier when you can find what you are looking for in a snap. You may want to make a custom photo book to document a vacation or create a slide show for a special event. Having your images accessible and organized is key.

Below are the tips I share with my clients:

1. Delete bad photos immediately after you take them. Your new motto: save the best, delete the rest!

• You know the photos. The blurry ones, the screenshots, the grocery lists, the item you wanted to buy (and now have). These can all get deleted.
• If you ever shoot in burst mode, take the time to pick your favorite one or two from the sequence and delete the others. 30 photos taken in a second or two is akin to creating duplicates.
• A fun exception to this rule is if you want to make a digital flipbook.

 2. Set up a regular time (weekly or monthly) for organizing digital photos.

• Making time to review and organize your image collection is a great habit to cultivate. You can use this time to favorite any special images or create smart albums or photostreams to share.
• Another bonus: your image editing skills will improve.

 3. Gather all your photos together in one central hub and back them up.

• Keeping your images in one place, such as on your computer’s hard drive, is a smart move. We recommend using non-proprietary software. It’s also a good idea to have your collection backed up on at least one external hard drive (two are better).
• Keeping the second external hard drive stored off-site is a safe bet.
• A third back up on a cloud storage system is also a good idea as external hard drives can expire or get corrupted.

4. Get rid of the duplicates – there are several de-duping apps available.

• Duplicate images are often the reason you run out of storage space on your devices. Dupes are sneaky and can wind up in many places without your being aware. De-duping is the first step we recommend when working with clients, both new and ongoing.
• There are many apps available to help if your collection is full of dupes. But if you practice monthly maintenance (step 3), you should be able to do this yourself.

5. If you don’t use a photo management system, you can organize the folders by year, then month and event

• We have our own collection organized in this type of structure and recommend it to our clients. Themes and events are another way to organize your photos. But we’ve found the year/month structure to be easiest to navigate.
• For example 1996-July 4-George Family Reunion CT.