Tuesday, December 16, 2008

organize your photos

Photos are one of those things that can quickly overwhelm you if you don't have a system. Before you know it, you have thousands of photos on your computer and no idea where to start.

If this is you, make one folder titled “Before _____” (today's date), drag everything in there and start working backwards, just 15 minutes a day. Once you start, the momentum will easily carry you forward.

Then, from now onwards, do the following steps and you'll never be behind again.

1. Download after every major photo-taking session:
It's far easier to sort through 50 rather than 500 photos. However, if you take photos daily, you might want to do this once a week.

2. Name the folder:
For our trips, I name my folders like this: Christmas – 2007, Family Pictures – Feb. 2005 or Ireland - 2008. It is easy to do a search and find what you're looking for later if you describe the photos first.

3. Delete the duds immediately:
Scroll through each photo and delete any blurry, non-flattering or "iffy" photos immediately. Also, delete duplicates…there are no need for the same or similar pictures when you can print off as many as you want!

4. Select the photos you want to print:
Make a folder labeled “TO PRINT”. When you come across the best photos, copy them to this separate folder. Note I said COPY - you don't want to accidentally delete the good ones. I only print the really good photos, which means I don't even print 10% of the photos we take.

At least once a month when you run errands, cut and paste the photos from your “TO PRINT” folder onto a disc and drop it off at your nearest photo developing store or send them to an online publisher.

5. Compress and crop photos:
If you want to send some photos to friends and family, it is good manners to compress them first (to around 50KB) before emailing them.

6. Back up your photos to a disc every so often:
There is nothing worst than losing those precious photos and the memories that go with them…so make sure you back them up regularly.

Hopefully these tips will help you organize your photos over the next month with all the upcoming holidays.

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1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hey Andrea,

I really like your tip on cleaning up the digital file photos at the time you download them... you're already in there looking at them, why not properly label them all, crop and get rid of the "duds" as you say?

John aka OrganizingLA

December 16, 2008 at 12:34 PM  

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