Images can take up a lot of space and can easily become a chaotic mess that you spend hours trying to sift through. From the images, you take personally to the ones you have professionally done, keeping your digital photos organized on your computer may seem like a daunting task. Fortunately, there are some quick and easy ways you can keep your images organized and make finding the ones you want a quick process.
5 Tips To Keep You Digital Photo Library Organized.
1. Date and Time
Most often you can set the date and time on your camera and this information will automatically show when you upload new images onto your computer. But, if you are uploading digital files from your professional shoot then you will want to make sure you add the date to the files before you begin the upload. All of the files I send you will already have a date/time stamp on them too!
2. Name
Create folders for your images with the name, date or occasion you had them taken. It is always a good idea to add in the year that they were taken as well. You can create subfolders in the pictures folders on your computer for images you upload from your professional shoot.
I personally have all our family photos organized by year, then month, and if there is a special vacation or occasion during a month, it will have its own folder in the correct month and year!
3. Face Recognition
Most photo software allows you to tag people in your images using facial recognition. This can be an easy way for you to find specific images of your children and significant other.
4. Keywords
It can take a little extra time to tag your images with keywords but this can make finding the images you want significantly easier. Use keywords that you will be able to remember and be consistent with them. Keywords can be single words or phrases. Some ideas for keywording your images can include the event, date, location, season and people in the images.
5. Rate and Delete
You'd be surprised how many images are on your computer that you simply will never use or feel the need to look at again. Do you have images that are out of focus, have poor exposure, or random images of your hands, feet or the inside of your bag? Spend an afternoon going through and deleting the images that are pointless to keep. While you're at it, you can go through and rate the images as well. This will allow you to easily find the images you like the most.
6. KEEP THEM ON A CLOUD!!
I hear all the time, "I lost my gallery because ... my phone died... my computer died... they got deleted because..." One of the biggest mistakes is to store your digital photos on a computer or hard drive! I highly suggest investing in cloud storage as well as keeping them on a phone or computer! Drop Box is the storage system I use personally and like it because I can access my photos anywhere and my phone does an auto-upload whenever I take a photo!! Apple Cloud is also great!
OK, go and get those photos safe and backed up!!
Love,
Kate