Friday, 15 February 2013

How to Organise and Store your Digital Photographs

A wee while ago, I asked all of the lovely readers on my Facebook Page what you might like to have covered off and fetaured on the blog in the New Year. One such request was how to organise and store all of the digital piccies that we now collect these days.
 
Because I am quite frankly no expert on this topic (and I really do need a swift kick up the backside to organise these myself), I have asked the very knowledgable Brian Jensen from Dell to pop back and give us his ideas and thoughts on the topic...


If you’re a digital photo buff, you know how easy it is to fill up your computer with mountains of pictures. You probably have everything from last year’s vacation in the Caribbean to your Great Aunt Betty’s birthday party stored on your hard drive. With all of these photos, it’s easy to see how they can get jumbled and hard to find. If your photos are in need of some organisation, read on for some easy tips for how to get started:

Decide on Your Method

There are a number of ways that you may wish to organise and classify your photos. A great way is by date—go ahead create folders on your computer that list the years the photos were taken, and then within the year folders create month folders. This way works well if you know approximately when the photos you are looking for were taken—you can go in and find them quickly and easily.

Another way that you may wish to organise your photos is by event, such as “Trip to California” or “Ski Vacation.” This works especially well if you tend to take photos of special occasions. You’ll always have those memories right at your fingertips.

While these are two of the most common ways to group your pictures, don’t feel that you have to use them. You may want to create different folders for different photography subjects (one folder for shots of your kids, for example, and another folder for pictures of your dog) or group things by colour (an awesome idea if you’re a nature photographer). The choice is really up to you, but one thing to remember is to be consistent. Find a way to organise your photos that works for you and then use the same method for any pictures you take in the future.

Create Labels

Now that you’ve got your digital memories grouped, you should give some consideration to how you’ll name them. Create a naming convention that has meaning to you and will allow you to find your photos if you search for them.

You may consider naming the photo with a brief description of what’s happening and listing who is in the shot. You can also put the place where it was taken, the date, and anything else that will help you find it later.

Back It Up

All your pictures should be saved in two places. Saving pictures on your laptop is great, but there is a chance that you could lose your hard drive either through a hard drive failure or a disaster of some kind.

In order to prevent that, you should save your pictures onto an external hard drive or some other external media device, such as an SD card. These are very inexpensive and can offer a great peace of mind if something bad were to happen to your computer.

Print a Photo Book

If digital access isn’t the most important thing to you, printing a photo book is a great way to store your pictures in an organised fashion. There are many websites where you can upload pictures to create a professional looking photo book. These sites will then print, bind and mail the book to you. Some of the sites that offer photo books are Shutterfly, Snapfish, MyPublisher and Blurb. In addition to these popular photo sites, many local stores that offer photo printing will offer photo books as well.

Store Pictures Online

In addition to organising your photos on your computer and backing them up on an external hard drive, there are places pictures can be stored online. The good part about this option is that no matter where you are or what happens to your laptop, you can get to your pictures from anywhere that you have Internet access.

What are your tips on organising and storing digital photos? Leave a comment and let us know.

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