Shoot Better | 2 Tips for Organizing Digital Photos
This post is part of a new weekly-ish photography series. This isn't going to turn into a photography blog, but in this series, I'll attempt to answer the photography questions you submitted, and the focus of the series will be on technique rather than on equipment upgrades. Because, you know...frugality.
Now that it's the digital age, most of us don't have shoeboxes overflowing with prints. Photos are still a little difficult to manage, though, judging by how many of you asked for tips on organizing your digital files.
So before we get to actual shooting tips, I thought it would be good to talk about photo organization.
The good news is that the system I use is simple.
Plus, it's free.
Aaaaand I find that it greatly simplifies the process of looking for a particular photo in your archives as long as you can sort of remember when you took it. 😉
(This is super useful for blogging, as I frequently am looking through my files when I need a photo for a post.)
Organizing Software
So, first off, you do NOT need Photoshop for photo organization. Photoshop is terrible for this, actually. It's definitely meant for editing and not organizing.
(If you want non-free software for organizing, Lightroom is what you're looking for. I just got Lightroom at Christmas and I do love it, but I'm a total newbie with it and am not at all ready to write any tutorials!)
There's a totally free option, though: Picasa.
I've been using Picasa to organize my pictures for years now. It's a free program from Google, and it's perfect for organization and sorting purposes (and it's not a bad editing program either!).
If you don't want to use software, though, you can certainly just make plain old folders on your computer.
(I also hear that iPhoto is a good organizing software, for those of you who have Macs.)
The Month Method
My main tip for photo organization is very simple:
Organize your pictures in folders by month.
Why?
Well, if you organize them by event or by the date you unloaded the card, your files aren't going to be very orderly or very simple to quickly scan when you're trying to find something. Months make such a neat, consistent way of labeling folders.
I know this seems a little bit simple and obvious, but I've seen so many people who organize their photos into super random folders.
What's easier, looking through folders like this:
Aunt Lou's 50th
5-22-14
6-15-14
Georgia's Wedding
or something like this:
January 2013
February 2013
March 2013
Also, this keeps you from having eleventy thousand folders every year....generally, you'll only have 12.
As you can see on the left here, I pretty much stick with one folder for each month, although I sometimes make separate folders for vacations or for when I take photos for someone else.
When a new month begins, I make a new folder. I import pictures at least 12-15 times per month, and every time I put them into that month's folder.
So, if I want to find, say, a photo of Sonia's birthday, I know I just have to poke through the March folder.
Or if I want to find a photo of the trip we took to Monticello, I just have to remember that we went in January, and even if I don't remember exactly which year, it's pretty easy to peek thru the January folders.
Import, then Delete Duds
The advantage of digital photography is that it costs nothing to shoot oodles of photos, but that's also the downside! You can easily end up with far too many photos and that is a huge headache when you want to do something like making a photo book.
Once you've imported your photos into the appropriate folder, it's smart to immediately delete any photos that are unusable (closed eyes, blur, overexposure, etc.)
In Picasa, you can just hit the delete button on your keyboard as you scroll through your freshly unloaded photos...easy peasy.
(Two photos Sonia took. The top one isn't focused on what she wanted, so it should go. The bottom one I kept for her.)
It's true that you can fix some issues with editing software, but if you have some that don't need so much fixing, keep those and delete the ones that would require hours of editing.
I know that especially when it comes to kid photos, it's sometimes a little hard to hit the delete button. But if the photo is super blurry or someone's eyes are closed, or it's just a dud shot for another reason, delete it.
You probably have a bunch of other good ones, and it'll be easier to use those if you get rid of the ones that are the worst.
(Kind of like how you enjoy your possessions more when you get rid of the clutter that's in the way.)
(Funny thing: apparently I do practice what I preach with this because I had to look pretty hard in my files to find undeleted duds. These photos are from 2007!)
Deleting ruthlessly helps things run much more smoothly at photo-book-making time.
Also, even if you don't ever make photo books (which is perfectly fine.), dud-free files are much more fun to scroll thru when you want to take a walk down memory lane.
So, my two best tips for taming digital photo clutter:
1) Use monthly folders
2) Don't be afraid to delete.
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Okee-doke! Next week, we'll actually talk about something involving camera-usage. 😉
Oh, and if you are a photo-organizing ninja, feel free to leave your tips in the comments.
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P.S. The ePantry $10/free shipping/free Method cleaner offer ends today, so don't forget to snag it if you
I really needed this post! Thank you.
I have a lot of clutter ( photos ) on my pc and I was telling yesterday to my husband that we needed to organize it.
I will try with Picasa and with montly folders ( it will not be completely possible for all the clutter on my pc, but I will create monthly folders from now on ) 🙂
Have a nice weeekend!
Dont forget to back up your computer files!
I have 2 great ideas but full disclosure: I'm terrible at actually implementing them.
#1: title your folders so that the computer automatically organizes them for you. I like chrono, so every folder starts YY-MM-DD. If you do MM-YY, then you might get all your Januaries together.
#2: I like organizing by trip, so a typical title is 16-03-00 Indonesia. (Hey, I can dream, right?)
My biggest frustration with photo organizing is the naming. When I upload photos they have a long, nonsensical, alphanumerica "name." What I want to be able to do is rename the photo while I'm looking at it; similar to what we can do with a text doc. The two free Mac programs (iPhoto and, er, that other one) don't allow it. I have to look at the photo, close it, then retitle. Does anyone have suggestions for the Mac so I can do this?
Hi William, I just wanted to comment and say that I never allow the computer to automatically download, and name my files. I always click on the "open file folder" option instead and copy and paste them manually into my prenamed year/month folder. This saves the problem of all the numbering/naming systems that the computer will do.
But what I want to do is rename each photo. There's no camera in the world that will know to title a photo "14-12-31 WilliamB plays the didgeridoo."
Hi, have a question not about photo organization but about uploading photos to create a photo book. Recently, I took photos with my new Canon DSLR and tried to upload to my photo book. They turned out blurry on the photo book, any idea why? When I opened the photos on my computer (.jpg files) they were sharp and nice, though.
Any advice will be appreciated. Thanks.
Hey Kristen - I was amazed to see that I have the same file organizing systems in place! I use Picasa as well, also for years (going back to 2002), I have made each year in a separate folder with the months inside that folder. Like you said, this is almost a fail-proof system, because if you have a general idea of when something happened, you can always find it. And delete is a button I use quite often - although hard sometimes to decide which shot turned out best, but the obvious ones that are bad always get deleted. I also have a Seagate external hard drive that I have all my old photos on from 2014 back as extra backup protection.
I am excited to see you sharing your photo tips - there is always something that we can learn from each other! Happy 1st day of spring to you 🙂
PS - can we talk about the 18 year old in the top photo that looks just like Zoe? Man! These kids grow up fast!!!
Haha, I know. She's halfway to 18 now.
I like the month system too, but by naming the month numerically and putting the year first, as WilliamB mentioned, the folders will automatically go in the order you want. Once you get used to doing this, seeing "2014-03" is just as easy as seeing "March 2014" on your folders. Since it won't affect the folder order, I also like to add a few key words after the date to jog my memory about the main things I photographed that month, for example, "2014-03 beach Joe b-day wildflowers".
That said, while I am great about organizing my work files this way, my photos are a complete mess, so this system is still largely theoretical for them. 🙂
Gwen, you and me both!
I work in a CAD based industry and have learned that file management is key to making anything work. I've used a similar mentality to the one that is used at work to organize our photos at home.
It is very similar to yours, month based. I organize by creating folders in windows with the top level being the year, next is month under each month I'll create a folder for general photos and new ones for any special events that happen (December gets a lot of these, one for each family gathering that happens). The only exception to this is big events that span multiple months, they get a special folder all on their own (renovations and extended vacations are prime candidates for this).
If you want to you can pre-create a yearly folder. Call it 1-New (the 1 keeps it at the top of the list) and inside of it have a folder with the name of each month and inside of each month have a folder titled "General". When you get to a new year copy and past the 1-New folder and change the name to the appropriate year and you only need to worry about creating folders for the special events. This takes a couple of minutes to setup initially but after that you have a whole year's worth of folders created in seconds.
Thank you so much for kicking off this photography series, Kristen! I have a new baby and I am so excited about getting better at photographing her, and managing my photos well so we can enjoy them for a long time. I am pretty technically-inclined and usually like figuring out new things, but there is just too much information on the web about digital photography, and I have a fraction of the free time I used to have. As a long-time reader, I know you'll give us the most important tips, clearly explained so they will be easy to put into practice. I really appreciate your blog!
p.s. Please do talk about your backup strategy, too! Do you use Picasa's backup function? External drive or cloud backup?
I have my folders set up like William with the year first, I guess it's the accounting mentality because my work files are organized the same way.
Deleting duds is something I need to work on. Sorting through photos to post or make a book takes me forever because there are so many duplicates!
great tips! i use lightroom and usecrashplan for backup.
I've heard of other people using month by month organization, but I prefer categories. I just save them to my computer with folders and (layers of) sub folders. That way if I'm looking for pictures of certain people or certain things, they're always really easy to find without having to remember when exactly I took the picture. That's especially true for random pics that aren't tied to an event. So for Sonia's birthday, if I were filing your pictures, I would go to Family, then Sonia, then Birthdays, then 9th (or however old she is). I find it easier than having to look through an entire month's worth of photos. For me, at least - everybody has to do what works for them in the organization department 🙂
With digital, one can file photos in both ways. Or maybe someone knows of software that tags the photos?
I do monthly but inside the monthly I have catagories. I just take way too many pics for just monthly! It is pretty crazy 🙂
I do monthly categories,also. My downfall is I like to print some also, so I still have the boxes!! My Nikon Coolpix point and shoot camera recently began showing dark spots on the screen that also show when the picture is printed. What could be causing this? If I have a dark background the spots don't show, but on light backgrounds (like the sky) they do. Thank you!
Do you backup the photos online? Is there a way to access the files from multiple computers?
All I want to know is why I never thought to put crunched up candy canes and hot fudge on top of ice cream. GREAT.
(p.s. Have you tried hot fudge and caramel corn on top of ice cream?)
My system is actually pretty similar! With two tweaks. I do the monthly system for photos I take of events and family and such, within folders for each year. If there's a lot of pictures of one event, I'll do a subfolder within the month. And then I can easily find photos for printing. My other tweak is that a lot of the photos I take are of finished projects for the sewing/craft blog that I write for fun. So when I import those files, I have a separate "craft files" folder, in which things get subcategorized by type of garment or whatever. It sounds complicated, but it's much easier for me to remember that I made a dress than to try to remember when. And then my more personal photos don't get buried in a sea of in progress shots.
Incidentally, I do have Photoshop Elements, but 9 times out of 10, I just tweak photos with Picasa because it's easy and faster!
We organized by month too. Thanks to your input a few years ago. However, we also organize by category first so in the main Picture folder I have: Family, Friends, Cooking, and Sewing/ DIY folders then organized each pictures inside them by month.