Organizing Your Pictures in a Digital World

For many of us, gone are the days of photo albums and/or boxes of photographs that capture our memories. It's good news from the perspective of saving space. The digital age has made it possible to clear our closet shelves of boxes of pictures, but at the same time, I've heard many complaints that once photos are on the computer, they're essentially gone. Out of sight, out of mind... inaccessible. The primary reason given is that it's too complicated to figure out what's where. You need to have a system to know where to look. Here are a few tips to manage your photos:

1. Keep all photos in the same place on your computer. It sounds obvious, but not everyone follows this one. Just as your paper-based photos should be kept in one location, so should your digital ones.

2. As you download your digital pictures to your computer, use a standard naming convention for folders to make it easy to find pictures when you need them. Use the same system every time you put pictures on your computer. Name each folder with the year first, then the month. If there is a specific occasion being documented, include that too, such as "2011 02 Florida trip". Using numbers for the months instead of the name of the month keeps things in order. Numerical lists work better than alphabetized months here.

3. I know many people will view what I'm about to say as crazy talk, but hear me out: Delete some pictures. There, I said it. No, don't delete the great ones, or even the good ones. But the blurry ones? Delete. The crooked ones? The can't-quite-tell-what-it-is ones? The back-of-someone's-head-blocking-the-scene ones? Delete. The picture on the right is one that I found on my computer. Why on earth was I keeping this?!

You'll be amazed at how you can pare down the volume of digital photos if you just keep the ones that are actually worth keeping. If you have five versions of the same photo with no major differences, go ahead and delete a few of them. The digital world makes it possible to take unlimited pictures, but just because a picture was taken doesn't mean it needs to be kept forever. It will make your life easier. Fewer photos means less time uploading/downloading, less space taken up on your computer, and less "clutter." Try it.

4. Once everything is labeled and organized, don't forget the final step: backup your pictures by creating copies. The backup can be as a CD, external hard drive, in the "cloud"...there are plenty of other options. Choose what works best for you, but I recommend you keep the backup someplace other than at your home. Having photos backed up digitally means that they can be protected from all kinds of trouble, such as computers crashing, theft, water damage, or fire damage, but remember, the backup is subject to all of the same physical threats as your originals. Ask a friend or family member to keep your backup photos safe for you...and maybe offer them a slide show to share your newly organized memories!

What are some of the ways you keep your pictures in order?

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