How To Organize Digital Photos
Does organizing the sea of digital photos on your phone/computer feel like a daunting task that just keeps growing? Here are some quick ways to bring the Chaos To Order:
Delete! The first step to getting organized in any area is to get rid of what you don't need. It can be intimidating looking at 10,000 photos in your camera roll. Take a small section at a time and determine what you can remove. Delete duplicates and old screenshots that are taking up space.
Bring all your photos together. It's hard to see all that you have when some photos are on the computer and others are on the phone, external drives, etc. Decide where you want to store your images and bring all of them to one place. Personally, I like having my photos on an external hard drive. This makes it easy to keep everything I need without worrying about storage space. Here’s an example of my photo storage system:
3. Categorize Photos Chronologically. Make it easy to find photos by organizing them into albums and folders. If you are on a computer or laptop, drag and drop into different folders based on how you want to group them. I like to do one folder for each year and a subfolder for every month with my personal photos. Work related pics are organized by how they are used (jobs, rooms, etc…).
4. Maintain your camera roll! Be conscientious of how much is going into your camera roll on a daily basis. Clear out excess regularly. Uploading to your computer frequently and storing things in an easy, efficient way is your best bet. Trying to save and sort in multiple different ways will only cause confusion. I suggest keeping about 1 year worth of current photos on your phone, then maybe a favorites folder of older pics that you like to keep handy.
Keeping up with a good system for maintaining photos will make it so much easier to access what you need, not to mention a good family archive going into the future. Of course, your Chaos To Order organizers are always happy to help along the way:)