Dealing with Photos

Dealing with your digital photos can be a nightmare. Here is how I deal with them.

Downloading:
Get them off your cards! Cameras can be stolen (and often are) and those small cards can be lost. Trust me on both of these points. Get your owners manual out and figure out how to download the photos from your camera (phone too) onto you computer. Mine is as simple as taking the SD card (memory card) out of my camera and putting it in the reader slot in my computer and then moving the files from that card to the hard drive (drag/drop or copy/paste; both work the same).  I then delete the pictures off the SD card so that I have room again for more pictures and don't transfer them again.

Editing:
After downloading do a quick edit by spending a few minutes going through the photos.  Rotate those you need to rotate, delete if you want (I put my less desirable photos in a "delete when ready" file just in case I want it later), label and sort them (see below). I believe this is one of the most important steps out there. Until I was consistent with this step, I could never find a photo after taking it. I often thought, "What was the point of even taking that picture, I can't find it now." 

If you don't have time to do the second step immediately put them in a temporary file. I label mine "needs editing and sorting" and so I know exactly where to go when I come back to the task. Even when I put them in this file, I try to do a tag of some sort so I at least can remember why I took that picture.

I can come back and do heavy editing later, but when I do that I always copy the original and label my new photo with this word "EDIT" so I know that it wasn't the original. I've needed that original more times than I want to count and am thankful I copied before I edited it. 
 
Labeling:
Here is how I label and sort my photos. I use Microsoft Windows and I file them in My Pictures. Here is the order I name my photos:


Year month day (if important), location (if important), activity (if important), people's names

Sometimes the location and activity are not important.

example:

2012 March, Art Class, Jessie 

or 

2011 July, Scout Camp, Pigot, fires, Matt & Chris

In icon view; my photo name will look like this:

I can rename a batch of photos at the same time. I simple select the photos I want to rename (Crtl A or shift with a click on first and last photo in a series of photos or Ctrl and click on photos), right click and pick "rename". I then type in the name I want them to be filed under.  The computer will automatically number them for me. Ninety-nine percent of the time the sequence doesn't matter, so I just let it number them. 

 
I always name as many people in the photo as I can starting in the upper left hand corner and working like a line of text in a book.  I can quickly find people because their names are near the end, so in a "list" view their names are near the end of each file name.

Name them now, because it is amazing how fast our memories go. "Oh, I will never forget this." Trust me, you will forget. My babies look very much alike and it I hadn't been neurotic and labeled them when I took them, I would be in a world of hurt!


Sorting:
After they are properly named; I sort them. I put my photos files in by dates because that is how I organize my life and thoughts.  I create a new file or put it in an existing file.

. To make that folder simply right click in the window, select "new" and then "folder". I name it as soon as I can following the method mentioned above. I give the folder a year and a month. For example a might make a "2012 March" folder for this month's photos If it needs something after that then I put a comma and then the name (it is usually an activity or event that we attended).

I decide if a separate folder is necessary by the number of photos or if it was a very special event. For example if I took a few shots of my cute puppies playing outside, they would probably just go in that month's file. If we went to the Zoo and I have more than 15 shots of us at the zoo then I will open a new file, give it the proper name and then drop all the photos in that file.

Here is a helpful hint for lots of photos of the same thing. I make a subfolder and label it "best" so that I don't have to continually go through 25o shots of my kid's senior pictures looking for that one I loved the most.

After each photo is properly placed in the file, I then put the file in the proper year. 



 
Helpful Hints:
I will sometimes make a folder that might have a theme to it. For example, I was going through our photos one time and noticed that I had snapped a lot of photos of my kids Halloween costumes. I copied those photos (did not MOVE them; COPIED them) and put them in a new folder I labeled "halloween (all copies). Notice the note I put on that file "all copies" so that I know I don't have to resort them and put them back in the original files.

You will also notice other folders with different categories of photos in the above screen grab. I will be shopping and see a craft idea, I will snap a photo of it using my phone and then come home and put it in my "craft ideas" folder. I can then refer back to it quick easily. These types of photos don't need to be in my family's chronological order of photos. Neither do the thousands of nature shots I take while out an about. In my next life I want to be a photographer. I will add the year to each photo so I can go back and look at that tree that grew in our backyard, but for the most part I file them under "Nature".

Back Up:
It only takes one fried hard drive and a couple thousand dollars repair and retrieval bill for you to believe in back up. Please do not learn the expensive and tragic way of having a back up.  Whatever back up system you have: USE IT! And make sure that whatever system you use allows you to retrieve them at the resolution you uploaded them. There are services out there that compress your files so you 600 x 600 pixel picture comes back as a 90 x 90. The quality is ruined. Just be mindful of that and make sure you are backing up often.

Personally I use two external hard drives, DVDs and Heritage Makers. Yes, it is a triple back up system, but I was burned only once and it was a very hard lesson to learn. I lost six month's worth of pictures; there is a hole in my life. Never again!

Just start TODAY:
You may ask, "But wait! I have THOUSANDS of photos on my computer. Where do I start?" Start today and work forward and backwards.  That's how I started with my problem. I started by doing today's photos and then worked backwards with a goal of a month a week.  Yes, it took a long time (only 20 years worth of photos), but slowly and surely I have completed the task. Now all I have to do is worry about the photos that I just took. When they are downloaded I just go through the steps above and don't have to worry!

Problem Solved!