How to Organize Digital Photos

04Let’s talk about how to organize digital photos. Of course, we don’t like big piles of disorganized paper or photos hanging out all over our office, but what about digital photos? Fortunately, they are less visible, but it’s no less frustrating not to be able to find a file or a photo that we need!

Let me start by saying that I’m certainly not an expert in this arena and I’ve had my fair share of photo organizing mistakes, but I have learned a few things, and I do finally have a system for organizing my digital photos that is working for me! In this case, I really believe the simpler and more straightforward the better. I’ve tried more advanced, complicated systems, and, trust me, they just fall apart. Here are the steps for getting your digital photos in order.

How to Organize Your Digital Photos - getorganizedhq.com

Before we dive into the system, it’s helpful to take a minute to consider the end goal. Why do you take photos? How do you plan to use the photos? This will obviously influence what photo organizing system would work best for you. It can also change some over the years.

For example, I used to take a lot of photos with my big, DSLR camera, but I now take most family photos with just my iPhone. Here’s why: I use a really simple app for creating photo books, and it’s WAY easier to do when the photos are already on my phone. When I took photos with my big camera, I had to transfer them to the computer, edit them, and then transfer them to my phone – which means I got way behind.

I decided I would much prefer a simple photo book with iPhone only photos that was actually DONE rather than a more elaborate book with fancy photos that never got completed.

 

Step 1: Start from This Point Forward

If your digital photos on your computer are a total mess and you really don’t have a system to organize them, or if your current system isn’t working for you, I do NOT recommend that you start by trying to reorganize all your previous digital photos. That can be a very daunting task that is likely to take you quite a while. Also, you’re more likely to put off starting an organizing system if you think you’ll have to start by spending hours and hours reorganizing your older files. I highly suggest you just start TODAY organizing your files with your new system. Any photos you take from this point forward will fit into the new system. Don’t worry so much about prior photos. You might get to them someday, and even if you never do, it will be so much better to have everything front this point forward all organized.

Step 2: The Delete Key is Your Friend!

No matter what system you choose, the delete key will always be your friend. Don’t be afraid to use it. Sometimes we think that because our files aren’t taking up literal physical space that it’s okay to keep everything. It’s still clutter, though. If you keep every digital photo, your hard drive will fill up quickly plus it will be a lot harder to find what you need. If you see a photo that is blurry or unusable, just delete it. If you take 12 shots of the exact same thing, delete 11 of them and only keep your favorite. I don’t overthink this or spend hours deciding what to delete. I’ve just formed the habit of always deleting blurry or way too dark photos. That only takes a second. And then if I am choosing certain photos out of a group, I go ahead and delete the ones I didn’t choose.

I do this both on the computer and on my phone. If I take 14 shots of the same thing, I try to delete 13 of them RIGHT AWAY. This is a game changer. I go through my phone photos at least once a week to delete any that aren’t my favorite. This both frees up storage space and makes it much easier to create my photobooks, because I’m not weeding through tons of photos or trying to agonize over which shot is my favorite.

 

Step 3: Choose a Very Simple File Structure

I know this from personal experience, but a very simple file structure for your photos will be most likely to work best long term. I wouldn’t suggest some fancy way of naming, categorizing, and tagging everything. For one thing, if your system takes you 15 minutes every time you import photos, you’re more likely to be in a hurry and not stick with it. Also, if you don’t have a straightforward way of naming folders, it can actually be harder to find what you’re looking for.

Here’s what I do. Each time I import photos, I name the folder with the today’s date first. I use the format of year-month-day, like 2014-01-31. I highly recommend that you do put the year first so you can easily look at all the folders in chronological order. (If you did something like 01-31-2014, then by the time a lot of years went by you’d end up with all the January’s from every year together, the all the February’s, etc.) I also recommend using leading zero’s in front of the months and days (like 01 instead of 1 for January). This will also ensure everything can easily be sorted in chronological order.

When I want to add more description, I will put a title of the event after the year. That would look like “2014-01-31 Planner Post Pics.” Also, I try to upload photos often, but sometimes I go a month or two without uploading. When I finally get around to it, there might be five or six different events that I’m importing. In that case, I do NOT separate the events. This takes too long, and I know I won’t keep up with it. I just put the date that I’m uploading. When I’m looking through folders I know that the folder could contain anything from the previous dated folder up to that date. In the example below, I know that “2013-11-17 Planners” could actually contain anything from November 3rd through the 17th, and it’s super easy to see that at a glance. Here’s what my current files look like:

How to Organize Your Digital Photos - getorganizedhq.comI find that using the date is the most straightforward method. I usually know the approximate date when things happened and there’s no ambiguity.

 

Step 4: Use Your Photos

It’s so, so important to actually do something with your photos. You didn’t take them just so that they can hang out on your hard drive. Print them, hang them, put them in an album, etc.

There are a lot of different ways to use your photos, but these days I’m loving the Project Life App by Becky Higgins (just search “Project Life” on the app store). Using the app, you can create a photo book right on your phone. Ideally, I like to keep up as I go. So I’m gradually creating new pages and staying constantly caught up (but that doesn’t always happen). This makes it so quick and easy.

Photo Organizing Software

There is software that can help you do this. I personally use Lightroom these days, but I’m guessing most of you don’t have that program. (If you do have Lightroom and want me to do a tutorial on my Lightroom workflow, let me know.)

If you have a Mac, iPhoto does this very well. I really love iPhoto, and if I didn’t have Lightroom, I would definitely use nothing but that. It automatically pulls in all your photos, organizes them by date, and splits them into events. You can order prints directly from iPhoto and do minor edits.

How do you organize your photos? Do you struggle with actually getting them into albums like I do? What are your favorite programs to use?

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Posted Under: Digital Organization, Organizing