From speaking with clients, friends and overhearing other people share computer frustrations, it seems that methods for organizing digital photos is a big concern. I’m pretty confident that people all have their own ways but I’m going to share some of the ways that I have learned to store and organize my own photos from things I’ve learned over the years.
I will have to split this into parts since you’d be scrolling for hours if I did it all at one time and we don’t want that. So today I’ll begin with Part 1 which will share how to organize in folders.
If your camera software or editing software has a way to name all of the images in your set of photos, I recommend starting there. I use Lightroom 3 for transferring my photos onto my computer and have that option to assign a name and number to all photos and also dedicate a folder for them to be transferred. It is convenient and easy. Most camera software has an option to name the files but not all. If your software does not, I highly recommend taking the time to rename manually (right click on photo and select rename). My choice is to use a time reference so that my photos stay in one place and do not get jumbled with past images I’ve taken. I label each of my photos with the date in number form, ex. “051413_” and then the computer assigns a number after that to tell them apart.
Here are some steps to break down my own method of organizing photos into folders.
1.) To start with I have a folder off of my desktop labeled “My Pictures”. All of my image files are stored here.
2.) Next I have a folder with the current year, so all of the photos I take this year all in a folder in “My Pictures” labeled 2013. See image below for an example.
3.) The next folder has my months of the year so that I can keep the photos I take and immediately transfer them to the date they below in. It is a good idea to number the months in front of the name of the month to keep them in sequential order. Without doing that, the computer will alphabetize them. See image below for an example.
4.) The final step is to label the actual dates of the images by typing the month and date and each date has its own folder. If it is an important event I might label it with a few words, ex. “Dec. 20 Christmas Party” or “May 30 Jim Bday Party” , etc. See image below for visual example.
How do you organize your photos? Tell us in the comments below! Also share any ideas you would like to see in upcoming Photo Feature blog posts. If you like what we have to say, share!
