Sometimes technology takes off so fast, we can’t keep up. It seems like that’s what happened with digital cameras and our photo libraries. We used to only take pictures of special occasions, which probably meant we accrued hundreds of pictures each year. Now, all of a sudden, we’re producing pictures every day. Thousands of pictures each year. And they just keep building. We’re paying for cloud storage, but sometimes the pictures are only syncing, not backing up (see this post for more about that!) and most of us have NO organization to this process! When we need to find a picture, we scroll and scroll looking for it.
I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t have to be that hard! We can harness the power of technology to organize our photo libraries and KEEP them that way! So, what does that all mean?
First, we need to get all the pictures into one spot. This is the consolidation phase. Where are your pictures? Mine were scattered on various discs, thumb drives, old computers, a new computer, old phones, my current phone, external hard drives and my husband’s phone. Getting ALL of those pictures onto one new external hard drive felt GREAT and resulted in 117,916 pictures!
Next, we scan the pictures for duplicates. Running these pictures through a duplicate finder, I found 50,702 duplicates. Yikes..Imagine scrolling through all those unnecessary pictures!
The third step is sorting. We take the newly reduced library and use software that reads the files and arranges them in a file system. Each year is sub-divided into monthly folders. This is my favorite part. There is nothing prettier than an organized photo library!
This organized library is uploaded to the cloud (there are many options, but I use Amazon photos because it’s free for Prime members). Some cloud services have facial recognition and key word searching so you can search for very specific pictures.
Once you’re established with a cloud service, you can set your phone to automatically back up to the cloud. Once a month or once a year, you move your new pictures to your external hard drive to keep your library up to date.
Sound easy? If your first response is “NO! You lost me on the first step!” That’s fine! That’s why I’m here. I can do all of that for you. Using screen sharing technology, I do all the work on your computer from my home. I take your photos through all the steps and then we schedule a time where I show you how to use and enjoy your newly organized library.
If you followed those steps and thought…”I’d love an organized photo library, but I think I could do it myself”. That’s great too! I have a suggestion for the DIY crowd: my mentor, the very talented Miss Freddy, has a self-guided course to get you through all these steps on your own. Her course is so thorough and well done, I saw no point in re-creating it for my clients. If you’d like to go that route, please use this link so she knows I sent you and I’ll get a small commission for sending you her way.
It doesn’t matter whether you decide to DIY or delegate, get your photos organized so you can ENJOY them!
