Taking pictures is easier than ever with smart phones. You just point and click. Long gone are the days of Polaroids and even digital cameras. No more film, getting pictures developed, and sorting through boxes of bad photos. Now we just have files and folders full of bad photos to sort through in digital land!

The downside of the ease of taking photos with our phones, and even digital cameras, rather than film is the fact we have pretty much unlimited photos. The only barrier is the battery life or storage. And, let’s face it, these are becoming less of an issue.

How to wrangle your digital images

I’ve been dumping my photos from my phone and digital camera into folders on my computer for years (at least 7 years worth). I’ve made attempts to try and sort, but always struggle. First, I tried to sort by subject, like all photos of my cat, or all photos of me, or a place. But then, just like tidying your house, inevitably you come across photos that you might like but have no idea what to do with.

Here is how I’m tidying my photos now and I’m loving the process too!

Sort your photos by date

Get your photos in chronological order. This way you can see your life events as they happened, which will help you to group your photos better. The idea is that you’re going to group your photos into a story line, like your own photojournal, or pull out individual photos that may work better grouped by subject.

Group photos by date or subject in their own folders

Your photos usually tell a story. Pay attention to the dates and keep photos taken on the same day together as they likely tell that story.

Group photos by date or subject into their own folders

Review your images in chunks (for instance, by a single day or over a few days).

Keep pictures together that tell a story. Like, photos from a vacation.
Copy these photos to their own folder.
Label that folder Year-MM-DD-DescriptiveName (for instance, 2010-03-01-Disneyland).

Tidy those photos

Edit and delete until you have a more curated collection of photos for this folder

Tidy photos in this folder

In your newly made folder, start reviewing your photos.

Delete any that are just plain bad or don’t tell a good story.
Delete any that are redundant.
Delete any you don’t like or are uninteresting.
Edit to improve any you do like (crop, adjust the lighting, etc).

Type up a description about these photos

This is what makes this whole process fun in my opinion. It’s you revisiting your photos and putting together the story of what happened, who was there. Maybe there are even more details you remember that aren’t necessarily pictured. Add them! Use Notepad or Word, or something similar to save it to the folder.

Add a little story or written description

Remember how we used to write on the back of old photos? And those we didn’t, we just had to guess, or ask your parents or grandparents who these people were or what’s happening? Our digital photos are the same. The more time goes by, the more we forget.

I’ve started adding a simple Notebook file to each of these folders and writing basic info about what’s going on in general. Think of it like a photo journal.

For some of my folders I ended up writing a short diary entry practically about what was happening, how I felt. Maybe things that happened that aren’t photographed that I’d like to remember. If I was sharing these photos, if they were in an actual photo album sharing it with people, what would I say so others could understand what’s going on?

I highly encourage you to NOT skip this. I think this is one of the most important parts of tidying and organizing your photos.

Other photo organizing tips

Make a folder for specific subjects you frequently photograph

This can be a good way to organize those photos that you like, but don’t particularly have a story behind them other than it’s a good photo of a subject you enjoy photographing.

Good uses of a collection folder are for:

Pets.
Landscapes.
Sunsets.
Street photography.
Nature or animals.

Make your photos come to life

While getting your images sorted will be quite rewarding, I think having them in a book or album is still a necessary part of our lives.

Create your own photo albums

Once I’m done, I plan to make some photo albums, perhaps one for each year using Shutterfly or something similar. You can also choose specific images to have printed and place them into photo albums of your choosing, or some other creative endeavor.

Other ideas? You could put your images into an online photo album if you want to upload them to something like Flickr or other sites out there. Personally, I’d rather have mine in my cloud and have printed books of the most special ones made, but that might just be because the idea of uploading and managing an entire photo journal online sounds like more work than I’d like to do. I’d rather devote that time to making an actual book I can hold and display.

I’ve enjoyed this process immensely, especially doing the written description part. This is not a fast process, but is very rewarding.

Extra credit: Rename your files and add tags

For those who really want to step up their image organization game, I suggest renaming your digital file names and adding tags.

Rename the photos

This is an easy step that’s easily forgotten. While the individual folder name is very helpful, it can also help to just do this extra step and rename the photos in the folder something less generic than whatever your camera named them.

Typically, all you need to do is:

Select All (Ctrl + A)
Right-click over the first photo in the group.
Click Rename.
Type in: Year-MM-DD-Description.
Press return (and the computer automatically updates all of them with this same name and a number after it)

Add to each photo’s properties

If you want to get even more fancy, you can add tags to your photos. Like, every photo your grandmother is in, you can tag her in.

Right-click your photo (or select multiple photos and right-click).
Choose properties.
Add a tag (or tags) to the photos.
Press return.

This is helpful because now if you search your photos for “grandma,” these photos you added a tag of her will now show up.

PHOTO CREDITS: All images sourced from www.unsplash.com

How to tidy and organize your digital photos