Storing digital photos doesn’t take up physical space, but it does take up hard drive space, so it makes sense to get organised. Organising your photos will save you time in the future when you are looking for particular shots.
Naming
Files straight out of your camera will be given a number, and its really difficult to remember unless you have a system to rename them to something meaningful
Editing
Don’t be afraid to delete the blurry shots, the bad ones or duplicates. You really don’t need 20 shots of similar views or that cute animal you saw on holiday. Pick out the best versions to keep and delete the rest.
Storage
Have a system download images from your camera or smartphone, and for saving your images on your computer, tablet or Ipad, so that you can find them easily.
Backup
It’s really important that you back up your photos - you don’t want to learn this the hard way. Its easy to get complacent about the photos on your smartphone for instance, but if you lost the phone, or it got damaged, you’d loose the photos. The same goes for a camera, however careful you are, it could get stolen on a trip, or dropped and broken
There are a number of options you could choose to do this, just decide what works for your budget and time:
- Memory Stick (not ideal for long term, but inexpensive)
- CD (also not ideal for long term, but inexpensive)
- External Hard drive
- Online (cloud)
- Photo printing site (inexpensive, not ideal as they can remove your account at any time)
It is best to have your backup in another location in case of fire, flood etc – you never know… Your backup is your photo insurance.
Choose the system that works best for you, schedule in some time to regularly organize your photos, and soon you’ll be able to find the exact photo you want to scrap in no time at all!
If you’re not sure about how to do it, I would recommend coming along to one of my classes, which will talk you through backing up and housekeeping good practice.