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Post by mom on Apr 30, 2015 6:15:20 GMT
Help! My photos are a mess on my computer. How do you sort yours and keep them organized? Do you have a method that works well for you?
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Post by kristi on Apr 30, 2015 6:19:37 GMT
I have folders for every year. In each folder I have 12 folders - 1 for each month. As I save pictures, I put in the name of the person along with activity, celebration or location so I can search & find it later when I search photos by name. I am slowly going back to old photos & renaming them when I have time.
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Post by mom on Apr 30, 2015 6:25:23 GMT
I have folders for every year. In each folder I have 12 folders - 1 for each month. As I save pictures, I put in the name of the person along with activity, celebration or location so I can search & find it later when I search photos by name. I am slowly going back to old photos & renaming them when I have time. Thanks for replying. I am thinking this is what I am going to have to do. *sigh* Its overwhelming. Im backing up everything tonight so I will have some time to figure out what will work best for me. Part of my problem is I haven't been weeding the crap photos out when I upload them. |
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Post by mom on Apr 30, 2015 6:54:45 GMT
I make a folder for each year. Then there are sub folders for each event. When I name the even sub-folders, I include the name and date of the event. That way if I ever get around to scrapping them I'll at least know when/where it was. I use iPhoto and it does facial recognition, so I make the effort to tag people. Then when I upload more photos down the line it will catch most of their photos and allow me to automatically tag those photos. That's also a big help for scrapping later on. So do you just upload everything to iPhoto or what? Right now I have folders on my desktop that I have been using. |
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Post by jennyap on Apr 30, 2015 8:26:24 GMT
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Deleted
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Jun 10, 2024 4:03:06 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2015 12:23:18 GMT
Thanks for that! Mine is such a mess -- I really need to do something about it. And I love that you have an entire folder for "Cats" -- I do too. |
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Deleted
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Jun 10, 2024 4:03:06 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 30, 2015 12:37:00 GMT
I don't think years/months would work for me. When I look for a pic, I seldom know what year it was taken. My folders are:
Trips
us (just me and dh )
Other people (not family)
grandchildren (I do have these by year)
DD # 3 visits (she lives far away)
smalls (for posting to social media)
Old pics (pre digital scanned)
There are a lot of folders inside these main ones that are more specific.
I'm not going to tell you I can find every pic I want immediately, but mostly, I can.
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Post by bwife on Apr 30, 2015 14:18:26 GMT
I don't think years/months would work for me. When I look for a pic, I seldom know what year it was taken. My folders are: Trips us (just me and dh ) Other people (not family) grandchildren (I do have these by year) DD # 3 visits (she lives far away) smalls (for posting to social media) Old pics (pre digital scanned) There are a lot of folders inside these main ones that are more specific. I'm not going to tell you I can find every pic I want immediately, but mostly, I can. For photos that were taken on a digital camera, To see the year and Date it was taken, You should just have to hoover over it with your mouse and a little box will pop up with the date in it. Or if you right click on it and look at the properties, it will tell you the date as well as the device it was taken with. -- EtA- I just re-read your post and I miss understood. I see what you are saying now, if you are looking for a photo, You dont remember when you took it. Sorry! I thought you meant while organizing your photos, you dont remember when you took it. My photos are organized by dates.... every "event" has its own folder. All folders are in a file called " pictures" on my computer. for example my files names look like this.. 2006-3-12 kite festival. This way, the computer sorts them by date when I am looking for something. Now if I have something that is JUST for one of my kids... then I name the file this.... 2006-George-3-12 band concert. This way, all of "george's" things stay together for that year. this is how all my the photos that I take are on my computer. I also have pics that my kids have taken with their camera's on my computer also..... those get named.... George camera 2006-3-12 so that they still stay in order for that kiddo. |
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pudgygroundhog
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,643 
Location: The Grand Canyon
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Post by pudgygroundhog on Apr 30, 2015 14:25:58 GMT
I have two main folders:
1) Folder for my daughter with subfolders for year, then month
2) Folder for Year with subfolders for each event that includes the date (for instance I might say Moab Trip 04-15). I also have a misc folder for one off pictures that don't fit in anything else
It's not perfect, but I've been doing it for awhile and it works well for me. I don't do any tagging - I know it could help, but it's just way too much work. When I edit my photos I save them with descriptive names, so it does help if I am searching for something (like one of our cats' names).
I also do photobooks, which helps me stay organized. Each year I do a book for my daughter that goes by month (I use Google Docs for journaling for each month), a general book that goes by the week (this is for more of the every day stuff, random photos, etc), and then a book for each vacation.
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Post by pierkiss on Apr 30, 2015 14:56:52 GMT
Year, month, and maybe a sub-folder inside of the month folder for bigger events/activities. (Birthdays, trips, etc).
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Post by mom on Apr 30, 2015 15:16:13 GMT
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Post by SnowWhite on Apr 30, 2015 15:41:52 GMT
I make a folder for each year. Then there are sub folders for each event. When I name the even sub-folders, I include the name and date of the event. That way if I ever get around to scrapping them I'll at least know when/where it was. I use iPhoto and it does facial recognition, so I make the effort to tag people. Then when I upload more photos down the line it will catch most of their photos and allow me to automatically tag those photos. That's also a big help for scrapping later on. This is what I do. I name my folders something like '2015-04-30 Zoo Trip' so when they sort, they're in chronological order and at a quick glance I can also see the subject/event of the photos in the folder. I don't have iPhoto (I have Win7) but I have Picasa from Google and it also does facial recognition. I don't take many photos with my camera anymore, only for special trips/events. I mostly just use my cell phone so it's just a matter of moving the photos from Dropbox (my phone automatically syncs them there) into the appropriate folder on my computer. But I leave them in Dropbox and then also copy them over to Box for backup. |
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Post by jennyap on Apr 30, 2015 15:48:00 GMT
Thanks for that! Mine is such a mess -- I really need to do something about it. And I love that you have an entire folder for "Cats" -- I do too. LOL. I had forgotten I mentioned that particular detail until I re-read my post when I linked the thread, and I did pause to wonder whether I ought to be embarrassed about it. But hey, I don't have kids, so what the heck. Glad I'm not the only one! |
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Post by originalvanillabean on Apr 30, 2015 17:07:03 GMT
This is what we do.
Each year has a folder and within it are the months
(we use this so they stay order since JFMAM, etc...aren't in order)
01-2015
02-2015
03-2015...
no subfolders as we can remember which month it is. We dump everything in there (phone pics, FB photo downloads, memory stick).
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Post by wrongwayfeldman on Apr 30, 2015 17:50:28 GMT
This tip may seem way too basic, but when a friend told me to do this, it was something I had not thought of and it made my folders stay in order. I always label each folder with the year first, then the month, then the day. I also put the first name of any person in that set of photos in the name of the folder, along with any key words that I might use when I search. For instance:
2015 04 28 Max Will Scout campout
2013 08 25 Kayla NYC college
This way, in my PICTURES folder, all the events are in chronological order.
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Post by annabella on Apr 30, 2015 18:24:59 GMT
I do the year thing for generic non-topic photos. But I also have folders named Christmas, Halloween, Birthday, and vacation destinations.
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Post by tallgirl on Apr 30, 2015 18:56:19 GMT
I organize strictly by date. Year folder, month folder, day folders. The only exception to this is that within the year I also have a separate folder for our big vacations - there may be 1 or 2 per year. A weekend away just gets sorted along with everything else by date.
This works for me... I can generally guess when a photo may have been taken, to within a month or two, and it doesn't take me long to dig between folders after that. I do a lot of everyday photography that I can't just tag with a holiday or event name, so this works for me.
My biggest photo organization tip is to delete ruthlessly. I probably take 300 photos on Christmas Day, and that night I upload my photos, sort through them, and keep 10-15. For me personally, I like having just a handful of really good photos from any event, and I am OK with getting rid of everything else. This means I have a lot less to weed through when I'm looking for something, and helps to minimize the amount of storage that I need.
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Post by snappinsami on Apr 30, 2015 19:40:46 GMT
I have folders for each year, and then name each picture as yymmdd ## Description.jpg. Doing it this way keeps them in order by date but also chronologically within that date as well. Thankfully, I've done it that way since I got my first digital camera in 2000.
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