How to Organize Digital Photos

Learning how to organize digital photos is becoming more and more important; it is so easy to take them that we can end up with literally thousands of photos!

And too many photos end up being clutter.

I’m going to go through the simplest, lowest possible technical way (and extremely effective) to sort and organize your digital photos on your computer.

(Click here to learn how to organize photos of the printed variety.)

There are a lot of software, tools, etc. available as well, so if you want to explore them, a couple of good ones are Picasa free from Google and iPhoto for Mac (you can do basic editing and organizing on both). 

My suggestion is do the easy sort first, and then if you want to get fancy, go right ahead.

Here's how to organize digital photos the easy way:

1. Your best tool for handling your digital photos is your delete key. Be liberal in your use of the delete key.
2. Gather your digital photos together. Transfer photos from your camera to your computer.
3. Decide how you want to sort your photos. Create a folder structure, organizing the pictures first by year and month, then by event or person. For large events, such as weddings, you may need subfolders (example: 2008 June - Mary’s Wedding for the main folder, Reception, Wedding, Opening Gifts, etc. for subfolders). Keep it really simple, so it will be easy to find the photos you’re looking for.
4. Create folders (in Windows, go to My Documents, Create New Folder) and label them as you go.
5. Sort photos and move into the appropriate folders. For example, you would move all of the photos related to “2009 Thanksgiving” to that folder. Do this sort step fairly quickly. Don’t stop to label each individual photo (leave this until later), or reminisce. And remember to delete as many photos as you can. Once you have completed this step, dance around the room for a few minutes and pat yourself on the back. Your digital photos are all sorted and organized.
6. Once you have sorted all of the photos into folders (deleting as many as you can), you can go back and label individual photos if you want (it’s a good idea). Give each photo a descriptive label, and use the same format each time. For example: 2008 June 23 Mary wedding dress.
7. Back up your photos regularly, on a CD or DVD, external hard drive, or iPod. 

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