How Do You Organize Your Digital Photos?

We store on comp with on line back up. We filephotos by year. Within each year folder we file per month or special event. So we have 12 folders for months and about as many special event folders which we file name first by date, then event name so it shows up chronologically in the line up. When I go to print, I make a folder and I copy the image into it (not transfer the image). I name the folder "temp for print (copies)". Then I can copy that onto a disc should i wish, or upload the whole folder to print on whatever online service I use. When I'm done I delete the folder. Truth be told, I have yet to print up a whole album since going digital. We have a lot of photos. Too many. We up load and have "deleting parties" soon after. Still, its a lot of photos, but the way we manage the folders, its easy to find things. Sort of.

Here's what I do and it has been totally manageable for me:

I usually ditch the bad pictures before I download them from the camera to the computer.

Once they get to the computer, I upload them to Shutterfly.com and put all the pics from April into the April folder, all the pics from May into a May folder, etc.

Then, every 3 months I do a photo book that contains 3 months of photos. (That way I only do 4 books a year) It's a softcover book from Shutterfly. You can group one to several pics per page and write little notes about what was happening at the time of the photos. It's a good way to keep track of what was happening in our lives at the time.

I manage to stay on top of everything that way and we have photo books here that my kids love to go through.

I hope that helps! :)

I wish i had a great answer for what you should do because it sounds a little daunting, maybe just take it little bit by little bit.

What i do, is generally upload the picts from my camera to the computer after each major holiday or event, I needed the reminder from other posters to back it on an external drive!! thanks ladies.

I signed up for emails from Walgreens plus a coupon blog i follow usually posts when there are deals. they often run 10 prints which I have found to be the cheapest (no costco by me). right now they have a deal if you buy 75 pirnts they are 10 each and you can order on line and pick up instore.

So i go through the pictures i have taken of say Easter, I only upload to walgreens photo site the ones i like best and want to print. It allows me to edit to some degree, some cropping some red eye, and i like adding borders to make my own photo thank you cards, and i can also change to black and white. So i edit and then pick how many of each i want, i have two kids so if a photo is of my daugher alone i get one print, if both kids are on the easter bunnies lap i get 2 prints. I do all of this at home online in my jammies, then i select the closest walgreens and place my order, i always select to "pay in store" . usually within a few hours or the next day, I can go pick up my prints and pay, --- I have always been very pleased with the quality at walgreens, some times Snapfish has good deals too but i hate how grainy and weird the colors are, plus i don't like having my pictures mailed to me in a pretty much unprotected envelope.

Once i get my picts usually no more than 75-100 at a time more likely 50. i date the back and put my daughters picts in one album and my son's in another, IF there are some really good ones i might frame them or sick them in a drawer or give away to family.

This works for me because i've been doing it since they were born with their first hospital picts and because i do it every 2-3 months.

I guess i would ask yourself, what do you want to do with the photos????? If you just want to have a record that you could go back to at some point, I would just transfer them all as is onto an external drive or cd.
I do worry slightely that technology will change and it will be harder to print out picts --ex like taking your 8mm video tapes and being able to view them now.
If you like the idea of an album you culd always go through and pick out maybe 2-10 picts for each event/holiday and just go in order. Or you could put all the birthday picts in one hard or soft bound photo book-which is an album you do online and prints out like a book- what i don't like about those as much as it seems hard to control the order your picts are in, I've made one through CVS photo and it just filled it in for me so i had a christmas picture on the same page as a halloween photo which bugged the heck out of me, Plus i didn't find it easy to add captions or labels to the photos. I think if i were doing a wedding photo book it might not have been as hard but because it was my kids for my mom i wanted longer stories about the picts and it didnt' work well.

I had a girl friend that didn't print as often as i do, she just waited until her child's bday and that was her annual time to do it.

Or maybe buy a photo collage frame and then look through and find enought to fill the collage.

This is one of the few mommy things i feel proud of and think my kids will value some day. so i wish you great luck and would be happy to talk to you more if you want to pm me, I have tried quite a few online companies so i have opinions about those, not so much technical knowledge about storage or organziing on the hard drive.

We have an obscene amount of digital photos built up over the years.
First I divide all my photos into folders with the date they were taken (2011_05_01 format). If it's a big day activity instead of random kid & cat shots I add that to the folder name too (2011_05_01 Zoo format). I then have them divided into folders of years.
We bought an external terrabyte drive that I store all but the most recent pictures I haven't moved over onto instead of the computer. I further burn CD copies of all of our digital photos that we store in one of those very large CD wallets. After a hard drive crash years ago when we lost all the photos on our computer that I had not back-uped yet we now go to great lengths.
We don't print picutres up ourselves, when we want something printed we have it done at Costco. Consumers Reports once did a thing on home vs store printing and found that store printing was cheaper, better quality and lasted longer. But when I only want 1 or 2 things for something not very important I'll print it up myself.
I used to get handfuls of the really good ones printed and put them in albums but I haven't done that in a good while now. I just don't have time and it's faster to look at on my computer. I also post up the best of the best in limited numbers to Facebook for family and friends to look at so they can watch the kids grow.
I use the program that's on my Windows Vista laptop to download things. It's OK, nothing specaticular but it gets the job done. I don't have a good editing program really yet. I want to get one but never seem to get that far. For the little bit of things I do actually do (basic croping for instance) I use whatever built in thing I've got on here that either came with the computer or the printer...I can't remember.
It kind of depends on what energy and time I have as to how many of the bad pictures I delete. I do my best to delete the ones that you can't even make out what it's supposed to be. I do keep most blurry pictures of the kids. Sometimes those really show their personality even if they're out of focus, sometimes they're out of focus because they were "being themselves". We use the "auto burst" feature a lot on our camera because that way we're bound to get a good picture out of the 20 or so we take in rapid succession when you have 3 kids that refuse to cooperate. You sometimes get to see the whole game of peek a boo the littlest was playing if you look at them in order LOL

J., My name is O. G. and I'm the CEO of Keepy. We have just launched a survey that shows you are really not alone.

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Keepy is the new way for families to save and share memories --photos, videos, schoolwork, artwork and mementos -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npdk79EygD0 . At Keepy we're big fans of CURATING your kids stuff...picking a few of the best photos that define a moment, pieces of artwork that are really special, schoolwork that your kids have worked super h*** o*, meaningful certificates and awards, sweet birthday cards, etc... And saving them into a memory timeline on keepy. You and/or your kids can enrich everything with voice-over or video stories - giving that special memory more context and meaning. As you continue to save precious moments to Keepy, you build the story of your children's lives...one that they can easily access in 5. 10, 20 years. If you want to know more about Keepy - PM me on FB. I'd be happy to tell you more! or check our website http:/www.keepy.me

Our photos are all backed up on two external hard drives plus the current ones are on the desk top. I go through and edit the good ones in photoshop and then the edited ones also go on the two external drives. The edited are then uploaded to shutterfly and printed for scrap booking. Some of the ones I have printed off a home computer have faded. I also upload some unedited photos and post to a share site so family can see them soon after I took them and not wait until I get to them for editing.

To upload to the computer we use the canon software that came with the camera.

Adobe & Aperture. ((I know... 2 programs... but I like that aperture stores the original algorithm no many how edits take place. So I use aperture as my base program, transfer over to adobe to edit. One only *needs* one or the other)).

I have at last count about 33,000 images. I save them ALL, however I sort through to pull out good ones.

"Everything" (sorted by event & individual - all 33k)

"Big Album" - all my good ones/ series: about 3000 images

"Event Albums" - the big album broken down into events (like snowboarding 09/10, or Gymnastics 2004-2010, or Santa Pictures)

"People" (every photo of my son, or the dog, or friends... further split by who else is in them... so I can click on the album with my son and get every photo he's in, or I can click on kiddo + dog and get all the ones that both of them are in)

"Favorites" (only a few hundred images - Also my screen saver)

"Wall Photos" (the ones I frame and hang on my walls)

"Gift Albums" (albums I make for grandparents, teammates, etc.)

"Upload Images" (ones I post to FB)

"School/Work" (assignments)

"Unsorted" (aka what I need to get around to sorting/editing... right now there's about 5k in there... because I ran out of space on my external harddrive and need to get a new one. And I'm lazy).

The reason I don't toss out the extra 30,000 photos (although I have 3000 'good' ones from the past few years... is because I've found that as I get older "different" things become important/appealing. I may only have 1 image of my 10mo old playing the guitar that's "good"... but in the slush pile are 40 of them that are *hilarious* to flip through once every few years.

As far as base storage... SOMEDAY I want a Drobo. Until then, I can keep about 10k worth of images on my laptop, and the rest are all backed up on 2 external harddrives. 1 that I keep in the house and add to periodically (moving them from off my laptop onto it), and another I keep in a safety deposit box with my will / life insurance information/ other odds and ends. I pull that one out about twice a year and 'update it'. As I fill up external harddrives, they get chucked into the safety deposit box. Then every few years as the tech gets better I put them all on a new harddrive with 10x the storage of them all combined. Keeps the data pure, and from needing a bigger deposit box.)

Hi J. - My friend is a photo solutions expert with Creative Memories. She has great systems for everything you can think of! She also holds scrapbooking/crop gatherings at her home, which are a lot of fun & educational too, i.e. everyone there likes to help the other people with ideas, getting organized, etc. Feel free to contact Susan: ____@____.com you live in the city or the suburbs? Susan is in a Baltimore suburb, so either way, not far from you. :)

Go through them and delete the ones you don't want. Put them in folders according to date or event! I get my photos printed at costco. It is SO cheap!!

On the computer I file by Mon-Year.

I use Kodak EasyShare to print. When I do print pics, I have nice photo box for each member of the family. Print a pic, place it in the person's box.