Cataloging / keeping track of digital photos

[Hokulele]

I know I can't be the only person to have hundreds of digital photos of my kids, all quickly stuffed in files on my computer. I off-load onto discs when I run out of space. I do try to sort them by time frame, putting them into folders labeled things like "October, 2009"

I need a better filing system for all these photos. I'm already 4.5 years in (that's how old DD1 is). I need to start saving these photos in a way that will help me find them again. I've been hoping to create a photo book for our playgroup but to find all the pics of our kids since they were babies is going to take me forever! I realize initially it will take a while to catalog everything I have so far, but I really need to get some organization going!!!

SO... I need suggestions. How do you organize your digital photos? Do you have a way to tag them that works for you? Do you use special software? I can use any and all advice!! Thank you!

[Veronika01]

I don't know if my system will work for you, but here it is. All of my photos are divided by year, then by month (like you mentioned, October 2009) and then by date under the relevant month. If I need pics from a birthday, I just look at the dates and get them out quickly. I also back them up on an external hard drive at least once a week, if there are any on the PC. Right now I'm working on backing them up to two more external hard drives. CDs corrupt and I would be devistated to loose any of my pics. My oldest will be 6 soon and this system worked well for us so far.

[staceychev]

I use iPhoto, which I really like. It automatically sorts pics by date. Also, you can order photobooks. I got this idea from my sister: every year she puts together a book of the best photos from the previous year. I've also done a calendar in the past, but I'm going to do a 2009 book this year.

[lotusdebi]

We use this: http://gallery.menalto.com/

It works very well for us. I scrapbook, and I organize photobooks and sometimes photo posters as gifts every year (and had to load a digital frame for Xmas), so I access it a lot.

[limabean]

I use iPhoto too. I just sort mine by date, but you can organize them by theme too if you want (I've never used that feature).

[Snuzzmom]

I just organize by year and then offload to CD and an external harddrive to save space on the computer.

For printing, I have used http://www.blurb.com/ several times and I LOVE them. The quality cannot be beat. If you want to see a personal scrapbook of mine online to get an idea of what they look like, please PM me! Actually there are tons of online examples, but mine is more scrapbooky/ real-mom kind of stuff. (read: not near as professional-looking)

[Shannie77]

another iphoto user here!! I love it!

[Snuzzmom]

Do you have to be a mac user to use iPhoto? Does it work as well on PCs?

[pjs]

I keep 6 months on my hard drive- stored in my pictures, then the year, then the month file is 200901 (with the last 2 digits being the month so the folders appear in chronological order). Every 6 months I back up to an external hard drive as well as making cds. I have a photobook for each child and I'll print off the best photos from the year for the book or display in my home, though I like the idea of a book for each year.

[staceychev]

Originally Posted by Snuzzmom

Do you have to be a mac user to use iPhoto? Does it work as well on PCs?

Unfortunately, I think it only works on a Mac.

[angelandmisha]

Another vote for iPhoto! Get a mac! They're super easy to use and way more friendly than a pc. iPhoto will easily import all your photos, store them in events that you can name, and attach the date. There is a feature called faces that can recognize the different people in your photos and will then allow you to search by that person(without having previously labelled all the pics!). You can easily make photobooks, cards, calendars or have prints sent to you or anyone else, or print directly to your own printer. Emailing a photo is very easy and accessible within iPhoto (or mac's mail program), posting photos to facebook or a blog/website(both of which are available through mac- called MobileMe) is super easy, again accessible right from iPhoto.

If you're not familiar with mac, you should check out www.apple.com and look at their online info and tutorials about iPhoto. They really make it easy and fun to use your computer instead of frustrating.

Additionally, you should be backing up your photos to an external hard drive in case your computer crashes.

[mamababamba]

I use adobe elements which works on both platforms. There are things I love about it, but I do find that it crashes...maybe I have too many pics....

[Vaske]

Only hundreds of photos?! My husband has thousands. Tens of thousands. This is what he does.

He unloads the digital pictures into a folder, names it by year-month-day-title:
2010-1-22-Example

This automatically puts all the folders into chronological order. (All the folders are together in one place; must take up a huge chunk of memory.)

He uses Adobe Lightroom, which was about $200-$300, for photo editing and management. He can tag photos with labels, assemble collections of photos, and generally fiddle with the photos to make them look really awesome. Lightroom is way beyond what the average person needs, but he is getting his money's worth out of it.

He has an external hard drive hooked up to keep backups of everything. I think he even keeps backups of the backups on a separate drive. If you're running out of space on your computer, I think this would be a good place to start. CDs break down and become unreadable over time.

He has done several photo books now, through Blurb.com, and they look gorgeous and are actually a fairly economical way to have pictures printed out. We've given some books as Christmas presents to grandparents.
My husband puts a lot of effort into book design, layout, consistency, and choosing photos that work well with each other. But really the free Blurb software does a lot of that stuff for you, and seems to be easy to use.

[Linda on the move]

I'm still working on organization here but I went to a digital class recently and the teacher emphasized storing photos in 2 places. He feels that Cd or DVDs are the most reliable. He said that hard drives (internal or external) or the internet are the less reliable, but they are fine for one of the ways to back up.

Mine are on an external hard drive and CDs. The CDs are by date and topic and I have an album that I keep CDs along with index prints.

I make my CDs at home at take them to a photo store (not Walmart but a real photo store) and they make the index prints for $1. Storing the the CD and index print side by side means that finding photos is a snap.

The external hard drive is just a back up.

[Hokulele]

OOooh, thank you for all the advice. This is all great info.

I've just looked and I DO have tens of thousands of photos. (Most just on CDs/DVDs, the last year's worth of pics still on my computer.) Wow. I guess I think my kids are pretty cute!!

Sadly, I do not have a Mac and buying a new computer is out of the question for me. So iPhoto is not an option.

I think I've come up with a plan.

- I am using Windows Photo Gallery, mostly because it came free on my computer and it works on my computer rather than needing an internet connection. I can tag and file them that way.
- For enhancing the photos I'm already comfortable with Picasa and since there are only a few each month I alter, that will still work for me.
- I will tag each photo with at least who is in it and hopefully extra info like location if we are traveling (we travel a lot to visit family etc)
- I will file them by date as I have been doing, but use the dates suggested here (eg 2010.01.22) so that they file automatically in the correct order (great idea!)
- I will re-back up all the cds/dvds once everything is tagged and labeled correctly AND back up on an external hard drive, that way I'll have two back ups (I'd be devastated if I lost photos)

I have a blog just for friends/family that I update 1-2x a month with photos of the kids. I plan to turn each year of blogging into a photo book. If I manage to get that organized, I'll have a pretty cool journal of what we've done each year. It is a blogspot blog and I don't feel safe just leaving the photos with comments there and assuming it will always be available. I want a hard copy to keep. I'm starting to think that if I'm really organized I'll be able to add in extra photos with the blog posts for when I put together the photobooks. I love the idea of having a book for each year just for us to keep. And maybe give as gifts if anyone in our families want it.

I really like the idea of doing photobooks. I saw some at my MIL's house recently and they were so GREAT! I am SO not a scrapbooker, so photobooks are perfect for me!

[lifeguard]

I use picasso - free off of google for my photo editting & whatnot.

I store photos by date: one folder per year, then one folder per month & then within the month I make additional folders for special events or whatnot if applicable.

Right now we just have everything backed up on an external hard drive but I intend to back everything up on cd's or dvd's shortly.

I also scrapbook, so the "best" photos are printed for that. Recently I started doing digital scrapbooking a lot more & use the Creative Memories software for that.

[Rowansmama]

I haven't read all the replies, but we have an external hard drive with loads of storage. On there, I have pictures organized by year and month (as well as a separate file for videos). I print the pictures I want copies of about once a month, and the rest sit on the hard drive. The great thing about it is it's portable, and if there was ever a fire I could grab it and still have all my photos.

I think the key to photo organization is that I have to keep on top of it! I do it about once a week, taking pictures off my camera and filing them appropriately. It's kind of OCD in a way, but it works!

[Linda on the move]

Originally Posted by Hokulele

- For enhancing the photos I'm already comfortable with Picasa and since there are only a few each month I alter, that will still work for me.

In the class I went to, this is the program he recommended people start with. He said it works well and is simple to use.

He didn't recommend spending a lot of money on that kind of software starting out.