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Organizing digital photos... is there an easier way?

post #1 of 42
11/18/06 at 2:39am
Thread Starter 
Ok, I never know where to put computer questions. If anyone knows a better place than this, let me know and I'll never forget again :

I am trying to get my zillions of digital pics organized. Now, I have been very good over the years keeping them in labeled folders with sub folders, etc, but it is getting out of control and I want to weed out a lot of the bad pics and reorganize.

Is there any way to do this where I don't have to go through each individual folder? I am thinking maybe some kind of album program?

TIA!:

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post #2 of 42
11/18/06 at 2:48am
Have you tried google's Picassa?? It's an amazing FREE program for editing and organizing photos. So easy to use.
post #3 of 42
11/18/06 at 3:53am
My photos are organized by year, then month. I use the Windows picture viewer to go through each month and my keyboard (delete and the arrow keys) to go through and clean things up.
post #4 of 42
11/18/06 at 5:35am
Yep, Picasa. It's free and really great. When you download it it will automatically scan all your pic files and organize them. (If you have any men in your house that use the computer, make sure they know this is going to happen, heh heh.)

Then, each time you upload pics to your camera, you can title the new folder and it puts them in there. I love it.
post #5 of 42
11/18/06 at 11:23am
i totally love picasa!!! it's so organized!
post #6 of 42
11/18/06 at 1:45pm
Dup Detector is also a cool program to help you eliminate duplicate or near identical photos (who hasn't done the "one more, just in case!" thing). It allows you to preview and select the photo to be deleted. It's free too, which is always a bonus.
post #7 of 42
11/18/06 at 2:20pm
:

I have 5 years worth of digital photos organized by year, but that is it.

Also, do you guys print out your pictures and put them into albums? What do you use? Is it possible to make scrapbooking pages on the computer and print the whole thing out?

Hope you don't mind me asking, devonc!
post #8 of 42
11/18/06 at 2:21pm
Until recently, I was super lazy about printing out my digital pictures. I do now, only cause we have a new digital camera that takes amazing photos and my parents bought us a photo printer that we can just put the SD card in and print direct (no computer needed).
post #9 of 42
11/18/06 at 3:48pm
Another Picasa fan here.
post #10 of 42
11/18/06 at 3:55pm
Bwuahahaha Of COURSE there is digital scrapbooking! If it can be done, it will be done!

My favorite site is scrapbook-bytes.com Lots of freebies and paid kits too, great community and so much inspiration.

I personally scrapbook the best pictures and print them (I've got an great printer) at 8x8 and mount them on scrapbook pages in a store bought scrapbook. All the other pictures I go through, delete the worst and burn to disk.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cloverlove View Post
:

I have 5 years worth of digital photos organized by year, but that is it.

Also, do you guys print out your pictures and put them into albums? What do you use? Is it possible to make scrapbooking pages on the computer and print the whole thing out?

Hope you don't mind me asking, devonc!
post #11 of 42
11/18/06 at 5:44pm
Thanks Synthea™!

Sorry for being dense, but do you just mount the entire piece of photo paper on the scapbook page?
post #12 of 42
11/20/06 at 2:27am
Thread Starter 
Downloaded Picasa... I am LOOOOOVING it so far!! Thanks ladies!!
post #13 of 42
11/20/06 at 2:29am
Ooo, organization ideas are always good. I'm downloading Picasa as I speak.
post #14 of 42
11/20/06 at 9:08am
I don't know if this will help anybody, but I keep them orgnized largely by how I name them. I put year, dash, 2 digit month, dash, two digit day, then a space, then a 3 digit number for the order they were taken in that day.

So, lets say I took a picture of my wild hair on January 6, 2004, the 8th picture I took would be saved as:
"2004-01-06 008 jfers hair"

The folders are divided by month ( 2004_01 January ). I put the month because I am terrible about remembering which month a number represents once you get past april.

This is nice when you are saving a huge chunk of them someplace else because then the naturally arrange themselves in order because of how they are named.

On your uploading or photo handling software, look for a feature called "batch rename". Most programs that have that have a setting where you can number things by putting in a # where you want the numbers. Using the previous example, I would do a batch rename of my hair, and have all 30 pictures of my hair named: "2004-01-06 ### jfers hair"
post #15 of 42
11/20/06 at 12:25pm
Wow, Picassa looks fantastic! I've been meaning to organize all those photos, but unmotivated because I didn't know how to do it. Once again the Mothering Mamas come through with great information and ideas! THanks for sharing and to the OP for asking the question!
post #16 of 42
11/20/06 at 3:03pm

are any of you picassa lovers mac users....

and if so do you prefer it over iphoto. I stongly dislike: iphoto, so much so that I don't spend time editing photos. mac users weigh in....
post #17 of 42
11/20/06 at 3:12pm
just another plug for picasa. it rocks and it's so easy to use.
post #18 of 42
11/20/06 at 3:14pm
yet another plug for Picassa. My 75 yo old mom got me hooked. it is by far the easiest program out there.
post #19 of 42
11/20/06 at 3:15pm
Also a Picasa user, esp. if you can take the time to really label and keyword your pics. Another commercial option is Irfanview.

Oh, and has anyone tried the Picasaweb Albums? I'm trying to choose between that and Flickr.
post #20 of 42
11/22/06 at 5:09am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cloverlove View Post
Thanks Synthea™!

Sorry for being dense, but do you just mount the entire piece of photo paper on the scapbook page?
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner, I didn't see this was moves (I really should start subscribing)

Yes, I buy those clear photo corners. I print the page out at 8x8 and trim off (got one of those paper trimmers too) the ends and plop them onto a page. I have 2 scrapbooks chocked full of memories and moments, I love it.

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Mothering › Mothering Discussion Forums › Natural Family Living › The Mindful Home › Decluttering, Organizing, & Simplifying › Organizing digital photos... is there an easier way?