The ABC’s Of Digital Photo Organization

My goal is to help you reach your goals in the easiest and most time efficient way, NOT separating you from your money. This means that the more you do of the sorting process, the less expensive reaching your goals will be. And frankly, when it comes to sorting through your memories, I can only judge a photo by its physical condition, not by the stories that it tells. So, during the sorting and organizing phase, even if money is no object, I highly recommend that you be involved.

Now, if you’re following along, you should have already done your initial sort and purge of your print media using the ABCs Of Print Photo Organization, so let’s now concentrate on your digital photos. Once we’ve done the initial digital sort and purge, we’ll add in the newly digitized files (the former print photos) before we start organizing.

SORT AND PURGE

Step 1. Gather Your Digital Photos

Just like with printed photos (which were sorted and pruned before digitizing), organizing your digital photos starts with getting everything in one place. That place should be your primary computer. This is what you need to do:

Set up three “containers” - in this case folders on your primary computer: one folder to gather everything together and the other two to do your initial sort to. For now, you’re not going to be setting up your permanent organization system - that will come later. Right now set up the three folders on your desktop, named “Temp” “A” and “B”.

Move ALL of the photos on your computer to the “Temp” folder. Don’t make copies, MOVE them. Go folder by folder and don’t worry about organizing them right now, just move them out of all the folders they are in now to the “Temp” folder.

Note: If you prefer to watch rather than read, check out our video: “The ABC’s of Digital Photo Organization”

Now, get the photos off your devices. If you’re like most of humanity today, you have lots of digital photos on external devices: cameras, smart phones, tablets, memory cards & flash drives. Move ALL of your photos from ALL of your devices to the “Temp” folder on your desktop.

Get Your Online Photos. Do you have photos that are not on your computer but in the cloud? What about Social Platforms? If you have photos stored on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or other online sites, upload them to the “Temp” folder on your desktop.

Step 2. Sort & Purge

Now that you have all of your photos in one place, it’s time to do your initial sort. Just follow the“ABC’s” on the right.

Once you finished your initial sort of your digital photos, give yourself a high five! Your “temp” folder should now be empty so you can now delete it.

If you have former print photos, negatives or slides that have been digitized, NOW is the time to add those digital files to the appropriate “A” and “B” folders so all of your images are all together in blissful digital cohabitation.

The “ABC’s” of Sorting & Purging Digital Photos

A = All Star: When going through your images, any photo you deem as an “A” is the best of the bunch. These are the images that belong in an album or video fusion show, images you will want to display and share with your friends and family. Move them from the “Temp” folder to the “A” folder.

B=Backup: Classifying a photo as a “B” means that it is important to keep and should be organized for long term storage. These photos support the story that you want to keep, but don’t necessarily belong in an album. Move them from the “Temp” folder to the “B” folder.

C= Can (as in Trash Can - read DELETE): Remember, your goal is to purge photos you do not want - trust me, you will never miss them. These useless, poor-quality, and duplicated “C” photos don’t need a folder - take a deep breath and hit the delete button (or drag to the trash can). The advantage of digital photography is that you can take so many pictures. The disadvantage of digital photography is that you can take so many pictures! You will feel so much better when you delete the “C”s.

S=Stories: Be on the look out for a great story! If you come across photos that tell a story, add an “S” to the end of the photo name and move them to the “A” folder.

In other words - a logical file system. After all, you’ve spent some time sorting through your photos and it will totally go to waste if you have a disorganized hard drive and can’t find the images you’re looking for.

Very simple - go to your local hard drive on your PC or Mac and find the folder that says “Pictures”. That folder should be totally empty since you moved all of your photos out. If there’s empty folders under pictures, delete them and set up new folders that make sense to you. You can set up chronological folders such as decades, or by theme, or by group such as family or friends.

Once you’ve set up your new folders, it’s time to move your “A & B” photos to their new home. The “B” folder is easy - simply move the entire folder from the desktop to under Pictures on your local drive since your “B” photos are those you simply want to back up. Then go through your “A” photos and move them to the new folders that you’ve set up.

Once you’ve moved all your photos to their new home, delete the “A” folder from your desktop and you are done! Note: As you’re moving your “A” photos to their new home, you may have to rename some if there’s two with the same name, but don’t go crazy with renaming until you decide the direction you’re going with your organization in the next section.

Now It’s Time To Get Organized!

If you’ve been following me so far, you should now have your entire photo collection housed under your “Pictures” folder. Your collection should include not only your original digital photos but also the scanned files of your prints, negatives and slides.

But even if you set up a lot of sub-folders, if you have a large photo archive, your images will still be hard to find and that’s just not acceptable! As famed photographer Kevin Gilbert says: “A picture is worthless if you can’t find it”.

How you proceed is determined by you:

1. If you have more money than time, you can hire me or one of my colleagues to do the organization for you. I use Lightroom to organize your photos and apply all your metadata permanently to your photos.

Metadata is the techie term for WHEN the photo was taken, WHERE it was taken, and WHO is in the photo (as well as lots of other info). Think of it as akin to the writing on the back of old print photos.

2. If you have more time than money, you can organize your collection yourself either with the aid of organizing software or without. Let’s look at these two options.