The cold months ahead are the perfect time to get your photo collection in order! Lots of people say they want to “organize their photos” but they get overwhelmed because they’re not sure where to start or what the steps are. Organizing your photos can be a big job, it’s easiest to break it into pieces and think of each piece as its own project. This is the way I break up big photo organizing projects.
- Book time on your calendar. It’s important to plan your projects but unless you make time to work on them you won’t make any progress. Start with one or two hours each week and book that time on your calendar.
- Make a Photo Project Journal. Find a notebook and use it to record your photo organizing projects. Identify your projects, track your progress, make notes and keep all your information in this one place. Note where you left off after each working session so as soon as you start your next session you know what to do next.
- Back up the photos on your phone. Most of your digital photos will be on your phone. Make sure these photos are backed up to an online storage site. Put the app for the site on your phone and have your photos back up automatically. I like Dropbox, Forever, Amazon Photos, OneDrive or Google Photos. Notice I didn’t include iCloud? iCloud is not backing up your photos. Select another site and begin backing up the photos on your phone.
- Create a Digital Photo Hub. This is the one location where you will keep all your digital photos and videos. Decide where you will keep your Digital Photo Hub folder and begin copying your photos into it. Make a back up copy of this Digital Photo Hub folder and update it every time you make changes in your Digital Photo Hub.
- Convert your outdated media to digital. Find your print photos, slides, negatives, VHS tapes, camcorder tapes and film. Decide how you will convert these to digital photos or videos. Do the conversion yourself or find a service to do it for you. Change the date of each item to better reflect when the photo or video was taken. Add your converted media to your Digital Photo Hub.
- Back up your digital photo collection. Make sure your entire collection is backed up before you begin organizing. Why? It’s better to back up the mess and protect your photos than risk losing them while you organize them. Always back up the mess first. Make two back up copies, one close by on an external hard drive and one in an online storage site. Use the same site you’ve set your phone photos to back up to.
- Organize your digital photo collection. Move the photos and videos in your Digital Photo Hub into a logical folder system. Digital photos are easy to organize chronologically.
- Clean up your digital photo collection. Remove duplicate photos, near duplicates, and the bad and unnecessary photos.
- Add metadata to your digital photos. This is the “writing on the back” of our digital photos. Use keywords to make them searchable and add details in the Description field to record the stories.
- Create a photo management system to organize and add photos to your Digital Photo Hub every year. Following the same process makes it all easier!
- Share your family photos and stories. Enjoy using your digital photos and videos!
Take this project one step at a time and you’ll find yourself quickly making progress!
You will find lots of additional information here on the Blog, like why I recommend the online storage sites I do.
You can also find clear step by step instructions to create and organize your Digital Photo Hub in our Digital Photo Organizing course. Learn more about it HERE.