How to Organize Your Photos so They Stop Driving You Crazy

I hear people say a lot that they can't keep track of their photos. A lot of people know their photos are precious to them, but it's frustrating to try and organize them, so the task gets put off because it seems insurmountable. Photos pile up and pile up and before they know it, they have a mountain of digital files and they can't find the ones they want when they need them.

There are many ways to keep your photos in order, but this is the way that works for me and I'd like to share it with you. (Keep in mind that I use a Mac, so some of these techniques may be different if you're using a Windows system!)

• Obviously, the most common system is to keep photos organized by year. I have a folder on my desktop called "Photos" (I know, creative, right?), and each year gets its own folder within that master folder. Upon importing the photos onto my computer from my memory card, I separate them into their respective month folders. If you have a mess of photos all together and don't know what months they belong to, I suggest arranging by "Date Created". You can also check the info of photos (Command-i) to see when they were created. Big events such as weddings, concerts or vacations (anything more than 30 or 40 photos) gets its own folder within that month to keep the folder visually neat and the pictures easy to find.

• If you can, make use of keywords to make your photos searchable. On the info screen of your photo (Command-i), you can add text in the "comments" section, which will make it much easier to find later if you need to. Unfortunately, I don't know of a way to do this to more than one file at once, so you may need to copy and paste it to every file. If there are too many, it may not be worth your time.

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• When I have all the photos from that particular month in the folder, I batch rename all the files in the folder. To do this on a Mac, select all the files in the folder and right-click on your mouse. Click "Rename (#) Items" . There will be a drop down menu that says "Replace Text". Change that to "Format". When it says "custom format", change that to the corresponding month, year number, and an underscore, so if the folder was for March 2017, I would enter Mar17_ in that box. Keep the box "Start Numbers at" set to 1. Then click "Rename" and you're done! I find this helpful to do because if I'm searching for a particular file, I can usually remember in what month I took the photo and then helps narrow down the pool of photos I have to look through. If I have a subfolder in a month with a certain event, I might make the custom format something like Jul12_LisaWillWedding_ to make the photos easier to find later. This is especially helpful when it comes time to print your photos. 

 

• When you have photos printed, most companies print the filename on the back of the photo for reference. If you've named your files according to their month, this makes it so simple to place them chronologically in a book or photo album. If you're not a stickler for keeping things in order, another way to organize photos once they're printed is just to keep a photo box for every year and chuck the whole pile in there. Then they can be taken out, enjoyed by the whole family and put back in their respective boxes when you're done. ​

I hope this has helped you a little bit to make sense of your digital photo stockpile.  It's so frustrating to me when I can't find a photo I know I have somewhere, so this system has really helped me. We document so much of our lives nowadays and I think it's so important to keep those memories safe and organized so that you can enjoy them! Good luck!

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Once your photos are all organized, why not schedule a photo session for some more?!