Organizing digital photos
 

First, I had no idea where to post this question so Let's Chat it is. If there is a different forum it would fit better please move.

What kind of system do you use to organize your digital photos?
Where do you store them?
How do you label them?

I thought labeling by season and year would be okay but having to look for my oldest's kindergarten photos proved tricky using that method because it could have been Summer or Fall depending on when I saved the photos etc.

So, I have 15 plus years of digital photos that need some kind of system. I don't want to lose them to randomly assigned file names and vague years.

I know I need to print them too but that is a whole other organizational challenge.

Re: Organizing digital photos
 

I think that it makes sense to organize it by years and then have subfolders for seasons/months. Generally, I try to keep it to 150 or fewer photos per folder (b/c that is easy to scan to find what I'm looking for).

For years when I had babies (and was taking a lot of month-by-month photos) that means each month had a separate folder (ex. 2010 - January, 2010 - February, 2010 - March, etc...)

When the kids were toddlers and I didn't have quite so many photos, then I started doing it every 2 months (ex. 2012 - Jan-Feb, 2012 - March-April, etc...)

Then when they were kids I switched to quarterly (ex. 2015 - Jan-March, 2015 - Spring (April-May), 2015 - Summer (June-August), 2015 - Fall (Start of School-Halloween), 2015 - Holiday (Nov Dec)

I have my photos stored externally on the cloud, and even when I have to check a few different folders the organization works pretty well because I can narrow it down to year, and then scan through visually to see what folder it's in.

Re: Organizing digital photos
 

I have a folder with the year, then 12 subfolders with the month. Sometimes there might be an additional subfolder if I have a lot . . . such as NYC for a trip.

I store them on an external hard drive. My labeling of the actual pictures themselves could use work and I have changed what I do over the years.

I am able to easily find them because I post pictures on a blog. I can search the blog for key words and then I can look up the name of the picture and able to find it in the right folder.

As for pictures being printed. Anything I want to print I put in a "TO PRINT MAY" folder and try to do that every couple of months. Then move them to right month for final storage.

Re: Organizing digital photos
 

:cup

Re: Organizing digital photos
 

I have yearly folders. I use nam.efix to rename all the pics automatically. It is free and I love it! Within my year folders I have separate folders for big events like a vacation. My kids also have baby folders with pictures copied from the yearly photos. I think I take fewer photos that most people. I also try to go through and delete the ones that aren’t great.

Re: Organizing digital photos
 

This is helpful. I need to go back and delete mediocre photos or photos that really don’t capture anything as a moment to remember.

It’s honestly overwhelming but I don’t want to have this same scramble in 2 years when my second child graduates.

Re: Organizing digital photos
 

I use Google photos and I just let there algorithm do it all :bag I know that probably isn't considered a lagitamat option but it is what I do.

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Re: Organizing digital photos
 

:yes Curating my photos down to just the ones I'd actually want to put on a projector/photo albums has been really helpful. I do that before I transfer from my phone to my cloud storage, which makes organization easier. When I'm looking at photos, I ask myself these questions:

"Would my kids like this to show to their friends someday?"
"Does this photo belong in a graduation/wedding/memorial slideshow?"
"Do I already have a photo like this that is better?"

I'm fairly strict when it comes to making myself delete photos and only keep the best ones.

Re: Organizing digital photos
 

This has been my most recent method. It’s not a method really but it’s better than what my overwhelmed mom of little survival brain thought was a good idea more than a decade ago.

Also discovered that while a I am not one to cling to “things” in my life I am clearly a digital hoarder :bag

Re: Organizing digital photos
 

I definitely don't follow all these suggestions, but I listened to a good podcast about this topic. https://www.10thingstotellyou.com/podcast/41
I just have one kid, which I think makes it easier. Everything is in google photos, but each month I go through and take the best photos and put them in a folder on my hard drive. Those are the photos that end up (usually) in that year's Shutterfly album. I do have separate folders for big trips, since I do a special album for those, but the photos are also in the month/year folder for when we took the trip.

Re: Organizing digital photos
 

So I have all of 2006 saved to cloud storage. I also have saved some key photos to a file on my hard drive for printing for graduation decorations. Tomorrow's goal is to tackle 2007 AND 2008. I "think" I have found a system that might work for me thanks to all your feedback.

Random but oh my word looking back through these photos I fully grasp now why there were days when all I could do at the end of the day was exhale and go to sleep. And the way my middle child looks at her dad in every single one of the photos of the two of them together. Melt my ever loving heart. Daddy's and their daughters. :love

Re: Organizing digital photos
 

For the past few years I have gotten better about saving by years, with subfolders for each month or special occasion. Trips, holidays, school things usually have a lot of pics so it's easier to give them their own subfolder. I have them saved on my desktop and external hard drive. I was using dropbox for my cloud but it's so expensive and takes forever to upload. I'm planning on trying to upload everything to my microsoft cloud (onedrive?).

Re: Organizing digital photos
 

I just started using google photos last month, on my BIL’s recommendation, and I haven’t worked it out yet :bag If I just leave it to do its thing, will it organise my photos for me?

Re: Organizing digital photos
 

F you are taking them from your phone then it has the date and location and it will automatically organize them by date. And you can do thing like serch for haloween or a location and it will bring things up. It can also do image serching so you can do something like pumpkin or apple and it will also pull things out.

There are ways to add more organization but I haven't ever gotten it done.

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Re: Organizing digital photos
 

:ty4