Saturday 30 June 2012

Organising My Photos

Reading the prompts on Shimelle's Cover to Cover class has made me think about how I store my photos. I'm not sure if I have the best organisational system right now - especially on my computer. But here's how I store them at the moment...

On my computer there's a folder that says 'Photos', and then inside that there's three folders - one for 'Family Photos', one for 'Craft and Blog Photos', and one for 'Creative Creatures' photos (the business that I ran with a friend). 

In the Family Photos folder, there is a folder for each year. And then inside each year, it's broken down again, and looks something like this:


Where the photos are stored either by date, or by a big event, or if we have a lot of someone else's photos because we spent some time with them, and they took pictures of us all. Within these folders there might be even more division, into dates or events again. 

The trouble comes when I want to find a photo, but I don't know what year it happened in - let alone which month! How do I find it then? I don't know if there's any solutions for this though...

My Craft and Blog photos are a lot easier to sort out - the folder looks like this:


The most important thing to note here is that I have a separate folder each for 2012 layouts, and for my latest cards. I used to just keep these in the other folders, per brand etc, but then it took me ages to find them if I wanted to submit to a design team application, or update an online gallery. Now I save just one photo of each layout or card into one of these folders, as well as their brand or class folder, and they're so much easier to get to!

Once I've printed out photos to use on projects, they get sorted away into this big blue shoe-box which sits on a shelf of my desk:


And then within the shoe-box they are sorted into photo packets, which I've written on with a sharpie pen. (There are more packets than this, with my kid's names on, etc, but you get the idea):


It means I always have a selection of photos to scrapbook with on hand in my study!

How do you store your photos? Are they all mixed up or are they organised - by date or by event? I can never decide what is the right way to do it!

Remember that a comment on this post, or on any of my posts from this weekend, will count as an entry into the Grand Giveaway {NOW CLOSED}- but only if you've registered your interest in winning that here!

I'm feeling sleepy now, so I'll bid you goodnight. I'll see you again in the morning, I've got more tips, tutorials,  and giveaways lined up for you tomorrow! x

24 comments:

Annie Claxton said...

Mine are all organised into folders on my laptop, then I have a shoebox full of prints ready to scrap or take to a workshop. Plus I have an enormous pile of old style scrapbooks which I made years ago before I had heard about acid-free etc - literally hundreds of photos which need re-scrapping. PLUS a box of vintage photos going back to the 1870s which I've scanned and have yet to decide what to do with. Oh dear.... it's hopeless! See you tomorrow :)

Maria Ontiveros said...

Mine are not organized well at all! I really need to attend to this. I do, however, print my photos fairly often, and am pretty up to date on scrapping them.
Rinda

Julie Baswell said...

I'm ashamed to say all mine are stuffed in a box about the size of 2 large shoeboxes. I have some on a file on my computer with a few subcategories. But I have resolved to at least work on them next month. Baby steps!

Emily Mae said...

Mine are automatically organized by date through iPhoto on my Mac. I only have about 50 printed right now, so they're all just in a packet together. Now that I've started scrapping, I really should utilize the "events" feature of iPhoto and get them a little better organized.

dogmatix said...

My printed photos are organised in a shoe box, separated by index cards with random memories on it. I am only half happy with this but it works for now.
The photos on my computer? Well, the less said about that the better lol

Cherie said...

I sort mine by event, and people. I take a lot of candid shots for no reason at all. But I think I need to sort them by years as well because I have the same events every year, or by the places I live, etc. It is time I get through and re-organize these! :) I think you have a good system!! I need to start printing pics so I do scrap them! :)

furrypig said...

digi photos are organised in date order with a brief title that is fairly useful but can take time to fins some photos. All my prints are in a box and are not so well organised but are easily accessible for scrapping

Nathalie said...

It sounds pretty elaborate! I simply load them into iPhoto where they are automatically sorted by date. When I want to scrapbook something, I look thru iPhoto until I find something that goes with the supplies or idea I have at the moment.

Counterfeit Kit Challenge said...

Mine are on my laptop and an external hardrive. I sort them by year-month. I have a pretty good memory, so I have yet to have problems finding what I want. :)

Bethany

Patricia said...

Mine automatically go in to Picasa and then separated by date and events in there!

Diane Standish(crazeedi) said...

Iam storing my photos similarly to how you are, but I got some more great tips from this post! thanks!

Julie H said...

I also organise my photos with a folder for each year, and within that a folder for each month. The extra thing that I do is that at the end of each month (or when I get around to printing off photos) I also print off contact sheets of each folder, which I then keep in a 2-ring binder.

scrappyjacky said...

All my printed photos are kept in 3 photo boxes seperated into years.

Kirsty.A said...

On my external hard drive, like you I have folders for year / month / blogging / family history etc.
My older prints are all in a random order but in photo albums where I can easily flick through them.
Current prints to scrap are keep in a drawer of my desk. I rarely scrap photos older than a year - have enough trouble keeping up to date with them - although I'm trying to go back and catch up, particularly with my early married years

Sally said...

Mine aren't organised at all.....this is something I need to address very soon! I can never decide whether to use orginal photos on my layouts or if I should copy them...if I copy them I still have to find a way to store the originals. Dilema!

Carin McDonough said...

Mine are organised into year and then month on my computer and then on an external hardrive and at least once a year we burn them onto dvd's too! I have photos waiting to be scrapped in a couple of small boxes in my scraproom sorted by theme and then ones that are printed but I am not going to scrap (I take lots of photos of each event so I could never scrap them all) are sorted into photo boxes by date. I do tend to let them build up before I put them all away and I am very behind in printing them!

Margie said...

I have my photos on my computer pretty well organized- monthly folders/edited or unedited, and as soon as I get done editing a folder of photos for a day, it gets saved to my EHD. My photos that I have printed are (mostly) sorted into photo boxes from WM.

Clair said...

I find the easiest way to organise my photos is via my Flickr account. It's easy to add them all to albums, tag them and find them, plus Flickr offers options for resizing, editing and adding to a blog.

But, if you prefer to organise your photos on your own computer, then you can still add tags which will make them easier to find. Hope that helps a little x

Ali said...

Oh dear, you've found my real Achilles heel! My digital photos are beautifully organised, but my printed and old photos are just a huge mess. I've tried to organise them, but it is definitely a work in progress! Thanks for the tips.

Melissa said...

I have several storage solutions for photos - mostly based on Stacy Julian's Library of Memories system. I have cold storage for photos I'm not planning to scrap or put in photo albums (stored in boxes, chronologically in my closet). I have storage binders for photos I want to scrap (stored chronologically). I have category drawers for photos I want to let "age" so that I can make connections. And my digital photos are stored in folders by year/month/event & tagged & rated in Photoshop Elements.

Unknown said...

Whenever I download my photos, I put them in folders by year and month chronologically. I then delete ones that are not good or too dark or repeats etc. When I have planned my page, I then print my photos in the desired size on my home printer. This way, I don't have any extra stuff laying around; I scrap with it right away.

Caroline Hackney said...

Our photos are on our laptop and on an external hard drive, for the most part organised by year and month. However, we take INSANE numbers of photos, and never seem to get round to culling out the dross. Yet-more good intentions that never get followed through...sigh.

I don't have many printed photos that are waiting to be scrapped. I tend to "print on demand" for my projects. Now that I'm doing some catchup for Project Life (I'm using it as a way of scrapping past years with montly overviews, rather than a weekly system) I'm printing more in bulk whenever there's a special deal, so I do have a few more photos awaiting the PL treatment than I have had previously.

Jimjams said...

I've yet to find a way to organise the 1000s of digital photos - we have them duplicated at least once across PCs/laptops/XHDs ... we NEED a system! I'm determined to get more professionally printed ready for scrapping though - it seems a waste to keep doing it at home as and when required.

Lisa-Jane said...

Another job before I go back to Uni in September - gah! I have a carrier bag of digi, an A4 box of pre-digi and then a drawer of sort of sorted recent ones. I've started a section of duplicates or photos not to be scrapped but that's it for now. Another could do better!

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