De-Mess-ifying Your Photo Collection
Whether you're a digital photography newbie or a seasoned pro, you need to be able to quickly find a particular image file. If you haven't done so already, the time to start working on organizing and cataloging your photo collection is Right Now!
It will take some work up front, but all that time spent will be recouped tenfold later on. Would you rather spend 10-20 seconds or 10-20 minutes trying to locate that once in a lifetime photo? That's what I thought! Let's get you on the road to organizing nirvana.
Naming your folders and files
Before we jump into discussing software solutions let's talk about two things that will be the beginning of your organizing system. First is a sensible folder structure. Most of the software that comes with your camera will default to using the current day as the folder name. When scanning through these folders it's difficult to remember when you shot a certain photo. Instead, give your folders logical names like Christmas_2006 or Billys1stBirthday. This step alone will greatly increase your chances of finding what you need.
Secondly, change the filename of your images to better reflect what it is. Leaving it as the camera named it tells you nothing about the picture and increases the chance of having duplicate filenames on your hard drive. You may want to use the folder name and append a 001, 002, 003 to the end. This is easier than naming each individual file. Some software allows you to rename files as they are downloaded and/or has the capability to rename a batch (folder full) of files. Don't go crazy with the filename as you'll be using software to tag, group and collect images. More on this later.
I encourage you to take some time to think about how you want to structure your folders and files. Adding some sort of date info in the name may be useful. Organizing by subject (Flowers, TheKids, Landscapes) may be your preference. Be sure to utilize sub-folders to further segregate your images. You need to figure out what works best for you and stick with it. You don't want to wind up deciding to revamp everything a year from now.
Note - Although Windows and the MAC OS will let you use really long filenames you don't want to. Keep it short and simple, using only letters, numbers and the occasional dash or underscore. Never use punctuation, double spaces, forward or back slashes or symbols (#, @, etc). Odd characters can cause your images to not be read by many photo printing kiosks.
Software for Organizing and Cataloging
Now we need to explore some software options. There are, undoubtedly, a myriad of programs available for organizing and cataloging your photo collection. I can't cover them all so I will tell you about two of my favorites: Picasa and Photoshop Elements (PSE5). You may find something else that works better for your needs. Many companies offer trial downloads so you can evaluate a program before you buy. If you'd like to seek other options, check out ACDSee, Photo Mechanic and Adobe Lightroom.
When looking for image organizing and cataloging software be sure that it has the following features:
- Import images to a specific folder and allows you to rename the folder.
- Rename files as they download and/or batch renaming.
- Grouping files from various folders into Albums or Collections.
- Keyword tagging with multiple keywords per image.
- Ability to burn images to a CD/DVD for sharing or backup.
- Basic or advanced image editing, depending on your needs.
To read my short article on Picasa just follow the white rabbit...
A short article on using Photoshop Elements 5 will be posted soon.
