A Guide to Organize Your Photos: Tips for Organizing Digital Photos
The best way to organize digital photos is by choosing a place where you’d like your files to live that is easy and convenient for you! Here are a few storage places we recommend:
IPHOTOS AND ICLOUD
Have an iPhone? Apple makes it easy to store and back up your photos with iCloud. You can also manage your collection, edit, and share photos on your Mac (or with other iPhone users!). With options to sync photos between your Mac and iPhone, this storage option is an easy way to manage multiple devices.
GOOGLE PHOTOS
Easily integrated for desktop and mobile — we love backing up and organizing photos with Google Photos. Download their app to get started. If you turn off backup and sync, you can control when the app uploads your photos. Or take advantage of the automatic function by keeping backup and synctoggled on. You can also easily drag and drop photos living on your computer to new albums on Google.
One of our favorite things about Google Photos is its intelligent search capability.
HARD DRIVES
In addition to a digital platform, it’s a great practice to back up your photos with external hard drives. Because let’s face it, we’ve all gotten the “you’ve run out of space” message one too many times on our devices. Create a routine of backing up photos to a hard drive and free up some space.
Wherever you choose to store your digital photos, it is best to regularly export or airdrop photos from your phone to your computer, the cloud, or another storage location. By creating a habit of cleaning up your camera roll, you’ll find your digital space to feel less cluttered and overwhelming. Plus, that’s a great time to select a few favorites to bring to print.
One of the places where your digital photos likely need the most TLC is your phone. It’s easier than ever to snap a quick photo, take a screenshot, and well... create an overflowing camera roll. Don’t worry — by following a few tips to organize your phone photos, you’ll clean things up in no time.
FIND FAVORITES
Select favorites by pressing the heart on the bottom of photos that are the most significant. This will filter them into a “favorites folder” on your phone.
IT'S OKAY TO DELETE
Get comfortable with the delete button. Declutter by getting rid of duplicates, super blurry shots, and screenshots you forgot were there.
CREATE CATEGORIES
One of our favorite camera roll organization ideas is to create albums and categorize your photos by months, people, or events. You can even set up a shared album with family and friends to all contribute photos and keep everything in one place. These albums make it easier than ever to make a photo project together.
MARK YOUR CALENDAR
Set a routine and make a recurring event on your calendar to remind yourself to organize. Here’s a simple way to break it down:
✓ Weekly - Delete photos that don't make your heart skip an extra beat; favorite the ones that do.
✓ Monthly - Categorize photos from the last month into albums, and back them up into Google Photos or wherever you are storing photos.
✓ Yearly - Double-check your albums to see if you missed any photo project or gifting opportunities.
How to Organize photos on your computer
Beyond creating albums and categories on your phone, you’ll want to replicate this system on your computer or Google Photos account. There are many ways to group photos as we mentioned above, so feel free to organize by year, month, events, people — or a combination of categories! Create folders/subfolders to stay organized (i.e. 2018 > August > Mona’s Wedding). This kind of hierarchy structure will make it even easier to locate photos.
Plus, we typically recommend creating folders on your desktop before heading to print — as they simplify uploading photos into a Gallery in your account. If you’re using Google Photos, download albums from there to save on desktop. And with iPhoto or iCloud, airdrop the photos to your desktop device and then organize them into folders.
If you’re curating photos to print from a desktop or hard drive, it’s a good rule of thumb to duplicate the photos you’re going to use and put them in a new folder. This will keep your system intact, and you can always delete the print folder later on!
Note: Really catching up on organizing your photos? Take it a step at a time by setting up parameters like “two years' worth of photos” or “one hour of your day.” And come back to this organizing project over the course of a week or month. And remember: you’ve got this.