I’ve been spending hours of the past few days mudding through my files and trying to get them managed. That’s a question that many new Photoshop students have: how do I organize my photos?
When you first start taking digital photos, it’s easy. You have a Pictures folder in your computer and there they go! But then you go and look one day and you have 500 pictures. Some are of your nephew’s Bar Mitzvah, some are random try-out-the-camera shots, some are of your puppy, and some are of your trip to Crater Lake. It’s just like mom’s shoebox of photos from your childhood.
So how is the “best” way to organize your photos? Well, damned if I know! But I can tell you how I organize mine. If you have a better plan, or even a different one that someone may want to try, add it in the comments.
For my life, it works well to organize myself by years. Within each year, I separate out by event. For an epic trip, I’ll sometimes separate out each state.
For my United States project, I can find a picture of the Illinois capitol by going to Camera Uploads > Statehouses > IL. Easy peasy.
However you do it, it’s best to keep up with it. Pretty close to when you upload your pics to your computer, you should file them away so that you can find them, and so that you’ll remember where they were taken.
Today I was working on organizing some files from 2014. You can see some of my categories at the right. And, of course, I’m not done arranging 2014, because I have many “misc” photos just floating in the 2014 folder.
I’ve gotten some more pages posted from my Our United States collection. I’ve discovered, to my frustration, that I accidentally deleted all of my files for Wisconsin, Indiana, and Kentucky. In addition, I’ve somehow lost my camera which I used for last summer’s trip. I am quite sure that the disk in the camera contains my pictures for Georgia, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. :/ I’ve learned a few things about taking care of pictures that will be hard to replace. <sigh>