Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Organizing your digital photos

Do you have digital photos and files all over the place on your PC? Probably the best thing I ever did was to keep all the photos in one folder on my PC. As a bonus, I can synchronize them with my video ipod, but it is based on what folder you want to copy over, so having them in one place makes them easier.

I have a folder on my PC desktop called “Photos.” In addition, below that, I have a folder for each year and one for the actual photos that I am scanning right now. Yours might be different, but one for each year just makes it easier and it is how I think. Within each of those folders, I have folders by date so that when I download pictures, I just create folders for the date that I am downloading pictures. I always start with the year and then the month and then the date, that way I know they will get sorted to the right order.

I would also recommend that you back up your pictures often. Many people keep them on an external hard drive. However, if that is your only copy, that is still risky. An external hard drive is a good idea, but hard drives fail. Do you really want to lose those photos? I typically put them on a CD every few weeks. The right method for each person might be different for every person, but you have to do *something* to back up your photos.

And just to be safe, after I copy photos to my hard drive, I also put them up on an online site. I use photobucket or flickr. And this way, if my hard drive ever fails between a backup, I know that I can re-create my photos, because they are online.

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