Divide and Conquer for efficient photo organization

The fundamental problem with digital picture organization is the very large quantity of pictures that one has to be able to manage. Only by dividing this large quantity into smaller and more manageable groups of pictures, one can successfully organize their digital pictures. This approach is nothing new; it is in fact an application of the age old principle of “Divide and Conquer”. This is how the Romans used to conquer new people and lands, they would turn them against each other and would divide them before they would conquer them.

Divide your digital pictures so you can conquer them

When you have lots of pictures you have to help yourself…otherwise you’ll go crazy. I found that the easiest way is to divide my pictures into categories of events and create special folders for them. So, I have folders for events for my FAMILY, events at WORK and at CHURCH. It is important to note that I don’t organize them based on who is in the picture, but rather on what the event is for.

This categorization helps me a lot when I need to find any picture. It works a little bit like a dictionary. If you’re looking for the definition of “photography” for example, then you look for the letter P and you don’t start at A. This is why dictionaries are helpful. You divide all the possible words into “categories” based on what the words start with. The result is that you can conquer individual words.

My folder structure

If you have looked at the picture organization method I teach on this site you’ve probably noticed that I create a folder structure that looks like the diagram below.

    My Pictures
        FAMILY
            2006
            2007
	            2007-11-23-Malibu-day-trip
	            2007-11-29-ToysRUs-new-toys
	 WORK
	 CHURCH
	 MISC

What are the categories (or domains) of your pictures?

You may ask “where did you come up with these folders: FAMILY, WORK, CHURCH, MISC ? My pictures don’t fit within those folders!” The answer is simple: “I have created them to fit the way I take pictures”. To get more specific…I’m talking about the domain of my pictures. In my case my domain is “events”. I take pictures at events at my CHURCH at WORK and with my FAMILY. So the domain of my pictures is events and because of that the top most folders represent categories of events. So, I want to separate events for my FAMILY, for my WORK, for my CHURCH and eventually some other pictures that don’t fit in those three. I believe most people take picture within this domain.

What is the criterion for organizing your pictures?

The next question is: what is your criterion for organizing your pictures? The answer obviously depends on your domain. If you domain is events then your criterion for differentiating between events is date. The answer to this question will drive how you name each folder that contains pictures from one event.

Another example would be if you’re traveling a lot and want to organize your pictures by countries you have visited. Your top folders would represent countries like: USA, France and Netherlands. Then you would place your pictures from the different photo shooting trips in the various country folders. Again this is a different domain for your pictures: countries. Then your criterion for differentiating between your sets of pictures could be city and that would drive you to create subfolders for each city you visit in that country. You can think of many other criteria for organization like: product id, part number, car type and so on.

Putting it in practice

Once you determined the domain and criterion that fits your purpose, then you create your top level folders. Later you may realize that you can create even higher level folders to identify groups of folders. For example your criterion is: Product Id. After you create a folder for each you may realize you have too many and then you create groupings of products: electronics, furniture and so on.

This is a basic application of the age old method called “Divide and Conquer”. You’re dividing complexity into smaller and similar problems that can be solved easier.

Important note

A folder based method will not be efficient if you want to organize pictures in more than one domain. You would need special software that will allow you to assign multiple keywords to images. These keywords can span multiple domains and thus you can perform complex searches against your pictures database.

Essentials for organizing your digital photos

Here are the essential products and services I have come to rely on for many years to keep my media collection organized and safe. Even though these are affiliate links, I wholeheartedly recommend them.

Excellent Lightroom and Picasa alternative. If you need a cheaper and simpler photo manager then ACDSee Photo Studio for Mac (save 20% until Feb 15) or ACDSee Pro for Windows (save $20 until Feb 15) is my preferred solution for organizing all my media. It has a very fast browser, great image editing and it's simple to use.

If you do a lot of image editing like I do, I recommend using Adobe Lightroom Classic CC via the annual Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Lightroom has best photo editing capabilities even though it comes with a steeper learning curve. If you do image editing, Adobe Lightroom is my favorite.

I recommend Backblaze Cloud Backup for affordable & reliable unlimited cloud backup. I have been using Backblaze for backing up all pictures & videos for more than 5 years now. All my invaluable digital memories are safe and secure. This is the best solution especially if you have a large quantity of media files.

Use a reliable & affordable external hard drive for backing up everything on your computer. It is absolutely essential for keeping all your memories backed up and safe.

Start organizing now using detailed, step-by-step instructions and videos:
Personal Coaching (closed) Independent Course Private Lessons
Reference book Basics book Picasa book

YOURS FREE! 10 crucial steps most people miss when organizing their digital photos

Most people want to just organize their digital pictures and ignore these crucial steps right at the beginning...when they are shooting and transferring their digital pictures. Then they wonder why they can't organize their digital photos! Avoid most people's mistakes and start on the right track!

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