Streamline your digital photo organization in 2 steps

Being able to summarize and simplify a complex process is not a simple task. However, when you can explain something complex in simple terms, the result is powerful. My STORE system for organizing digital photos is the simplest way to tackle this complex task of organizing all your digital media from all these sources. This article contains a simplified summary for the “O” which stands for Organize in my STORE system for digital photo organization.

The easiest way I found to explain this part of my system, is to split it into 2 phases, or steps. The first step is organizing all your NEW photos that come from your cameras and phones. These are pictures that have never been on your computer, but have been newly taken with your camera and you need to store them in an organized way. The second step is how to organize existing unorganized photos that you already have on your main computer, other computers and external hard drives. The great thing about the STORE system, is that once you understand how to organize your new pictures, the existing unorganized pictures follow the same process, making everything as simple as possible.

Organize your new pictures

After automating your transfer process you should have your new pictures on your computer in the TRANSFER folder like this:

TRANSFER
   2016-08-02
   2016-08-05
   2016-08-06

Organizing your new photos in five steps

Now there are five task you need to accomplish with your new pictures:

1. Delete your bad pictures. Go through the pictures and delete the bad ones. Be merciless: bad exposure, repetitive poses and simply unappealing photos.
2. Add keywords. Then add keywords to your new photos: where,who and what.
3. Add face tags. Optionally add face tags if your software supports that.
4. Rename the event folder so you add place and short description of the event.
5. Move the new event folder in the MAIN library in the appropriate year folder.

Organize your existing pictures

Most people don’t start organizing correctly right away, but instead they have lots of unorganized photos on other computers and hard drives. So what do you do in this very common case?

Organizing your existing photos stored on external drives and computers
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1. Move all your unorganized existing pictures into one new folder. You can call that folder “UNORGANIZED” or something similar.
2. When you are ready to organize some, move a few folders of unorganized photos to the TRANSFER folder and treat them as new photos.
3. Go through the steps outlined above for new photos. This requires determination and perseverance and…time.
4. Delete the UNORGANIZED folder when it becomes empty.

That’s it really! When you finish going through the unorganized folder and it is empty, you are done. Now you only have new pictures that come in. No more unorganized photos.

Is it really this simple?

The answer is mostly yes! The complications come in when you have more sources of unorganized photos, like multiple computers, multiple external drives and not enough space on your computer hard drive.

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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