Snapping digital photos is easy and addicting, but the follow through of printing and storing photos can be a huge headache, so here are some tips on making the process more efficient.
The first step in the process is obviously getting the pictures off your camera and downloaded onto the computer. If you find it hard to even get to this first step, I heard about a product you may want to check out. It’s called the EYE – FI, and it will automatically download your photos when you get in the house if your home has wireless internet. Check it out at www.eye.fi
To decide how to group your photos in digital folders on your computer, think about how you would likely store them once they were printed. If you tend to put your pictures in photo albums, you may want to create folders based on dates and subfolders based on topic. If that’s the system you wish to use, here is an example of how you would set up a folder tree for your pictures:
My Pictures
2006
• 06-28_Europe_Vacation
° Amsterdam
° Greece
° Paris
However, if you tend to scrapbook most of your photos, you often do that by category, so you may want to set up folders by category first, and then by date. Here is an example of how you would set up a folder tree for your pictures:
My Pictures
Birthdays
• 2009
° John
° Sue
° Peter
Experts say that only 12% of the photos we’re taking actually get printed, and they take up a huge amount of storage space on your computer. So once you’ve decided which pictures you want to print, create a new folder under your existing sub-folders that says “Print these” and then purge the old folders and remaining pictures. Using the example above, here’s what it would look like after you’re done:
My Pictures
2006
• 06-28_Europe_Vacation
° Print these
If you want to rename your pictures in a folder in a quick and easy way rather than leaving them by image number, check out IrFanView (www.irfanview.com). It is a freeware program that allows image manipulation and renaming without opening individual images in a viewer.
An ideal goal is to sort and print your pictures every 3 – 6 months, but if you can’t accomplish that, at least create a “Print these” folder in each area so that when you do have time to get them printed and stored, you won’t have to go back and look through a year of accumulated pictures. If you need to, hire a babysitter or swap time with a friend to make this happen.
If you’ve created a series of “Print these” folders that have been sitting for a couple years, set up an online account with Walgreens or a similar photo processing location so that you can batch them together and send them electronically to be processed all at one time.
Also, at the end of each calendar year, you should copy the “Print these” folders onto a CD, DVD, or USB stick and store it in a home fire safe or similar secure space so that if your computer were to crash or some natural disaster affected your home, your photos would still be safe.
If you can’t get printed photos into an album or scrapbook right away, store them in the original developing envelopes with the date written on the outside in an archival box in chronological or categorical groupings. Then, once you find the time to deal with them, you’ll be able to hit the ground running.
Finally, purge those holiday pictures you received unless they are a close family member or friend. The intention of the sender was to give you a visual update of their life, not for you to feel obligated to display them or store them indefinitely as a treasured item J