BETTER LIVING: Organizing Your Photographs
Friday, January 06, 2012
Now that the holidays are behind us and the task of undecking the halls is underway, it’s the perfect time to take on an organizing project like your photos.
Photographs capture the special times in your life like nothing else, and keeping them safe and vibrant is essential if you want to enjoy them for years come. Too often, we find older photos shoved in drawers or left in piles, creating unnecessary clutter and often damaging them beyond repair.
It’s likely that most of your current photos are digital. Although the clutter may not be visible, you can be just as overwhelmed by thousands of disorganized images stored on your computer.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTI offer the following advice for streamlining the process of organizing your photos.
Start with the present: It’s a brand New Year and you probably have a camera or cell phone full of recent holiday pics. These are the photos with which you should begin your organizing project. There’s no time like the present, and you’ll have an easier time putting photos in a cohesive order while the chronology of the day is still fresh in your mind.
What’s the plan: Organizing your photos may be a big project, but you don’t have to do it all at once. Start by carving out some blocks of time for the project. It’s also helpful to create an out-of-the-way staging area to work on the project for consecutive sessions without having to clean up in between.
Develop a system: Decide how you want to sort then create files like Holidays, Birthdays, School, Sports Vacations and Miscellaneous. You can get as general or specific as you choose. If you have thousand of photos you may want to go with general categories first and then get more specific as you go. Apply this filing system to both your digital files and printed pictures. Once your files are in place you can revisit once you have chosen your display medium.
Weed: Why hang on to blurry, duplicate, or off-center shots? If you’re dealing with traditional film photos, toss all but your favorites. If you’re going digital, delete anything you wouldn’t bother to print.
Label EVERYTHING: Whether on your computer, a photo box or envelope, include as much detail about your photos as possible for ease in identifying later on.
Display medium: If you are planning on creating photo albums on an online site like Shutterfly or one of the many photo sites available, you can create an account and transfer image files directly to those sites while you create your albums. If you plan on storing physical prints in envelopes, photo boxes or albums gather the supplies you need beforehand so you can stay focused during your organizing session.
Back it up, Back it up, Way up! Whichever method of organizing you choose it’s best to back up your image files on disk or thumb drive for safe keeping. Special printed images that can’t easily be replaced can be scanned as a just in case measure. Some things just can’t be replaced so don’t take chances with your memories.
Candita Clayton is the founder of Your Life Organized and author of Clean Your Home Healthy. Visit her online, here.
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