Electronics

[Angie127]

Hi,

I'm wondering what programs people use/like to organize their digital photos. To be honest, I'm just getting started with this and am not sure what to do. I don't care for the default Windows/MSN option on my PC, but perhaps I haven't give it enough of a chance. Snapfish also came with my PC, and I have an old Photobucket account where I posted a few photos at one time.

Any suggestions?

[LilacTree]

This isn't what I have, by a long shot, but it's what I wish I had done. All of my photos in one folder chronologically according to month and year.

Instead I made many folders for different events, different people, different everything, and I can never find the photo I want.

[Abrowneyegirl]

How do I organize my photos? Not well.

I wish I was better at electronic organization.

[addiegal]

I have a Mac computer but I do not like IPhoto. I can't seem to get how it organizes. So, I make files as reference photos, by the year, and then label each download by subject or place certain photos in other files if the subject is similar or same. But I can locate them at least by year and subject or at least subject. I should use my Shutterfly account but haven't and I also have a Photobucket account I use for online.

[Nana5]

I have all my electronic pics in a place on my computer called "My Pictures" which is part of Microsoft Windows 7.

To save them, I insert my camera card into a card reader which goes into a USB port on my computer. I highlight the new pictures on the card, hit "copy" and then "paste" them into a folder, in "My Pictures," which I've named with the date and a descriptive phrase. (2014-07-04, fireworks). They automatically are filed in "My Pictures" in chronological order.

I developed this system after having my pictures in total chaos on my computer. I love it. If I have any idea when an event happened, I just look for the folder near that date with the descriptive phrase of the event. I have almost 80,000 digital pics going back to 2006. I can almost always find any photo that I want within a couple of minutes, or less.

For this system to work, I download pics after every event when I took a number of pics. It doesn't take long to download and file.

[hckynut]

Primary name on folder and than a name of the .jpg or .BMP picture file.

[gardenman]

Tags are a big, big help. If you haven't tagged your photos, now's a great time to start. You can add multiple tags to one photo which makes it pretty easy to find anything. You can then sort the photos by the tags. I just starting using tags a few years ago and I've now gone through and tagged every photo on my computer. I can find anything in a matter of seconds now. Many programs that use photos let you find the photos you want ot use by the tags also, so tag them once and then you can use the tags to find what you want forever afterwards.

Let's say you have a photo of your family at Christmas with an Aunt Georgia, an Uncle Tad, your brother Steve, and your dog Rex is also in the shot. You can add tags for each person (Tad, Steve, Georgia,) the dog (Rex,) the time (Christmas,) and more general information (family, pet, holiday, etc) and then by looking for any of those tags, that photo will pop up along with any others sharing the tag you searched for. Tagging is the best way to sort photos bar none.

If you're not familiar with tagging then do a search on tags in whatever photo program you're using, for example: "adding tags in Windows live photo gallery" and you'll learn all you need to know. Once you get started tagging you'll wonder why you ever tried any other way to organize photos.

[glb613]

Picassa is a great photo organizer. It will download photos from your camera and put them into a folder or you can pick where they are stored.

[MKR14]

I agree with glb613. iPhoto is ok but on your iPad it has changed the format and I don't like it. There is a version of Picasa for Windows, Macs and iPods/iPads. All versions I have are free.

I use Picasa and it automatically picks up any photos on your computer and puts them in files by dates. It also is great to email, edit, videos,or do collages of photos and email. You can sign in on it to go onto their online site also but you don't have to. I do both. It is the best one I use.

On my MacBook Pro I also use it. It does a better job than iPhoto or Photo Stream. They don't pick up all the photos lately as Picasa does. I think you would be very pleased with this and EASY to use.

[Caffeina]

I don't use any special program, I just do everything manually in Explorer. I have a folder for each year, and within each year 12 folders, one for each month. I'll tag pictures when I'm in the mood.