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Organize My Digital Photos – Done!
By Susan | January 19, 2010
In the last week or so, I organized all of my digital photos. While I can say I did this for my 101 in 1001 list, I also did this because I’m trying to move as many files over from my PC to my new (to me) MacBook, and start using the Mac as my main computer. The 101 in 1001 list was really just an excuse, but a good one, as it got me to do this now rather than waiting a few months.
I am no expert at this particular task, but I did find discover a few tricks that made the process much, much easier. I figured I’d share these tricks in case you, like me, have never, ever, ever organized your digital photos in the entire time you’ve had a digital camera.
Did you catch that? I have never, ever, ever organized my digital photos. Ever. So that, my friends, is a lot of photos to go through. In fact, I believe that there are years-worth of photos that were lost on previous defunct and now recycled computers that I’ll never see again. I’m trying not to think about that.
Here are my suggestions if you, like me, have thousands of digital photos that you’ve never really sifted through before:
1. Find Duplicate Files
This is HUGE. I didn’t realize it, but I discovered that since I wasn’t clearing photos from my camera card in between imports, I was basically saving the same photos to my computer over and over and over again. That’s a lot of duplicates. Rather than deleting them all by hand, I downloaded a free duplicate file finder to do the work for me (I used this one for my PC). I ran this program on just my photos and chose to delete just the duplicates, leaving the “original” (or just one copy, in my case) safe. By doing just this step, I freed up about 3.5 GB of duplicate files. THREE POINT FIVE GIGABYTES. This was way easier than trying to delete them one by one by one. Augh.
2. Find an organization system that works for you.
Personally, I fell in love with a trial version of Adobe Lightroom, which I can’t say enough about. When I transferred the photos from my PC to my Mac, I used Lightroom to organize them. It placed them into folders for me, so I didn’t have to manually drag and drop all of the photos by date or category. It also has a keyword and search system that is fast and simple to use. Love it, love it, love it.
3. MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR DELETE KEY.
Because I’m doing the 365 project, I sometimes have dozens of versions of the same shot, and I’ve been keeping them all. Why? I have no idea. But during this process, I made an effort to be vigilant and delete as many of these multiples as possible. This cleared up a lot of space, and now when I look at my photos, I focus on the good shots, rather than the 15 shots that are just so-so.
If you’re hesitant to delete these extra photos just in case, my friend B. made the following suggestion: Put those extras in a separate folder, and date them. If you don’t open or view those extra photos for a month, delete the folder. Simple!
I’m so glad I took them time to do this, and to back up all of these photos to an external hard drive. And with that, I can cross #69 off of my list!
Next week – a massage. I’m so happy about this, I can barely stand it.
Topics: 101 in 1001, Daily Ramblings | No Comments »