Digital Photos on a Mac: How to Organize You Photos

If you're like me you take hundreds of photos, and love to capture even the most basic moments of life in a digital array of memories. Don't you hate when you end up with a hard drive full of images with file names like img_134.jpg, img_1344.jpg, and no legitimate plan to organize these photos in the near future. The Mac is a beautiful thing, but I've found that organizing your photos on a Mac can be fustrating to say the least. Your digital memories don't have to be a mess of scattered, unorganized photo names. There are some good options for Mac users when it comes to organizing those digital photos.

Manual Organization Techniques

I know, I know, the word "manual" is not in most of our vocabularies when it comes to this fast-paced, automated world. Honestly, once you get past the initial organization of your old digital dirty laundry, keeping up with your new, beautifully organized Mac will be a cinch. But even then you can divide that initial work into several different organization sessions, while simultaneously organizing your "post-chaos" digis with your new system. Let me show you how.

It's fairly simple to use your file system to organize your digital photos on your Mac. The first thing you want to do is create an easy-to-access root folder for all of your photos. Name this something cool like "My Digital Life," or conversely if you're a plain-Jane, try "Photos" on for size. Every time you download new digital photos from your camera, you should create a new folder inside of your root folder. Descriptively name this folder, something like "Family Waterpark Trip" or even use the date as an organizational method.

Next you'll want to create subfolders for different categories. For example you could create a folder named "Vacations". You can then subdivide these folders even further. Perhaps you'd want all the pictures from your tropical vacation in Maui in "Vacations/Tropical/Maui". The possibilities are endless. Use that imagination.

The next step is to go through and find pictures that you may actually want to share, edit, create slideshows, or print. In OS X opening each folder will display a thumbnail of each image. Copy and paste those photos into a folder name something like "My Digital Workshop". It will be handy to have just the photos you are interested in working with in one folder. Don't hesitate to create subfolders as well in this "workshop" folder.

Now you've got an nice organized file system for your digital photos that is fairly painless. You also have easy access to just the photos you need for importing into your photo editing software, or uploading to various web-based digital photo sharing solutions for Macs. Remember, sharing is caring!

Web-based Applications:

With the evolution of web, sharing is everything. Great web-based digital photo organization applications exist for your Mac and they are just begging you to make use of them. The best thing about these things is that you can easily share, and organize your coolest photos.

Google Picasa Web Albums

The best free web-based solution for Mac is Google's fairly new application - Google Picasa. Picasa offers a downloadable application for Windows, but for Mac you are stuck with the web-based one for now. This is no worry though, as the user interface is sleek and features powerful organization for your digital photos.

It's really simple to get started with Picasa web albums. The first thing you'll need is a Gmail account, which takes about 30 seconds to create if you've not gotten one yet. Google makes it a three step process to upload, organize and view your photos for your Mac:

Step 1. In Picasa, Select the photo(s) to upload.
Step 2. Click Web Album, name your album and adjust privacy settings.
Step 3. When the upload is finished click View Online. Your web albums will open.

Remember, if you've got your photos organized well on your Mac OS, then uploading your photos to Picasa web albums will be a cinch. You can check out Google's free photo management solution here.

Mac Web Gallery

Mac Web Galleries allows Mac users a convenient way to share not just photos but also movies. You can put your photos online with a few clicks. Your photos are uploaded to Mac web gallery's traditional Apple style interface, neatly organized by album. It even gives you the option to password protect your digital photo albums for greater security.

Sharing the photos is dead simple. All your family or friends have to do is log on to your Mac web gallery and peruse through the array of digital memories you've got nicely organized. Visitor to your gallery can choose different viewing options like grid, slideshows, mosaics, or carousel. Other features like auto resizing adjust the image to instantly fit the viewer's browser window. You can even let users print high-resolution copies of their favorite photos, but of course you have the option to restrict this feature.

Perhaps the coolest thing about Mac web gallery is that it is fully compatible with Apple's new iPhone. You can view your web gallery from your phone wherever you are, or even upload photos right from your iPhone. This is definitely the envy of any company flirting with device/application connectivity.

Mac Web Gallery is awesome, but if you want to use it be prepared to pay a fairly expensive price. But considering Mac and Apple customers in general are no strangers to big price tags, you may not have a problem with the MWG membership pricing options. An individual membership with 10GB of file storage, and 100GB of bandwidth will run you about $99.95 / year.

If you prefer a more comprehensive solution the Mac Web Gallery, the family pack is for you. A one-year subscription costs $179.95. For that price you the 10GB storage and 100 GB bandwidth. The difference with the family pack is that you also get four sub-accounts. Each sub-account gets it own storage space (2.5GB) and 25GB of data transfer. This is a great solution for kids who want to manage their own digital life, while giving their parents a bit more control.

You can try out Mac Web Gallery for 60 days with the free trial offer. If it suits your digital photo endeavours, you can become a full member, keep everything you've created, and your online storage jumps from 100mb to the full 10GB.

The Software Solution:

If you're too lazy for the manual solution, and too private for web-based applications, then you need a desktop software application to organize digital photos on your Mac.

iPhoto

There are a couple pieces of software that allow you to organize your digital photos on you Mac, but one of the best is absolutely free. iPhoto is nothing new, but it is very good and is simple to use. Although the original iPhoto digital photo management app performs basic organization, any Mac lover is going to go crazy over Apple's new upgrade, iPhoto '08.

iPhoto '08 in simple terms is awesome! Just take a look at some of the cool features you can use to organize, print, edit, and even share (if you want) your digital photo library.

Organization + Editing + Sharing

iPhoto '08 automatically organizes your by events like "2007 family reunion" or "Swimming with Grandma". It's a breeze to browse your library and find a specific set of photos.

"iPhoto is smart enough to figure out that those 50 photos from last Tuesday likely came at a single event. So it automatically groups those photos together. You can identify all your Events quickly by a name and poster photo (which is simple to change)." (Apple)

How cool is that? Remember that sinking feeling when I mentioned "manual organization" earlier? Organizing your digital photos on a Mac with iPhoto '08 will pamper you like a you're it's digital baby!

Other features include: integration with Mac Web Gallery, powerful editing tools, a comprehensive library search, high-quality printing, and you can even create hardcover photo books, large calenders, and more. Don't forget, iPhoto '08 is fully compatible with your iPhone. What a life!

iPhoto '08 will be the ultimate digital photo management solution for any Mac user. If you're living the iLife, you cant beat this software app for you Mac OS. There are several other piece of software that are compatible with Mac, like Adobe Photoshop Album which are also viable choices.

Final Notes:

There are really some good options for organizing your digital photos on a Mac. Which one you choose will largely depend on how iLife connected you are. Will you be the manual digital photo organizer? How about a web-based sharer, or a connected software application user? Whichever you choose, organizing your digital photos on your Mac should be fun, rather than a task. Go wild; live your life, love it, and keep it organized!