Managing Your Collection of Digital Pictures

Owning a digital camera means also not owning enough hard drive space for all those pictures of your dog, your daughter, and your Disneyland vacation. Many people get the wrong impression about the freedom of digital cameras. Without the cost of film you can shoot pictures as much as you want, right? Well, it's true that memory cards are cheap and reusable but you need a place to store all these images you are capturing. There are a couple of things you should get into the habit of doing so that your computer does not become a mess of file folders filled with images that you can't find later.

Upload and Cull

Upload your images onto your computer soon after you take them so you don't forget important details about who is in the picture and what they are doing. Culling is a term used by professional photographers. It means to go through the images and throw any out that are unusable. Professional photographers will sometimes do more than one cull session if it is a large event like a wedding. The first session will include deleting anything that is blurry, exposed incorrectly or anything else that is just a poor picture. The photographer will then go through the images a couple more times whittling them down to images that are important and conducive to the story being told that day. You will probably just need to go through them once. Throw away anything dark or blurry unless it is an image that is particularly meaningful. For example, if you took several images of your brand new baby sleeping, then pick out a couple of the best ones and toss any that look identical or that aren't good images. However, if you only got one image of Grandma dancing at a wedding but it is dark then keep it. Image editing software may be able to make the picture better.

Use Folders and Rename

Organizing your photos may be a little time consuming on the front end. But, if you wait years down the road to go through your images it will take even longer. Create a folder for each year and in that year create subfolders such as your children's names, events, holidays, or whatever works best for you. Put the images in the folders they belong in immediately and rename them. Some photo editing software like Photoshop Elements (the consumer version) let's you add notes to your photo that will be stored in the image file. You don't need to put notes on each image, but it is especially helpful to put names of distance relatives and children (babies are especially hard to tell apart years down the road). You also don't need to rename each photo if you have several in a series. Just put all the photos together in a specially named folder.

Archive

One of the most important steps in organizing and storing your photos is to archive them. I have heard of many accounts where a hard drive has failed and someone has lost all their precious photos. One of the cheapest ways to back up your files is to get an external hard drive. They plug right into a USB port and come in various sizes. Pick more memory than you think you will need. In fact, I tell people to pick the most they can afford. The more megapixels your camera has the more memory your photos will take. Get into the habit of copying all your images to the hard drive right after you have put them into the right folder and renamed them. This will be a life saver if and when your computer has problems. It also makes it convenient to move pictures from one computer to another.

Print and Display

It is a sad fact that most digitally captured images will never be printed. There are some great places online where you can upload images and have them printed and mailed to you. There are other ways to display your images like digital photo frames that can sit on your desk or mantle and will rotate through each image at intervals you select. With more and more people taking lots of photos companies are coming up with creative and fun ways to display your pictures. Some especially fun and useful ideas are making your own coffee table books and calendars. The purpose of taking picture is to enjoy them. Make sure you do.