Get digital photos organized

When most digital cameras or cell phones take photos, they assign a number-letter combination that does not help at all when you are trying find a specific photo. You can spend hours looking through photos trying to search for what you want. There are a couple good photo organizing programs that can help you declutter your digital photo files and folders. Picasa and iPhoto are two excellent choices. Some camera manufacturers have their own photo album software that can be downloaded free. Kodak has a good one. Even if you do not have one of their cameras, you can use the organizing software.

You can sort by date, which can narrow down your search, or you can individually name folders and put the appropriate digital photos in them as if you were literally placing printed photos in an album.

Sometimes organizing by date can be confusing. Did the trip to the zoo happen before or after last May? Cameras usually allow you to name the folder when you transfer photos to the computer. If it’s “Betsy’s trip to the zoo,” label the folder accordingly and you will have a better idea of what is in that folder.

If you are anything like me, you will have several photos of one subject, including some blurry images. Delete the blurry ones, especially if you have better, more clear photos of the same subject. They are just taking up precious hard drive space.

Scanning old family photos into the computer is a great way to preserve memories and protect photos that might get damaged with age. Some scanned photos can be altered to look better than the original, although fixing photos is probably best left to the professionals.

Back up all of your photos onto a flash drive, backup drive and/or CDs to make sure you never lose them. Another way to backup is with cloud storage, or to virtually store them off site in cyberspace. If anything should happen to your computer, or even your home, the photos will remain safe. Only print out your most spectacular images for gifts or framing. Avoid adding unnecessary clutter and keep the majority of them on the computer.