organize my digital photos

Here’s a random shot. . . My sister is so gonna kill me >:)

I had so many problems when I was using dial-up. Photos took forever to upload from my Yahoo email account to my Windows XP My Pictures folder. Plus dial-up kept on freezing on me for no apparent reason. I got discouraged.

Everything’s much quicker and easier with DSL. So far I’m roughly 80% done with processing my photos. True, it should really take less than a week for me to do them all. But I prefer to process them in batches. I group them according to a blend of the dates the photos were taken, the photographer, and (sometimes) the subject matter. My Pictures has a category called “Date Modified”. I process my photos from every few days to every few weeks so each group of photos have different dates on them. In that way if I decide in the future to make new folders for them I can recognize photo groupings. I just want to avoid future problems and make things easier for myself.

Plus there are two motivating factors for getting this done besides being organized. For so many reasons I need to start my own blog with photos. I’m starting to recognize that 43things is not the best site to put up long rambling entries, and I need a forum for that. I’ve told myself that once I’m 99% done with this digital photo project then I will get myself a camera.

This is beginning to seem like a project with no end, yet I’m amazed with what I’ve already accomplished.

Since my mac —and iPhoto as well— broke down on me last month, and I had to reinstall everything, I was left with a gazillion photos scattered all over the place, with several libraries with their respective originals and modified files, plus others that I was unsure if they were a backup or not…

To be on the safe side, I decided to put them all together in one library and work with it to discard all duplicates. Well, I had to make five libraries instead, as iPhoto starts slowing down after 20,000 pics or so. I’m currently “down” to about 40,000 pics —well, maybe 43,000 :P

After I take care of all the duplicates, I’ll continue to organize the rest.

In some of the users there are repetitive files. Not the entire file but part of it. So I can’t just simply say “Oh those 50 photo’s are duplicates… gone.” Once I get through this I am going to set up files in the shared photo section so for now one we all dump them there and make life easier.

It takes 3 days to complete. I believe this and more. I have two pc’s and they are scattered across all the users and the pc’s. Disorganization at its height! I started the goal. It’s just finishing it that will be key.

but for now, I still have plenty of really bad, out of focus, icky photos to delete. Another 144 bit the dust tonight and I won’t miss a single one of them. It is good to begin to feel a sense of accomplishment for a long-standing goal. A good start to the new year.

More of those blurry, poorly lighted, awful photos are gone from my collection now. This really is the easy part. Flipping through the collection and realizing that I have 10 nearly identical photos of the Christmas tree from a couple of years ago…seriously, it is time to get rid of the digital clutter now that the actual clutter is gone.

I just went and deleted almost 200 of those really blurry, badly lighted, and awful photos that always get loaded along with the great ones. It only took me about 30 minutes and, so far, the decisions of which ones to keep and which ones to delete have been quite easy. I can do this! I will do this!

Okay, I have ignored this one long enough. I can do this. This is VERY achievable. I am thinking that for a few minutes each morning, or maybe a few minutes each evening, I can go through my photos and get rid of the duds (there are many) and the duplicates (also many) and that will be a start. Then, when I have gotten rid of the ones I don’t need, I will start the organizing and tagging and sorting. I think I will go do a few right now.

pictures from my phone onto PC today then in folders, but still a lot to do.

I found a really cool photos organizer which ive been desperately seeking for like ever! I have thousands of family and friend photos all scattered on my system and did not know how to get organized and where to even start!
But Ive just recently come across a program ‘nerxy file organizer’ and I love it!
It automatically organizes my photos and even music files into folders using options of my choice AND it deletes any duplicate files I may have.
Check it out at www.nerxy.com
i really recommend it