All those digital photos -- organizing tips, etc.?

[Cameron]

First -- I have a MacBook that synchs with my iPhone.

I also realize that these photos aren't something my kids will want to inherit! Mom's trip to Basque country? Nope. They'll not care about it. Mom's 10th trip to Paris? Nope. Yet, I find it difficult to delete photos from trips. I've considered printing books of the photos (gets expensive), or only of the best of the best.

I have an external portable drive with folders, which contain thousands of photos from cameras used prior to 2009. I doubt I'll ever return to those, but they're there.

I have more recent folders on my MacBook-- exported from Photos and stored outside the app (and also backed up on that external drive), as well as albums within the Photos app.

I have 1800 "active" photos in my Photos app now and with winter coming on, I need to take the time to organize, delete duplicates and save only the best.

So -- does anyone have tips for better organizing photos? Do you use add-ons to Apple Photos?


Thanks!

 

[scottw]

I use Google Photos for that stuff. I can create/customize albums as I see fit. Naturally, it doesn't have much to do with Apple Photos though.

 

[carolync]

I keep all my photos the Photos app on my MacBook. I take soooo many photos on trips, that I will go in and purge right after, keeping the ones that bring back fond memories of the trip, or are very nice photos. I've been doing it almost daily since my last trip (because there are thousands). I flip through them quickly, duplicates are deleted, multiple shots of the same thing, I keep the best one. Out of focus? It's history. I don't labor over it, just a quick once through, then do the same thing another day or so.

I'll go through older photos with the same criteria.

I organize them by trip or location, and I have a back-up drive as well.

A few trips I've created a website using Shutterfly.

 

[Colo]

When on travel, I snap a bunch of pictures. I usually have two cameras, my wife one camera, and both have phones. When I return home all the pictures by camera type or phone are downloaded to external hard drive never to be touched. (Master Copy)


I take a copy of all the files and combine them into a single folder. I use a freeware program called Bulk Utility Rename that allows me to rename all the files to single name convention and put them in time order. Key point! Make sure cameras and phone are in sync and all have the same time.


Now I go through and throw out the out of focus, uninspired shots, or ones that add nothing to the story of the trip. Usually that will leave around 25% of the whole set. Then I will clean them up or crop if necessary, and then rename them sequentially for a show set.


If someone is foolish enough to say, “I would love to see your trip pictures” they get the edited show version. Storage is cheap and one day there maybe something in the background on one of your shots that may now be important.

OK – I am a little OCD

 

[Cameron]

I use a freeware program called Bulk Utility Rename that allows me to rename all the files to single name convention and put them in time order. Key point! Make sure cameras and phone are in sync and all have the same time.

I'll have to look for that freeware. One of my biggest problems is lack of an easy naming system.

Thanks everyone!

 

[Colo]

Cameron,

The bulk utility program is pretty powerful and does much more than I ever need. It looks scary, but is pretty easy to use once you play with it. This is what you will see will you pull it up for the first time. Lots of choices! Recommend you make a copy of a directory and play with it so you will not loose anything while you are learning.

 

[Pauline]

I use Adobe Lightroom which is by subscription. I pay £10/month for Lightroom and Photoshop.

Photos are stored on an external hard drive (that I backup to the cloud with iDrive). In Lightroom I have a folder for Europe Trips, then make a folder for each trip, then a folder for each day (Lightroom lets you import from your camera by date). I change the day folder name to indicate where we went that day.

Photos from my iPhone automatically come onto my computer and I import them into Lightroom, tagging them as iPhone photos and merging them with my camera photos.

I don't do as much tagging as I should to make photos easy to find, but I create collections for each Day Trip (on Slow Europe) that I create or for Trip Reports.

I have trip photos going back to our big trip in 1988. Years ago I had my printed photos and slides scanned so I have them in digital format.

I have 68,000 photos, but that includes all my cat photos. Only 37,000 of trips to Europe.

 

[Cameron]

I just updated to the High Sierra OS from Apple and it has better photo organizing. I'll play with it a bit.

Thanks!

 

[Bruce Pollock]

I've been a photographer since high school. My best advice would be: delete, delete, delete. Back in the days of film when you had a small number of potential images, you were forced to be more thoughtful before you released the shutter. Digital cameras make it way too easy to blast off a large number of poor quality photos. Get rid of the obvious junk (out-of-focus, poorly framed, etc.) and look carefully at your multiple copies of the same shot. One or two will stand out as the best. Will you ever look at the others?

Editing photos is a lost art - you have to be pretty ruthless or else you'll be doomed to drowning in useless images. Margaret Bourke-White, the great Life magazine photographer once said: "Get rid of the garbage. Otherwise you'll be impressed by how many you have and depressed by how little there is."

But I also agree with Colo's comment about using a standard file naming convention. I use one based upon a date and sequence number: 20171122_0001.jpg , where the sequence would reset to one for each trip. The software will automatically pull the date from the metadata and then assign a sequence number. And as Pauline said, Adobe Lightroom is the best professional tool for organizing photos, but it can get a bit pricey.

Meta-tagging each image with keywords is very powerful and helps with later searches, but can be tedious without the proper software to do it. And if you are trying to do it retroactively with a large number of images you'll probably feel overwhelmed, but it's something to consider moving forward.

Good luck!

 

[veronicafrance]

I use Adobe Lightroom which is by subscription. I pay £10/month for Lightroom and Photoshop.

Photos are stored on an external hard drive (that I backup to the cloud with iDrive). In Lightroom I have a folder for Europe Trips, then make a folder for each trip, then a folder for each day (Lightroom lets you import from your camera by date). I change the day folder name to indicate where we went that day.

Lightroom effectively lets you bulk rename photos as you import them, with quite a flexible naming system. Mine get named with the date, and I use the custom text option to include the place name in the name too, finishing with a sequence number, so you don't even need to open the file to know where it was taken. I also use the option to store in named subdirectories (always the place name in my case) and within those in folders by year and then date. You don't need to be as granular as that, but the possibilities are there. You don't need to manually create or change folder names -- let Lightroom do it for you.

I also always add tags on import -- you can do this in bulk too. I always tag with the place name (again!), then the subject, names of people, type of photo (landscape, night, portrait...) etc. If you have thousands of photos, this is essential. It also lets you use Lightroom's smart collections, which are virtual folders -- it will automatically file photos with specific keywords or other attributes in them. So if you've tagged a trip's photos correctly, you don't need to manually add them to a collection, they will just automagically appear there.

BTW, I paid for Lightroom as a one-off, so I don't pay a monthly sub -- although at some point I may switch to that as I think they won't be updating the standalone version.

 

[veronicafrance]

I've been a photographer since high school. My best advice would be: delete, delete, delete.

Yes, I review my import and delete the outright duds and less good duplicates right away, before I do anything else. I try to be selective about pressing the shutter, but I'd say I end up deleting at least 60% of the photos I take! Why waste space on stuff you're never going to look at or use? And I say that as someone who blogs at least one photo every single day.

 

[Colo]

So, I will disagree, with the consensus of the responders and say memory is cheap. The historical reference I will use to justify why one should save everything is a very famous picture.

In 1996 the President of the United States had an affair with a 22-year-old intern. With all the revelations of late, I am not trying to start a debate on the President’s actions. However, I heard an interview with the photographer many moons ago regarding his picture that was on the front page of almost every news publication. The President was captured giving the intern a big hug and she returning his embrace with a big smile.

The backstory - Two years had gone by and the shot was captured with a film camera. Most photographers had moved over to the new technology of digital for newspaper journalism. The Washington Post issued a finite number of memory cards to their photographers. If the shot did not make the paper the card was wiped for the next day. The photographer stayed with film, but knew he had seen Monica. Spending two days on a lightboard reviewing negatives – Bingo – He found it! The Post published the shot, and then paper made and investment of external memory to store all digital photos.

Today memory is sooooooooooooo cheap that it makes no sense to me not to do a straight backup of everything on the camera and call it a master. Then make a copy of to edit or delete shots one never wants to see again. While the master sits dormant unless… and I offer this example.

One of our friend’s daughter went to Europe on a high school study aboard program. 10 years later when her future husband asked her where was her favorite place in the world, she answered, “Malta”. He said he loved the island also and told her he had gone as part of study aboard program. One from Virginia and one from Pennsylvania on two different trips, but lo and behold there was a shot of the two them together on a tour in Valletta. I will say it again – Memory is Cheap!

 

[Roz]

Very interesting stories, Colo.

Like you, I back up pretty much all my photos to my computer. I don't generally use my iPhone for taking photos, but much prefer to use my Canon, which automatically places the photos into folders by date. Although I am a Mac person, I have never liked iPhoto, or Photos as I guess it is now, and just copy the pictures from the camera to my hard drive, sorting them into folders at that time, generally by place and date.

I have started uploading everything to Google Photos because it makes it so easy to organize them, share them, and find them again. When I upload them, I try to immediately put them in an album. Then I'll skim through the album and remove all but the best ones. They are still in Google though, since Google has no storage limits, so I could always get back something like what Colo talks about that I might decide later that I want.

I also make a copy of all my photos (well, at least all the reasonably good ones) to a Mac Mini computer that is attached to the TV set in our living room. We have that set up so we can run slide shows when we're in the room but not watching TV. That way we have a continual backdrop of photos from our family and our travels. It's a really nice way to review our memories, at least of the past 15 years, which is how long we've had digital cameras.

 

[Peg A]

I use a freeware program called Bulk Utility Rename that allows me to rename all the files to single name convention and put them in time order.

Wow. I didn't know programs like this existed. Thanks to you, I may actually get organized!

 

[Cameron]

I appreciate all the responses! I'm mulling over the choices.

Thank you!