Best Practice to Organize Your Digital Photos

Learn how to organize your digital photos for maximum organization.
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In this video I will show how you can organize your digital photos for maximum cleanliness and organization. You will learn how to organize your photos on your computer in no time, such that you will always find what your are looking for without spending hours of searching.

[@thephotomanagers]

Excellent tips! Professional photo organizers often go through a similar process with their clients. There are a lot of options/systems/apps out there for DIY photo organizing but just getting started with some basic sorting is a huge step towards freedom from digital clutter!

[@AkshayParulekar-cm7hx]

Good video..! I am a photographer & use the following method to save my data which is similar to your suggested ways. I have 1 big folder for Photos & Pictures only. Inside 2001, 2002,...and so on Inside those, actual event named folder..like 2022_03_Samson's_Wedding Inside that folder I have Original JPG, RAW, Snapseed, LightRoom, Photoshop..5 folders And that's it. every folder is managed like this. One can also add extra folder as "Other Photos"...where you will copy screenshots, WhatsApp photos (Low quality photos) for each year I have few special folders like Finance, Warranty, Property, Personal documents (Like IDs, educational docs photos, certifications etc.) These are supposed to be in your documents folder but this will be your backup folder of Documents Just keep it simple & accessible

[@LeaDavid]

Thanks for sharing! Really like this approach :)

[@frankmeier3042]

why_those_underscores_? I think we don‘t need them anymore & i.m.o they feel very unnatural a modern OS can handle unicode and spaces as well. Regards Frank

[@AkshayParulekar-cm7hx]

@@frankmeier3042 Photography is just my hobby. Profession wise I am a ethical hacker. So I write code also and I know how those spaces cause problems while retrieving data from any SQL server. I have my own cloud storage also. It is becoming little more technical but for normal person with space will also work effectively.

[@oldrth]

Good Tools = ExifManager, PhotoMove, YAPS 😊 Great video Lea

[@ModelRailwaysUnlimited]

Ooo I've been battling this very process. Some good tips there thanks

[@LeaDavid]

Glad it was helpful!

[@ulrik12nd]

With for example gtumb you can edit metadata in the files and then search on metadata. For example tag all photos of flower with the tag "Flower".

[@LeaDavid]

Great, thanks for sharing!

[@SimpleTruthNotEasy-l8j]

Thanks, excellent teaching

[@LeaDavid]

Thank you so much!

[@JayJr.]

I save my photos in the "Years" folder I created within the pictures folders. Then, I make a folder for each year, i.e., 1987, and inside the year folder, I create sub-folders using the month and day (mm-dd) the photo was taken, such as "05-20"; "06-25", etc... I then keep a list of the photos that allows me to search for any event by simply using CTRL+F. I saved this list to my OneNote (Windows) and Joplin (Linux) as such: 1995 05-20 - First jump 10-25 - Trip to Vienna 06-12 - Kid's high school graduation 1996 01-01 - New years 02-02 - Kid's first swimming competition etc...etc... I also keep a couple of extra temporary folders within pictures until I can catalogue and move into the final "Years" folder location. Last but not least, I subscribed to online backup and backed them up to my NAS and another PC. One can never be too cautious with "precious" family photos. :)

[@LeaDavid]

Thanks so much for sharing, Jay!

[@thomasw.oreskov9797]

Hi Lea 1) What is a good way to add Metadata to pictures? 2) What is a good way to add Image Alt Text to pictures? Both in Windows 10. BTW Thank you for your video :)

[@LeaDavid]

Hi Thomas, good question. Either you use a software that will help you do that or you do it by going to a pictures properties via right click and then adding metadata on the Details tab by clicking on the respective row and adding it. Hope this helps :)

[@oldrth]

Good Tools = ExifManager, PhotoMove, YAPS

[@aarez_a]

-> Organize all of your digital photos. 1. Gather your photos 2. Remove useless photos 3. Structure your photos by topic 4. Rename your files by topic/date whatever. 5. Add meta data for better search Bonus! Back up your photos in seperate drive ;) Focus apps.

[@GledsonSantana10]

Se conseguir fazr 40% das suas dicas, estarei satisfeito!

[@LeaDavid]

Good luck, Gledson! :)

[@JackupTraining]

Can anyone recommend a good software for batch metadata change? To write metadata for many photos at once?

[@LeaDavid]

Great question. Maybe someone here to help?

Hi, I'd like to give you two video suggestions: 1. MS Onenote tutorial (I know you have a tips video, but a beginners tutorial would help me a lot) 2. How to organize PDF files

[@LeaDavid]

Thanks for sharing, will consider it for future videos!

[@timpullen4941]

I use a command line program called XXCOPY. This searches the various hard drives for pictures. Moves them onto whatever drive is needed. Xxcopy F:\*.JPG C:\NEWFOLDER\/S /CCY This will go to the F: Will look for anything ending in .JPG then the /S wil keep the folder tree the same in the copy as the original. /CCY means copy

[@LeaDavid]

Thanks for sharing!

[@madwilliamflint]

I had no idea CCleaner actually did that level of de-duping. Thanks o/ Ironic as it might seem, I wish your Digital Architect guide had a physical copy option.

[@LeaDavid]

Glad you found it helpful! Well, you can always print out The Digital Architect and make yourself a small booklet :)

[@DanyB009]

CCleanup is available for MAC? If not what do you suggest?

[@Utubin]

Lawd have mercy. My tiny pee brain short circuits and breaker trips. Let's see my first computer was purchased in 2000 and almost 25 years later and my breaker still trippin, Lawd have Mercy on me. 😮😵‍💫

[@ravigrover2134]

What tools are available to delete duplicates

[@LindaHdaSilva]

Wow! This must be THE best video about photo organization I have yet to watch! Great tips, and it was easy to understand! Now I know what to do! Thank you!

[@LeaDavid]

Awesome! Thank you, Linda! Good luck with organizing.

[@LeilaJun]

Incredible! So helpful! I'm gonna use the challenges from the photo declutter community f b group to start implementing this! Thank you!

[@LeaDavid]

Thanks, Leila! Glad it was helpful!

[@poconino]

Thank you for sharing these useful organizing principles with us, appreciate that 👍🏻 By the way, great video timing, it came at the right moment, many thanks to you! Diving in the digital tiding 🙃 Hope someday I'll triumphantly complete this endless process 😆

[@LeaDavid]

Thank you so much. Glad you found it helpful and good luck with your journey :)

[@my-smalltowns]

Thank you Lea, very easy to understand in a sensible way. I am looking forward to your PDF sorting :) New subscriber.

[@LeaDavid]

Thank you very much. Glad you liked the video and hopefully, you could apply some of the best practices. All the best, Lea

[@deniscarpenter1203]

Excellent presentation Lea.- Thank you. I have photos on 3 different drives & i don't think I can put them all on my PC.

[@LeaDavid]

Thanks, Denis! If you are satisfied with the way your photos are organized at the moment, no need to action. However, if you would like to further streamline them, maybe you can use a drive to collect and organized them all. Best of luck, Lea

[@frankmeier3042]

Backup! Please see it like this ‚One Copy = No Copy = No Regret‘

[@joaomariofidelis9461]

Excellent video!

[@LeaDavid]

Glad you liked it!

[@MrAalestrup]

This is your solution to your view on handling image files. Mine is completely different as I am very much in favor of security. Digital photos cannot be recreated once they are deleted.

[@LeaDavid]

Would have been great if you shared your approach 😀

[@MrAalestrup]

@@LeaDavid "First, I have several hard drives with my image files, so if an error occurs on one disk, I still have multiple copies of the images. When the disk is replaced, I can quickly copy the files over to the new disk. The suggestion to delete copies doesn't work for me; those copies are there on purpose and are my safeguard to ensure that no images are lost." Next, all the images are organized into subdirectories by year, e.g., 2009, and under this, there are subdirectories from 2009.01.01 up to 2009.12.31. Additionally, on the same date, there can be multiple subdirectories, e.g., 2009.08.15 Birte's birthday, 2009.08.15 Ferry ride to Zealand. When a new year starts, a new subdirectory is created, e.g., 2024, and then a subdirectory for each date that has pictures, again categorized by events. All my pictures are tagged with keywords and descriptions, making them easy to find. For this, I use the software Zoner Photo X. Unfortunately, I can't upload pictures, otherwise I could illustrate what I mean. By the way, I have a lot of pictures, over 400,000 images amounting to about 8TB, so backup is an important thing for me

[@kiruthikakanagaraj1]

Helpful ❤

[@LeaDavid]

You are welcome!

[@melancholoid]

Awesome Vid! Thank You very much for Your Work! Greetings from Germany

[@LeaDavid]

Thanks and greetings back :)

[@melancholoid]

@@LeaDavid Thanks! 😌 Would You kindly do a Video about how one can remember useful Keyboard Shortcuts? You obviously know Your Stuff and You could give good Advice how to do it efficiently.

[@melancholoid]

@@LeaDavid Oh! Never mind, You already did a Video about that 😅 Thanks again!

[@ranjaym1294]

I have been using this way to save photos since 1996. Probably before she was born.

[@Fondofmelobster]

Wow you are so cool and wise… totally cool and wise.

[@LeaDavid]

Thanks, glad to hear that!

[@frankmeier3042]

@@LeaDavidbut it is YOU LEA to teach it to all the others out there ❤🤩 Thank you

[@serenadenphoto]

I think your advice is a bit dated. 1) Since most people now days use laptops with limited space it is not practical to gather all photos (and videos) in the internal drive. Space will lbe a limiting factor. 2) For larger collections of media I strongly recommend using an app like Lightroom. With most of these apps you can easily find photos based on date regardless of where and how they are physically stored. 3) In apps like Lightroom you can create collections or virtual folder for easy access to images with a common theme. The same photo can be maid available in multiple collections without actually create physical copies. The most important part of some organisation of media on drives (internally or externally) is to simplify the important task of making backups.

[@LeaDavid]

Thanks for sharing, but I do not think so. 1. Sure, feel free to use an external drive or a cloud storage. 2. Not everyone has access to such a software or would like to use one. But sure, if you can and would like to do so, it's a great option. 3. see 2. :)

[@timpullen4941]

Maid = a person Made = put together or built.

[@frankmeier3042]

Prof. Photographers have for sure a different view on this topic … I can recommend any database solution if you backup that monster frequently - nobody want‘s to tag all the photo library twice after the database (or hdd) crashed. for home users the backup is (and will always be) the weak part of the chain.

[@petrusmiguel776]

THANKYOU FOR THE TIPS LEA!!!! CHEERS FORM PHILIPPINES!!!!!!!!!💯💯💯

[@LeaDavid]

Glad you like them, Petrus :)