You likely have thousands of photos. Each a precious memory and part of your personal history, your photos are precious
As your wealth of photographic memories grows, however, it becomes increasingly difficult to find a particular photo in your collection that you may be looking for.
Most people have two to three collections of photos to look through:
- A digital collection, taken mostly in the past two years and located on a computer.
- A paper print collection, taken over the years prior to digital photography and likely in albums, boxes, or envelopes.
- A slide collection, which requires a projector or lightbox to view.
Let’s take a quick look at different ways that your paper photos may be organized, along with some suggestions for organizing your digital photo library so that images are easy to find.
Paper Photos and Slide Collections
If your prints are still stored in the original photo processing envelopes or slide delivery boxes, they are probably naturally organized by when they were taken and developed.
Photos put in albums or scrapbooks are typically organized by date (such as an album for all off 1999), by event (such as a wedding album), by place (such as photos from a trip to Italy), or by things (such as a new home). The same is likely true of slides that were put together in a carousel for a presentation.
Ask yourself when the photo was taken, where the photo was taken, who was in the photo, and what was in the photo. Using these four questions, you can likely go right to an album or two that has the photo you want.
Combining Our Collections
You can make it easier to find individual photos that you’re looking for by combining copies of all of your photos, including the paper print ones and slide ones, into a single digital collection on your computer. E-Z Photo Scan helps people to digitize their photos, whether they want to scan their photos themselves or they would like someone else to do the work for them.
Organizing Digital Photos from a Scanner or Digital Camera
There is probably a good reason why you have your paper photos organized as you do.
When E-Z Photo Scan converts pictures into digital files, they are organized and stored in batches, similar to how they were stored in their physical albums or boxes.
Once your photos are digital, new ways of organizing them become available! A paper photo can only be in one “Album” or “Envelope” at a time, but digital photo can be organized into several different virtual albums at the same time!
Just like with your paper photos and slides, when organizing your digital photos, you will want to ask yourself the “When, Where, Who, and What” questions.
Asking “When” your photo was taken will tend to organize your photos into Events (such as a Trip, Birthday, Holiday, or Special Occasion).
Asking “Where” your photo was taken will tend to organize your photos into Places (such as a trip to France or to the Smokey Mountains).
Asking “Who” is in your photo will tend to organize your photos by Faces (such as your grandmother, your parents, or your child).
Asking the “What” question will help you organize your photos by Things (such as a first car, a first home, or a special landmark).
You do not need to purchase special software to make it easy to find your photos by Events, Places, Faces, and Things. You just need to put the information in the name of the folder on your computer that contains the pictures. An example of how to do this is shown in the video attached to this article.
Of course, there are also specialized software programs available to organize your photos by Events, Places, People, and Things. Google’s Picasa, Apple’s iPhoto or Aperture, and Windows Live Photo Gallery are some of the most popular. Some of these programs are free, and they often support easy upload to Facebook, Kodak Gallery, Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket, Shutterfly, Snapfish, and other online social networking sites.
Unlike paper photos and slides, it is easy for scanned and digital photos to be multiple places at the same time. This makes it easier to keep and protect our photos from natural disasters and the ravages of time, and it also makes it possible to share and connect with our friends and loved ones, no matter where they may live.
Would you like to find out more about how to scan your paper photos? E-Z Photo Scan can help. Contact one of our solution specialists at 1-800-739-6919 for more information.
