Not so long ago, a kid could grow up and have only a handful of photos of his entire childhood. These days, it鈥檚 not hard to take hundreds of photos of a child in a single day.
While it鈥檚 great that photography is so much simpler these days, there鈥檚 still the bother of figuring out what to do with all those shots.
Backing up the photos you really want to keep is essential. In fact, today is a day we鈥檙e reminded that 133 cellphones are lost or stolen every minute around the world, and one in 10 computers is infected with a virus every month, so back up those files you don't want to lose.
If you're overwhelmed with too many digital memories, here are some options for organizing photos in a way that works.
Folders and hard drives
Since the advent of digital photography, organizing photos has meant creating folders on your computer, moving pics into the folders, and then backing it all up onto external hard drives, CDs or memory sticks.
Most of that still works (although CDs are a little harder to find now) and these backups are probably a still a good idea. But all that file creation and management takes a bit of discipline to do it regularly. Which is why so many photographers are welcoming cloud storage.
Cloud storage
Photos uploaded to the myriad of cloud services that have opened up in recent years including iCloud, Google Photos, Dropbox, Flickr, Amazon Cloud Drive are much less likely to be lost in a computer crash or a damaged memory card.
And now, some of these systems are even organizing photos automatically.
Google Photos was only launched as itsown entity one year ago, but in that time, has emerged as one of the best photo systems out there. For one, it offers unlimited storage -- which is huge for those who take a lot of pics or worry about hitting their storage ceilings.
It also offers a frighteningly accurate photo search system using image recognition technology. Type in 鈥渂eer鈥� for example, and it will find all your shots that contain beer bottles or pint glasses -- whether you named those photos 鈥渂eer鈥� or not. It even 鈥渓earns鈥� the names of your friends and family, pulling up all images of your sister just by typing in her name.
The search function is so good that it could make that tedious job of naming and adding keyword tags to your images obsolete. and it鈥檚 had its share of problems, but it鈥檚 almost certain to improve over the next couple of years.
Yahoo鈥檚 Flickr, one of the first sites for organizing, storing and sharing photos, is still a good option, even as it loses users to Instagram and Google Photos. But it鈥檚 still the site many pros use, in part because it displays handy camera specs on each shot, including shutter speed, focal length and camera model.
The site offers 1,000 GB or one terabyte of free storage, and encourages users to create albums and add keyword tags to each shot to make it easier for both you and others to find your best pics.
Last year, Flickr introduced a 鈥淢agic鈥� image recognition function similar to that used by Google Photos, as well as auto-tagging. With the auto-tagging, when the technology recognizes shapes commonly found in cars, it will label the image 鈥渃ar鈥� and when it finds shapes it thinks are mountains, it will label the image 鈥渕ountain.鈥� Again, it鈥檚 not perfect, but it鈥檚 a timesaver for many photographers.
The iCloud Photo Library for Apple iOS devices is similar to other cloud networks but goes the extra step of automatically storing original high-resolution photos and videos in iCloud, while leaving a 鈥渓ightweight鈥� version behind, to save space on your device. iCloud offers only 5GB of storage for free; after that, storage plans start at $1.29 per month.
Everyday organizing
As great as cloud-based online drives are, they don鈥檛 solve all photo organizing problems; you鈥檙e still going to have to regularly purge photos or risk getting overwhelmed.
The best way to manage all your images is to make a point to regularly clear out your phone or your camera鈥檚 memory card once a week or month, depending how often you use it. That means toss the terrible shots and dump the duplicates. It also means purging all those shots that are just okay, but that you really don鈥檛 expect to treasure years from now.
Make it a habit to do this regularly when killing time while waiting in line, for example; instead of checking email, delete some blurry selfies.
Then, set yourself a rule to name and file your photos into folders every time you upload shots to your computer or external drive -- again, purging the bad ones as you go. Same goes for when someone emails you a photo worth keeping -- download it right away into a folder rather than let it sit in your inbox where you can鈥檛 find it again.
Taking a few moments for these steps now will save you a ton of time later, when you search for favourite shots later.
