Photos are one of the best memories you can bring home with you.
When I see a beautiful landscape or an interesting subject, I start to shoot like crazy. It’s compulsive, I can’t help it! The result? After 5 months on the road, I collected about 9,800 photos and my computer looked like a battlefield.
Today I decided to do something. After 5 hours, countless unsuccessful attempts and moments of hysteria, I finally organized all my photos in super effective files. I am proud to say that I can now find a photo taken 2 years ago in less than a minute.
Here are 5 easy steps that will help you organize your digital images, improve them and create an effective archive to find them in seconds without losing your mental health. If I managed to do it for almost 10,000 photos, believe me … you can do it too!
Step 1: Delete
The blurred images go to the bac! Source: Keep calm and travel. All rights reserved. Meaning: I am the only one allowed to delete it forever !! 🙂
This is the most difficult part, at least for me.
I used to take several photos with different parameters, accordingly I have 70 photos or more with the same subject! I didn’t have my heart to delete them because “you never know”. Oh no brother. You know. You don’t need 20 images that look alike.
Choose one, max 2 and delete the rest. Just do it. Don’t think about it. Fluis will never become “abstract art”. These are just garbage 🙂
Important note: Always zoom in to make sure it is 100% sharp. Most of the time, when we look at them on a small scale, they seem perfectly ok. Make sure they are really!
Step 2: rename
Portraits – Philippine children. Source: Keep calm and travel. All rights reserved.
The 90% of my photos always had the strange name DSCN_973… whatever. Not good. This step takes a long time but is really worth it.
Make sure to give your images a relevant name. If you love me having millions of sunburn, don’t just call the image “Sunset”. Get a more specific detail like “1 Sunset in Sardia”.
Important note: If you have more than one shot on the same place and the same subject from different angles, be sure to put a progressive number, because the computer will organize them by ascending number once you have put them in a folder.
In this way, different angles of the same subject will be grouped closed to each other for easy research.
Step 3: Modify
Example before / after assembly using Picasa and painting. Source stay calm and travel. All rights reserved
This is the part that I appreciate the most. Unfortunately, only a few shots come out “perfect”: perfect light, perfect colors, perfect angle, etc. Most of the time, we have to adjust a few parameters to make the most of the image and get closer to the scene we saw with our eyes.
There are many valid editing programs that you can use, the choice depends on the level of expertise and the result you want, the most popular are:
Photoshop: Personally, I do not use it, because it is too advanced and I do not like to change my photos too much, but it is obviously one of your best choices if you want endless options. Update: I’m starting to experience it and it’s not that difficult! Phewww ..
GIMP: Similar to Photoshop, free and slightly easier to use than Photoshop. I used once to combine 2 planes from the moon, keeping the background and the moon on the focus.
Picasa: I love it! Free, easy to use and many standard options to adjust the basics, but also add text and more.
PAINT: I sometimes use it to add lines, to resize the images or add small labels.
Lightroom:I would say that it is for beginners and the intermediate photographer. I have never tried it because I now use a mixture of Picasa and Photoshop.
Canva: This program is great to quickly and easily add text and original shapes to your images. I fully recommend it and I don’t know how it is possible that I discovered it recently!
The basic parameters that I change more frequently are:
Light / Brightness: The perfect balance is difficult to obtain, so I tend to take photos which are a little exposed instead of underexposed so that I can balance it with “add a shadow” or “add contrast” in post-production, without losing its sharpness. This also gives clarifications, because too much light tends to wash them. If the image is too dark, be careful because the addition of brightness could create too much noise.
Crop: Sometimes getting a detail instead of full shooting is much more powerful (that’s why you have to make sure the image clarity!)
Color temperature / saturation: Personally, I prefer the more natural effect of balancing too exposed shooting by adding more shadows. I only use them when I want a more “creative” effect.
STraighen: There is nothing worse than a good sunset with an oblique horizon line (unless you want this purpose)
Black and white / sepia: Sometimes the colorless effect is more powerful. I mainly use it for portraits.
Management: This gives the image more definition and accent (but it depends on the taste).
Add a signature or text: Especially for the featured photos.
This is almost everything for the publishing part. Nothing too sophisticated. I don’t like highly treated images. My goal is to improve the natural beauty of the image without modifying it.
Important note: if the original image and the published version are very different, keep the original and the edited. (I always do for blacks and whites and major publishing). To avoid confusion, in any folder that you will create in step 4, add a subfolder named “edited”.
Do you want to improve your photography skills?
Read my article on how to take incredible sunsets
Click here to read the full article on how to take superb sunset photos like this 😉
Step 4: Create files by categories
Someone once said that a chaotic workplace is the prerogative of a spirit of genius.
How to properly organize the files. Source: Wikimedia Creative Commons Images.
Before you start this part, you must have a “plan” and ask yourself questions:
What is the main category of your photos?
Do you have enough images to create a subcategory?
In my case, I tried to keep it as simple as possible. I created 2 files:
I then created subfolders for everyone.
Destination file::
I created sub-reporters for any place that I have visited, keeping it as general as possible. I went to Sri Lanka, I visited Colombo, Kandy, Galle and a few other villages. To avoid the “section of the file”, I have just left a generic “Sri Lanka”.
For what? Too many files only create more confusion. Unless you have tons of images for each destination. In this case, go ahead and create sub-groups.
I do not do this too because I followed step 2 religiously, so if I want to find a specific location in the Sri Lanka folder, I am just looking for the keyword (example: “kandi”) and the computer shows me all the linked images. Easy and quick! 🙂
Themes file:
I created various files with special events / subjects, etc. Examples:
“Federer and Nadal Match” (Where I took something like 1000 photos … What can I say? I’m a tennis fanatic!)
“Funny images and collages” (I have so much, including the infamous and Einstein)
“Animal / Flowers”
“People / portraits”
“Old photos”
Of course, this is my personal preference and it works well for me. This is why you must identify your main categories and themes and try to keep them as generic as possible. The labels on the photos will do the rest!
Step 5: Back!
Backup joke! 🙂 Source: ahajokes.com
This is the most important thing you need to take for your precious photos! Unfortunately, most people tend to forget this simple step, but so important. Imagine a catastrophic scenario. Your computer crashes and you lose all the photos you have there! For me, it’s a number one nightmare, with my website, it happened once, what a horrible experience!)
Terrible right? Fortunately for us, technology can crush and save you at the same time!
Backup options:
External hard drive: Copy everything in an external hard drive. Make sure it is large enough to contain all your photos.
Cloud service: You can download an unlimited amount of images for a ridiculous price and access them from each computer with an internet connection.
Download Internet platforms: Download them to Pin It, Flickr or your personal website. Or all these options together (at least for those you really don’t want to lose)
CD: Burn a few CDs with all the photos and keep them in a safe place. With this method, I found photos of 20 years ago!
If you follow these 5 steps, you will have so many advantages: better photos, easy access and safety. What could you ask for another ?? I must admit that it was quite a job, but I feel so better now, and even more productive!
One last note
If you are seriously passionate about photography and want to improve without studying boring technical books on the opening of the shutter, exposure to time and others, I highly recommend a book for you: Scott Kelby digital photography box set, parts 1, 2, 3 and 4
This is not an article sponsored by any means. I loved this book. In fact, it’s a series of 3 books on advice and secrets for “budding” photographers or photographers. It is so easy to read and it shows you step by step on how to take very beautiful photos. I consider him my bible in terms of photography!
I hope this guide was useful to you, and if you have a question, leave me a comment or send me an email! 🙂
