Photos

Nebb

How do your organize your photos on your computer? Do you have everything in one folder or do you have folders of certain subjects with subfolders inside which are dated?

Currently, I have the latter and Im starting to feel overwhelmed by it because its all jumbled and not organized AT ALL anymore. I have it organized by random pics, dog pics, nature/macro, outtings (sub catagorized by location). Some folders are broken down further into dates, others arent. It makes no sense but theres probably thousands of pictures on my computer and it seems daunting to "fix" it.

What do you do with your pics on your computer??

sarabear23

I have mine all in a folder titled pictures. Inside that, I have folders with the year. Then Summer, Spring, Winter, Fall. Then each month. Then the specific event folder. 
I probably have 5000 pictures on my computer, so I can find them super easily this way.

LessThanZero

I hear you Nebb. I always say I'm going to organize everything and I start out that way. Then I get lazy and after a while and things are out of control.

I think the best way is to have one "Photo" folder and within that divide everything up into separate folders which is what I have done recently.

LessThanZero

The separate folders thing is subjective though. Whatever works for each person. Whether it's by year, month, or event. I do a mix of all of these depending on when and where the pictures are taken.

ETA: And please, please but yourself a decent external hard drive and back up the things on your computer which are important. Whether that's pictures, music, emails...whatever it is. I can't stress that enough.

Nebb

My dad got me an external for Christmas that actually backs up constantly, its amazing! I upload new pics, and theyre uploaded instantly somewhere to the HD. The only thing I cant figure out if what will happen when I start moving stuff around and making/deleting folders. I dont know what that might look like backed up as I dont think the HD deletes anything it already has saved... Im too lazy to figure it out.

I feel like it would be a plain old daunting task to organize by year, as I havnt so far - I could if I felt like putting in the time but it seems like a lot of work. It would be NICE if it was organized that way already... but I never thought of that.

cupcakesfrosting

I have mine in "My Pictures", then by event/date or "theme". I have a bunch of pictures of my friends kids, so I just have that titled, "Kids". I think you've got to figure out what would work best for you and what you need. And ditto LTZ about the external harddrive. I keep all my pictures, music and videos on a terabyte harddrive..

nda_roxybabe

Ok, so I have folders like:
 -"Me" (just photos of just me...from my egotistical HS days)
 -"Me with friends and family" (so photos of me with other people in them)
   w/ sub folders like "Mexico sr trip", "graduation"
-"Friends and family" (photos of just other people)
   w/ sub folders like "Niece # 1", "niece # 2", "niece #3", Nephew 1, etc...
Then I have events like "2009", "2010", "SF 2006", South Carolina 2010", "savannahs wedding", "Allisons wedding"....
Uh, see below:




 

nda_roxybabe

BUT I don't love it. Like I said, I'd like to have a way of labeling them multiple ways.

Nebb

I actually really hate the way mac folders organize, because it looks nothing like it does on a PC and I always really liked that.

reddy123

I really need a new way because I have iPhoto, and my camera automatically uploads everything by date, which is not working. I find myself scrolling through the thumbnail photos like a mad woman trying to find that one special picture. 

I have a few "back ground", "art inspiration", "Movies", etc. And a few important ones I've titled "honeymoon", "Cousin graduation", etc. but for the most part my stuff is labeled by the number date, or not at all, and it drives me nuts. I really hate trying to upload pictures online and scrolling through all the unlabeled madness.

nda_roxybabe

I could not tolerate the date thing.

reddy123

It's really funny you bring this up today. I was going through my photos and found a picture I had been looking for FOREVER buried in cat photos. I brought it up with my friend and he didn't believe me.

Hehe, I'm evil and want to post it...

It was while I was wedding planning and looking at bachelorette party favors and coming across all the penis replica hats, kazoos, whatever you can think of.

It wins the award for the worst bachelorette gag EVER:

NSFW Saturday workers:

....................

....................

....................

*I loved knowing right where this was in my iPhoto, haha.

reddy123

Yes, that's a penis shaped beer bong. Your prayers have been answered?

nda_roxybabe

I've been looking for one of those!

Brandiewine11

You can get several inexpensive/free pic organization programs that allow you to "tag" photos and put them in files. They are super easy to find that way. It takes a while to get everything loaded, but after that its easy. Picasa is the free one from google, which also does minor editing, etc. 

nda_roxybabe

See, I know theres places you can upload everything and organize it but I want it organized on my computer.

number55

I have a mac and I love the way it is organized into events...here is what my iphoto looks like...

Love it! I combine lots of stuff into various events. 

cardmonsta

Mine are ultimately organized by year, and then by month, and then by event.

I'll have folders marked "2011" and then folders inside marked "April" and then folders inside marked "Wedding" or "Rehearsal Dinner."  It works really well for me.  Although, I generally remember when things happened.

But it's nice to pull out an Easter dinner picture from 2009 because I know exactly what month it happened.

LessThanZero

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_snarky-brides_photos-1?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:17Discussion:c3201e19-479e-4cde-94d0-52d73b627851Post:e34e2fba-2cbc-40ee-9db4-8ce03b98adb3">Re: Photos</a>:
[QUOTE]I actually really hate the way mac folders organize, because it looks nothing like it does on a PC and I always really liked that.
Posted by Nebb[/QUOTE]

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

number55

Nebb...you have a mac no? Why aren't your photos just organized into events?

reddy123

My iPhoto does not look that nice Number, but it should. Mine is just a mess! This is inspiring me to re-organize.

I also boo the liking of the Windows folders.

number55

It takes some time Reddy but it is SO nice once it is done. To be fair though, I just checked and I have 24 066 photos on my iphoto and I have about 4-5k more to load onto it that I have been saving.

I haven't tagged all my photos yet but there are some folders where I need to do that (when I go to St. Lucia for example, we have photos from all the team members...so thousands of photos, so I tag them).

I love my iphoto and I love my photos even more.

reddy123

Without sounding like a total idiot- what do you mean 'tag' your photos? I just upload them into events and haven't really explored the program that much.

number55

Okay, tag might be the wrong word since it is so FBish...

In iphoto you have the opportunity to add keywords to photos...here is an example. This is from the newest version of iphoto but you can do it in the last version too, it just looks different.

So in that screen shot you can see on the right hand side, about three fifths of the way down, there is a section that says Keywords and I have tagged the photo as "getting ready".

I use this feature when I have an event that has lots of photos and I don't want to search through them all for specific points within the event.

reddy123

I'm so impressed with your organizational skills number (not being sarcastic). I need to be taking notes. I'm starting a blog and have been struggling going through all my art photos on my laptop. I need to start a few folders and events just for my blog

I think I might use this tagging thing for my HM pics, I've had them all separated by place, but now I could put them all together and just tag them by place within one event. Thanks for explaining number!

number55

It would totally work for travel photos and would be really useful if you visited several places and just wanted to organize them by place but not create separate events for each place. Happy I could help!

Nebb

I gotta be honest, I have no idea what this iphoto thing is you speak of. Ive had my mac for 2 years now and I have never used iphoto - I ust open my harddrive to see what shiit I got when I want to look at it...

number55

OMG. Okay Nebb. You make dinner, I will organize your photos. It is just wrong to own a mac and not use iphoto. I pretty much bought my first mac because of iphoto.

Nina0528

I'm not too picky when I upload pictures from my camera. They automatically upload into a new folder with that days date on it. Works for me. I can usually tell what's in each folder just by looking at the "preview picture" on the folder. I'm way to lazy to go back through now and orgainze everything!

I also save everything to CDs (used to work in a photo lab, so I would burn discs for super cheap), so every so often I delete the pictures from my computer so they're not taking up space.

Nebb

hahah I feel like a mac failure now that ive never used this before. It just never occured to me to use it!!

number55

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_snarky-brides_photos-1?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:17Discussion:c3201e19-479e-4cde-94d0-52d73b627851Post:2d51a529-b36c-471a-8fbc-69f291707d96">Re: Photos</a>:
[QUOTE]hahah I feel like a mac failure now that ive never used this before. It just never occured to me to use it!!
Posted by Nebb[/QUOTE]

<div>DOn't feel like a failure, just know that it will solve your organizational woes. </div>