Welcome to the world of digital photography, where taking photographs is now simpler than ever. With the advancement of smartphones and digital cameras, capturing and saving many images on your computer is now possible. However, managing and organizing them all can become challenging as your photo collection grows. This article will look at the best way to organize photos on your computer.
Table of Contents
Establish a Dedicated Space
The first small step to take is to create a folder. All your photos in one folder will help you access the gallery faster. Plus, it allows you to back up your entire archive in a few clicks. If your images have more than personal value, you can encrypt the folder to protect it from unauthorized access.
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Choose a method
There are plenty of criteria that you can use as a framework for your catalog. You can even make up those criteria as you see fit. But let’s see how you can use the most widespread ones.
Date
Keeping your chronicle in chronological order makes sense. The easiest way to organize your photos in this manner is to create a folder for a year and then subfolders for months, weeks, and days, depending on how many files for each time frame you have.
Event
You can create folders for noteworthy events, such as birthdays, vacations, parties, and whatnot. This method works best in tandem with the previous one. For example, create folders for years and months and then subfolders for specific events rather than dates.
Tags
To make it simpler to find a photo using the Windows 10 search function on your computer, you can tag the photo with keywords. Simply right-click a pic and pick “Properties” from the drop-down list. Then open the “Details” tab and find the “Description” category – the tag text field is right there. Make a habit of tagging each new photo you add to your archive. This might feel tedious, but you’ll save much more time in the long run.
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File size
Following these criteria might be helpful if the image quality is important to you. Photos taken by a good modern DSLR are usually much larger than the pic taken by a phone camera. Hence, sorting files by size can help you separate them quickly.
Get creative
Simply sorting your photos in folders is trusty but not the only way to store photos in your archive. Another thing you can do is make a collage of pictures on a computer. This is a perfect solution if you want others to see these photographs. All you need is to get and learn to use a Windows 10 collage maker. Collages are a great asset for family events and parties with old friends. It is a much more engaging and emotional way to dive into memories than pushing through hundreds of folders and pics.
Use specialized apps
If you use Windows 10, you may also organize your images with the help of the Photos app. It allows you to organize photos into albums and folders to build your hierarchical structure.
Back it all up
The more copies of something you have, the lower the chances of losing it all simultaneously. Provided you store your backups in a different place than the originals. Best case scenario – have a copy on your PC, on an external drive, and in the cloud.
However, the latter has some caveats. Cloud storage requires Internet access, has limited space, may require payment, and can be shut down or hacked. Cloud drives have their use, but don’t rely too much on them.
As you can see, organizing a massive photo archive is entirely doable. And there are multiple approaches that you can try – from building a simple folder hierarchy to learning how to make a collage on a computer.
The best method depends on whether you need to sort your photos for a job or leisure. Photos help us hold onto the most treasured memories, and preserving and organizing those photos helps you keep your story fresh and clear. And remember to do a backup!
