organizing digital image files

[zelek]

Do you guys have any suggestions for good ways to organize all your digital pics?? There must be a program out there that makes it a snap.

[DTro]

Try Picasa from Google. It's a nice program, and the best thing is that it is free.

I'm with ya on the organization thing. No matter how hard I try I end up with pics here and there and not sure what is backed up

[Slyster]

I have a "Photos" folder.. in that I have subfolders of years.. 2004, 2005, 2006 etc.. and in THOSE folders I have months. Works slick. As long as you never rename the photos (and set your camera right) you never have duplicate file names. Then I use ACDsee 8.0 to browse them (thumbnails and full sized slide shows).. search google for "acdsee" (It does cost.. but very worthwhile). It also make web slide shows and has a simple editor and processes bulk procedures such as color corrections, mass resizing etc etc.

For backup.. I just dump the photos folder on one of my two external hard drives.. (deleting the old folder first) that way I KNOW they are backed up in full and I keep one drive at home and one at work locked up for safety.

[carlcmc]

from a previous discussion where we talked about this

Quote:

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Here is a different take:

I copy them into folders based upon year. And sometimes folders within that for special occasions.

I then use Adobe Photoshop elements for tagging. This is so much better than trying to name each file. I have tags for people in each of our families, tags for fish outdoors etc. Drag and drop the tags onto the pics. It even has a "find face" feature that scans all your pics for faces and presents just faces to you for tagging to make it easier.

Here is the best part. Now I can click on my name and my daughter, exclude grandmother on mother's side but include grandfather on mother's side. This is an example of the detailed searching/sorting that is available. Basically, any tag you assign to the pictures then becomes a sorting option. I can in seconds bring up any picture that has just my daughter, just my daughter and my mother, my kids but not me or my wife, etc etc...

I encourage you guys to check it out and get away from naming all your pictures. I have thousands of pictures and can't imagine having to name them all.

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