Photos are the key ingredient to scrapbooking, so being able to find specific photos when you are ready to scrapbook them is essential!
As a scrapbooker you probably take a lot of photos, and if you’ve gone digital, you probably take even more than those still using film cameras. That adds up to a lot of photos to go through in order to find what you are looking for!
I know that some of you may be avoiding photo organization because the thought of organizing all the photos you’ve taken up to today makes you feel a little faint. No worries! Forget about the past (and put away those smelling salts) for now and focus on organizing the photos you take from this point on. Then, once you get your system down, you can slowly go through your older photos as time permits.
There are two things to keep in mind when organizing your photos:
1. Choose a system that works for you.
2. Stay on top of it by organizing your new photos at every download (from digital camera to computer), once a week, or once a month.
Choose Your System
Choose an organization system that works best for you. One that will allow you to find the photos you want to use both easily and quickly.
Organize by:
- Topic – home, school, kids, friends, vacations, etc.
- Project – organize your photos based on project or scrapbook pages you’d like to create with them.
- Person – each member of your family has their own category.
- Chronologically – if you scrapbook chronologically this is the method for you.
Printed Photo Storage
Whether you shoot with a digital or film camera you probably have printed photos that haven’t been scrapbooked yet.
Organize printed photos in:
- Albums – place your photos in pocket sleeves so you can enjoy them until you are ready to scrapbook them.
- Photo boxes – you can store a lot of photos in these types of boxes and they can be labeled based on your organization style.
- Photo docking system – these boxes make it very easy to organize and access your photos.
- Photo display – use a magnetic board to display the next photos you plan to scrap and simply replace them with new ones as you scrap them.
Digital Photo Storage
Since going digital I’ve found that I take a lot more photos. And while organizing digital photos doesn’t take up physical space, it does take up hard drive space, which fills up pretty quickly with all those digital photos! Here are some tips for digital storage and organization.
When organizing your photos don’t be afraid to delete the bad ones or duplicates. You probably don’t need 20 shots of the same person in the same pose. Pare it down to 5 or 10, or less if you are brave enough.
Believe me, you do not want to learn this the hard way, but it is essential to back-up your photos! You can back them up online or with an external hard drive. It is best to back-up to another location (such as an online option) in case of fire or natural disaster.
There are a lot of digital organization options to choose from. Here are a few worth checking out:
So choose the system that works best for you, schedule in some time to regularly organize your photos, and soon you’ll be able to find the exact photo you want to scrap in no time at all!
For another chance to win a copy of The Organized & Inspired Scrapbooker, leave a comment about how you organize your photos!
-Cindy Tobey, contributing writer
My photos are all organized on an EHD in monthly folders and I use Picasa to go through them, choose which ones I want to print and tag them. My life is so much easier with Picasa!
My digital photos are on my computer hard drive. My printed ones are stored in photo boxes. But I need to start organizing them so that they can be easily accessible & scrappable, lol.
I dont organize my photos that is the problem! i do have some photo boxes but mostly they are still in the packaging that i received them in from the printer. My most recent photos have been put in albums waiting to be scrapped.
I take digital photos and organize them by month. I just make a folder for each month. We have an external harddrive that is already full from 2 years worth of photos, but I don’t like that too much because I don’t trust technology. I have a large bin of scrapbooks stored at my parents house in America and about 6 books here in China. I know I’m all over the place, but I feel safer when I’m spread out. Is that weird?
Sorry…still trying to come up with a system!
I think I do a pretty good job organizing my digital photos. It’s the backlog of printed photos and negatives I have trouble with. The pile of photos makes my head spin.
I organize my photos chronologically. But I need to be more diligent with backing them up. Thanks for the well-written post.
I store my son’s original photos in an acid free photo box. I sort them by age.
I keep my photos in Creative Memories photo boxes. They have dividers in them so each of my kids have a space, then I do holidays. Now that those are packed my newer photos are stacked in the hallway in the boxes from Walgreens. I need to scrap more and faster. Also thank you for reminding me about backing up my photos, keep forgetting to do that. Thanks for all these tips this week it’s been fun reading all the comments and ideas.
I probably have the worlds worst photo organization! I have a few photo boxes with a great deal of my prints organized by date and holidays. That only came about when I began scrapbooking. That was 7 years ago and now that the years have past, the prints I actually get around to making usually end up just thrown in a box because I just don’t feel I have a great system! It is beyond uninspirational! The past two years of photos that have not been printed for pages are still on memory cards!!!! I just got a new computer so I am planning on getting some software to help digitally organize them….when I get the chance! Thanks for this post….hopefully it helps me!!
I’m terrible, mine are horribly organized. My goal this year is to get them on Carbonite.
Still working on the best system. Chronologically stresses me out so I’m starting to sort by person and then sub-categories like school, holidays, Disney, vacations, etc. I’ve stopped trying to scrap pictures in order and have started scrapping by person/category so this system seems to fit better for me. Thanks for the chance to win.
I stay organized by month/year. When we download from the camera the file name gives the date. I have a file folder on the computer for each month/year. It’s easy to quickly move the downloaded files into the right month. We have very little printed pics…they all fit in one shoebox and are again sorted by date. The way I keep up what the pics are about is my personal monthly planner calendars. I keep them all with the printed pics too.
I put my printed photos in envelopes labeled by event/topic in photo boxes. My digital photos are organized by Year/Month/Event. After I have scrapped the photos I want to scrap – the leftovers go into photo albums. They are still good pictures to look at – they just didn’t make it into the scrapbook.
I use iPhoto and my photos are organized by events that I name. So I have’1st day of school’, Birthdays, etc. I can also search by date ir keyword if I am looking for a specific picture or event. It works for me.
this is my weak spot in organizing. My photos are chronologically organized but so much happens in a year I’m constantly digging through them. I’m going to try the other ways all of you have mentioned and see what works best.
At the moment my photos have been organized by date. This isn’t always the best way to do it.
I organize my digital photos by event. I also back them up to 2 different EHD for safety.
I sort my photos on my hard drive by year with subcategories for the months. Within the months folders, I may have events or photos I have edited in their own folders. For my printed pictures, I use Stacy Julian’s “Library of Memories” system. It keeps like photos together and makes it very easy to find what I need.
I store my photos on my computer in Chronological order. I have a folder for each year, a sub-folder for each quarter, and a sub-sub folder for events. I also have on folder in each quarter for misc, photos that aren’t related to an event. I backup my photos weekly and I don’t delete them from my camera until they have been backed up.
I delete a lot of photos before I download and then I go through again before I print and delete more. It was hard at first, but I take a lot of duplicates to get the right shot.
I do print all of my photo and keep them in photo albums. When I am ready to scrap I look through the albums at the printed photos. I almost always reprint the photos when I scrap. This allows me to get the photo the right size for my layout.
On the computer, I organize my digital photos by month and year. When I print them, I sort them by the person I plan to scrapbook about (each child and grandchild has their own albums–one per year) then I put them in the page protectors in the album with some stickers, embellies I plan to use with them. Another pile of pics goes into my “picture-a-day” album, the rest go into traditional albums.
I organize my photos in 3 ways:
1. Printed good photos i store in pocket sleeves albums;
2. Digital photos i store by date taken in CDs
3. Photos for scrapping i have them segregated in photo boxes.
For my current photos follow Stacy Jullian’s Photo Freedom approach, and use Photoshop Elements. When I download the photos to my PC (organised by year and month of photo, and any special events), I go through and tag them (All About Us, People We Love, Things We Do, and Places We Go).
When I print photos in bulk, the ones I don’t have immediate plans for go in photo boxes labelled Stacy’s way. Those I have plans for, I put into archival 12×12 plastic pockets along with any journaling reminders, papers, embellishments, and photo-safe memorabelia.
General Memorabelia (school reports, artwork, large school photos etc) I keep in 12×12 archival pockets, one for each year.
My pre-digital photos are just sitting in archival boxes, organised by year, and go through them periodically if I am looking for inspiration.
I back up to an external hard drive, with another copy on DVDs stored off-site at my husband’s work.
I have thousnads of photos! My digitals are printed and then sorted by year and month and topic and stored electronically. I also make two copies of photos on CD–one to keep and one to store elsewhere.
I am in the process of scanning all of my older photos and negatives to store on an external hard drive.This summer, several families in our area were flooded. Our youth group cleaned hundreds of pictures and tried to save as many as possible. I learned a valuable lesson–pictures stored in albums faired much better than those in packages, and those stored in magnetic albums were destroyed! Since then, I have been working to make sure all of my pictures and negatives are being stored electr5onically and in albums!
I have taken Stacey Julians Library of Memories class twice and have been using her system for about 4 years. This does take dicipline and tweaking…..which I am still doing. Havent worked at it for quite awhile and I have gotten lazy,now have my most recent (printed)photos in the envelopes from the printer. Not working very well. I need to get back on track.
I donate to our church. The kids programs are always in need of stickers, paper, the works.
Thank you for the chance to win an awesome book! I need all the help I can get
I have mostly digital photos. I organize them in folders on my computer. The folders are labeled by events, groups or people. In the big folder I put little folders, further breaking down the categories. For example, in the family folder I have a folder for each family member and then folders for events like Xmas and Thanksgiving labeled by year. This works pretty well foe me.
I organize my photos in adobe photoshop elements by date of download. I use the same file name in adobe and on my external hard drive so they are easy to locate for digital scrapbooking. I start the file name with the month number (for example 01 jan 22 12) to make my files appear chronologicaly. In adobe I tag some photos to people and families. I hope to make disks for my friends of all the photos I have of their families.
I am totally overwhelmed with the task of organizing photos. My digital photos are all sorted into files by family member or location (as vacation); but all the pictures taken over 38 years of marriage. We have a suitbox full of pictures from my husbands family that include beautiful old pictures; but we have no idea who the people are. None are labeled. The sad thing is that we have a bigger box from my side of the family in almost the same state! I don’t want this to happen.
I’m paranoid about losing my digital images. Not only do I upload to Costco because they seem to never delete any old libraries and so far it’s all free.
I also get one DVD of each event that I post to Costco. Even though DVD’s have an only five year suggested life, I figure I can always get another one.
The last thing that I’ve been doing is using the USB cruz drive (thumb drive). Here’s the main problem. If they break, getting your data off can be EXTREMELY costly.. (can you tell I’ve had to do it?). Because all drives look alike, I take a label printer and make a label for the drive. I’ve been trying to do it by year because that seems to work the best for me….so it may say… Personal2012-1, or Personal 2012-2 depending upon how many I’ve filled up. Thumb drives go on sale almost weekly at the major office supply stores and if you are willing to buy in 3′s Costco pricing is almost unbeatable.
I take a lot of photos. And, YES, I nearly lost my photos but was able to retrieve them with a lot of help. I now store them on and external harddrive, CD’s and offsite with Carbonite.
I also store my photos in my Creative Memories program. They are sorted by event, person, activity and chronological. Since I almost lost 34 years of pictures, I don’t think I can be too careful in backing up my photos.
Mine are stored chronologically and then by event. Still looking for the right system for tracking what is printed and what isn’t. All the many years of photos, prior to digital, are in boxes and drawers. Maybe someday …
I have my printed photos in photo boxes and duplicates in photo albums chronologically. I have fallen behind in printing photos since I have gone digital and that was be biggest hesitation about going digital in the first place!! I store all of my digital files on an EHD and online @ Shutterfly. I use them to print when I get around to that!
I tend to be a little ridiculous in saving all kinds of souvenir stuff and memorabilia for events so I can have some things other than just photos to use when I work on a page. I’ve even been known to collect the colored mylar confetti on the table at a wedding or shower to put with my pictures so I can use the pieces on my page. In order to keep the stuff with the pics, I use catalog size white envelopes which I got at our local printer ( I think the case had 200 envelopes, and it was like $30). This way I can put everything in the envelope and label it along one edge. I store those envelopes in copy paper boxes by subject and when I work on a page for a golf tournament, I go to that box and pull out the envelope with all of the ticket stubs, pictures, pairing sheets and whatever else I want to use. It works for me.
I have photo boxes that are by year. Unfortunaly I have years of photos before I started scrapbooking. I have many photos that are not backed up on the computer. I need to get them digitalized before scrapping. Takes so much time!
Pingback: 30 Blogs With Tips for Organizing Family Photos | Find A Nanny
Pingback: 30 Blogs With Tips for Organizing Family Photos | Living better at 50+| Online Womens Magazine
Pingback: 30 Blogs With Tips for Organizing Family Photos