Long Term Photo Care - Part 1

Part 1 - Digital Image Management

How do you store your digital photos? On the camera card? On CD? On your hard drive? Scattered around different cameras, computers and iPods?

There is no time like the present to get your digitial images organized! There are several different options available but the easiest is storing them in file folders on your hard drive. Now how you store them and organize them is up to you. Some people like to organize by years or dates and others like to store them based on events. You can also mix it up - an example would be to have a Christmas Folder with subfolders for each year. If you don't know how to make folders, just shoot me an e-mail and we can walk through it.

Each digital image has EXIF data associated with it. EXIF stands for Exchangeable Image File and it stores information such as the date, time and exposure settings for each picture. Some computer programs will also allow you to store tags or keywords on the EXIF file so you can search for and find your photos faster. There are several programs on the market today, such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel PaintShop Pro that will allow the user to edit their photos as well as tag and store them so they are easy to find. Adobe Photoshop will allow you to put tags on your photos so you could have tags for Mom, Dad and Brother. But, if you wanted to find the photos with just Mom and Dad you could search for pictures that had both of them in them. How great is that?!

Another option would be the online storage sites such as WinkFlash, Kodak or Shutterfly. These sites typically allow the user to create albums that can be shared online with family and friends.

So, however you decide to organize your photos. Get them organized because next month we will discuss backing them up! Yes...it needs to be done! :)