I was looking for a photo on my external drive and saw that I still hadn't corrected so many of my photo files.
April 3,1998
Jan 2,1996
May 5, 1996
I don't think you're even supposed to use commas.
I did this for a couple of years inconsistently before figuring out it was not a good idea. In fact, it's a really bad idea because then you'll have your photos organized in alphabetical order starting with April and ending in November.
So then I fixed it with a numbering system, e.g.
01-15-2006
02-13-2008
Now I wouldn't have the alphabetical order problem, but there was still the problem of the year. Everything was being ordered by the month and it was still not organized unless I put them in separate folders by YEAR which is what I did.
When I moved to Hawaii, my brother saw what I was doing and said I should do what they do at the police department. Sigh...
2015-01-13
2015-04-16
And so on and so forth. It's also good to add a little clue as to what the photo is about when you name your photo. (e.g. 2021-01-20 Inauguration)
I am NOT looking forward to fixing my old files.
Sometimes organizing takes on a life of its own but I have given up on photos It used to be that pictures would automatically somehow go from my android phone to my macbook. Then I made the mistake of getting an iphone and the phone and the computer refuse to speak to each other. That doesn't make sense to me. I refuse to be the intermediary.
ReplyDeleteI import my photos via a program which I have automatically append the date. I use your format without the dashes. Today would be 20210203.
ReplyDeleteOr you could just do what my sister does--saves everything to her desktop. The last time I was at her house, she asked me to look at a problem she was having and her computer screen had a thousand teeny-tiny icons crowded into every nook & cranny. It gave me heart palpitations, but it's not my PC!
ReplyDeleteMy older daughter does that with open tabs and it DRIVES me nuts. (plus, it slows down her computer which she ten complains about)
DeleteI don't organize my photos at all, except by date as they appear. I sometimes browse through them looking for one and usually can find it among the thousands I have in there. I am lazy and would get tired of the task before I finished! :-)
ReplyDeleteI've never named my photos but I probably should. I create named folders in iPhoto which helps me find some. You are very organized.
ReplyDeleteI go by YMD on my photo files it works well
ReplyDeleteI do essentially what you do but divide it up a bit more. In my main directory, I have folders for trips, pictures downloaded from our phones, pictures given to me by relatives, genealogy related pictures and a couple other misc folders. Within each of those folders I create another folder for each year. Within those year folders, I label the subfolders using the method you arrived at. My aim is to keep every thing easily viewable without scrolling.
ReplyDeleteI think the most important aspect is how you store them. I gave up on external hard drives after having one go bad and seeing others lose theirs due to storms and theft. I pay a token subscription fee and have mine backed up automatically to the cloud whenever downloaded. If my house or computer spontaneously combusts, I still have them. When I get a new computer, once connected to the internet I log into my account and just restore them back to my hard drive. Because it comes with an app on my phone, I can be anywhere in the world with cellphone signal and have access to every file I have backed up. It is also versioned so if I make a mistake and accidentally delete a file, I can go back and retrieve the last version.
Good hint, which I appreciate before I try to figure out how to tackle ALL of my family photos, back 3 generations. I need for you to come to KC and scan all 13 huge boxes of photos. Did you write a book "Kay's Photo Scanning for Dummies"? Linda in Kansas City. GO CHIEFS! (Chiefs are from Kansas City, Missouri, but people on the Kansas side of the metro claim them too.)
ReplyDeleteI hardly ever come across anybody from Kansas City as I'm reading blogs. I live 30 miles east of KC. Hated football until two years ago when I actually started watching our magical team. Now I don't know how I'm going to make it through spring and summer with no Chiefs games to watch.
DeleteAll of my photos go onto the hard drive, which I keep organized in file folders. My iPhone photos automatically download to my desktop hard drive, where I edit them before filing them.
ReplyDeleteWhen we got new computers last year, I took the time to organize my files into files and we stored them on external hard drives, so I could start over with clean storage. They are also backed up on iCloud and a paid cloud storage.
I don't label individual photos and the date is whatever the file date is.
You are much more detailed than I am, apparently. I don't even understand what the date issue is about. Maybe you are referring to all of the photos you have scanned? I haven't done that, but Tom has scanned some old photos for his genealogy files.
Yes, you’re right. I do mean the photo files I scanned earlier. I scanned ALL our old photos several years ago.
DeleteLike Djan, I don't organize mine at all. Guess I don't take that many.
ReplyDeleteOrganizing my photos would be a great project for pandemic times. I have no idea where to even start.
ReplyDeleteMahalo Honey
ReplyDeleteYou can put the old files in a grouped in a folder with the right numbers on them by occasion. I just made a decision to fix them later....and sometimes later hasn't come.
ReplyDeleteI am an unorganized mess. I wish I was organized and had everything in its place and a place for everything but I don't. My modus operandi is search and search and then toss and trash. I waste too much time that way but end up finding nice surprises from time to time.
ReplyDeletephotos organized are a plague...they seem to multiple as they sit on the computer...lol!
ReplyDeleteI set up folders by the month, and date them inside those folders.
ReplyDeleteI look at my mismash of files and think anyone who wants to look at them is welcome to decipher them.
ReplyDeleteI'm in the middle of a computer photo reorganization. I suspect it will NOT include re-dating all of them.
ReplyDeleteGood for you -- so organized. I need to convert some color slides to some digital device. Probably should do the same with my Mom's photo albums and some of my photos.
ReplyDelete