Need advice for a specific project

H

howman

0
Hi everyone,

I have a project on my project list that says: Organize Digital Photos

Basically, I've got a bazillion digital photos on my home computer. Some are backed up, some are not. Some have been printed, some have not. Many need to be deleted. It's really just a mess. And more pictures are being added every day.

Seeing as there are a lot of technology users in this forum, I am guessing that some of you might have a similar project. I am hoping for some ideas as to how to move this project forward.

What do you think would be my first Next Action?

How can I turn this project into a "system" so that I do not get back logged in the future?

Thanks!
 
I'm not really technical but what I have is a folder named Photos. It's structured by year month and event name, i.e. 2006 January New Year Celebration. First NA could be "Creat Photos folder" @Computer :) The next I'm not sure but maybe sort out Folder X.

My 2c.

Regards,

Eugene.
 
Start by deleting those you don't wish to keep. There's no point in trying to manage unwanted stuff. Then follow the suggestions already given for organizing those that remain.
 
wordsofwonder said:
Perhaps some photo management software (like Picasa) might help with this project?

-- Tammy
Click to expand...

I'll second that. Picasa will help you get you pictures organised quicker. And has some good features, especially at that price.
 
Hello, I have a similar project, I'm getting married this upcoming December, and we have tons of pics, Tammy suggested Picassa which I have and its great but I don't think that's the next action. In my case, my NA is gather all my pics in one folder, one physical location where I can actually see all my "stuff" like yourself I have digital data everywhere cd's, memory sticks, my fiancee's computer, so after re-thinking my NA it just changed to basically which digital medium am I going to upload to my computer first and that's an individual choice, my suggestion, do the most difficult one first, in my case it would be, Next time I'm at my fiance's house, take 5 blank cd's to burn all the pics and then I'll just take it from there but at least I initiated the project and the ball is moving, if I can't do that within a reasonable amount of time, back to the Someday category.

hope this helps
 
I was doing the same project this weekend!

Since I upload all of my pictures to snapfish, I need to keep track of the pictures I have and have not uploaded, and which ones I have printed out. My system works like this: on my desktop, I have two folders, one that is labeled 'snapfish' and one labeled 'archive'. When I plug in my digital camera, I make a folder for the event (just the event name and date) in the snapfish folder and dump all the pictures from my camera into that folder. About once a quarter I spend the time uploading the photos that I want to print out onto the snapfish website. Once I've uploaded the photos, I move the event folder from the snapfish folder to the archive folder.
I also found that on snapfish, I need to code my folders so that I know whether or not I have printed the pictures out, and also sometimes I need to know that I am waiting for more pictures from somebody else for an event before I print them. I rename the folder in snapfish to have a * in front of the file name if the pictures from that event have been printed, and using a ~ in front of the folder name for the events that I am waiting to get more pictures for.
It took about 2 hours to get all my pictures sorted, but the result is well worth it.
Let us know what works for you.
;)Mindi
 
Thanks!

Thanks everyone for the feedback.

On further thought I think I have two projects here.

Project one: create a system to manage digital photos. I envision a system similar to GTD - Collect: put all incoming photos in one place; Process: view one photo at a time and determine what to do with it (trash, needs editing, add to album, needs to be printed, etc.); Do: do the editing, upload to photo site, order prints, etc.

Project two: bring all existing photos into newly created system

So what do you think my Next Action for Project One could be? How about: "Create directory structure on hard drive".

Thanks again for the input.
 
howman said:
So what do you think my Next Action for Project One could be? How about: "Create directory structure on hard drive".
Click to expand...

"Decide what directory structure should look like."

Creating the structure itself is trivially easy, the hard part is deciding how you want to organize the photos. By date? By subject? By photographer?

Katherine
 
Depends on system

As for creating the directory structure on your hard drive, I'd recommend taking a quick look at what system you might use first, if that system is something along the lines of a Picasa or the like. I know in some cases, the software may have that functionality available internally, so you may be able to save some of that work for during the actual process. If it creates some of these things differently than you might, it could potentially cause some duplication. If not, it might at least give some ideas of how to have everything a little more integrated.

Just a thought.

Cheers, and good luck! (And thanks for reminding me that this is something I've been meaning to do, but most of my home related projects lately have dealt with moving, and its been tough to even dream of anything else!)
 
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