Organizing my photos
@BelleStarr (61102)
United States
August 19, 2016 8:27am CST
My photos are a mess.I have 5 old laptops, tons of memory sticks and a desktop. All of them have photos on them. When I am trying to write an article and want one particular photo, it is a nightmare.
I have 100s of thousands of photos. This morning I started to put them in folders at least the ones that are already on my desktop. I can see this is going to take me forever. I also want to make sure they are stored in the cloud which I should have done years ago.
I am open to any suggestions about how you organize your photos, this seems like it is not going to be that effective.
26 people like this
26 responses
@BelleStarr (61102)
• United States
20 Aug 16
I am trying that but the number of photos I have is rather overwhelming.
2 people like this
@LadyDuck (471540)
• Switzerland
20 Aug 16
@BelleStarr I always try to organize the photos every day. I have many more old photos (the non digital) to organize, the digital ones are all sorted and easy to find.
1 person likes this
@MarymargII (12422)
• Toronto, Ontario
25 Aug 16
I like this idea- and there's even some I'd like to delete!
1 person likes this
@crazyhorseladycx (39509)
• United States
19 Aug 16
i used to name my pics, put 'em nice 'n tidy 'nto folders. each'd a category 'n those that had multi, i made copies 'f 'n put 'nto said 'ppropriate folders. then i got sick...i've a complete nightmare where's all're sorted by 'date taken'. takes me a month 'f sundays to find a pic these days. i'm prone to takin' 100's daily. i've started sortin' through 'em somewhat, a most dauntin' task. perhaps if'n i jest dedicated a couple weeks to nothin' but that, i'd be successful.
best 'f luck!
3 people like this
@BelleStarr (61102)
• United States
20 Aug 16
I am afraid it will take me the rest of my life and still they won't be organized. lol
2 people like this
@Asylum (47893)
• Manchester, England
19 Aug 16
This would depend on the type of photographs, assuming that you have photographs from holidays, some of flowers and family photographs, divide them accordingly.
For example, make a folder for holidays and sub folder it into places or particular trips. Do similar for each type of genre you have, which will obviously vary from person to person.
2 people like this
@LadyDuck (471540)
• Switzerland
19 Aug 16
@Asylum Hello Barry, I see that you safely arrived at destination. Have you already met cute creatures like snake or alike on the Island? I have a folder "cute creatures" for cats, puppies, hares, young foxes and there is also a young snake... killed by Willy. Sorry.
2 people like this
@Rollo1 (16679)
• Boston, Massachusetts
19 Aug 16
I have five old desktops, which does not include the two we are currently using. Most of the towers are non-functional but not worth upgrading or repairing. What I did was to whip out the hard drives and then for about $20, I got a hard driver reader from Amazon. I hooked it up to my desktop and copied files from the old hard drives to the current tower. From there, they can be moved to cloud storage or flash drives, etc.
2 people like this
@BelleStarr (61102)
• United States
20 Aug 16
Will that work on laptops? I do have an old hard drive that has some things on it I want that might solve my problem.
1 person likes this
@Rollo1 (16679)
• Boston, Massachusetts
20 Aug 16
@BelleStarr I checked mine and it says it will support 2.5" and 3.5" SATA or PATA(IDE) hard drives as well as SSDs. I haven't used it on a laptop, but I did have a collection of both old IDE hard drives and newer SATA drives.
1 person likes this
@BelleStarr (61102)
• United States
20 Aug 16
@Rollo1 That is all Greek to me I am afraid, I will check with my tech guy.
@BelleStarr (61102)
• United States
20 Aug 16
I don't know dropbox, I guess I will have to check.
1 person likes this
@just4him (317067)
• Green Bay, Wisconsin
24 Aug 16
@LoriAMoore No, it's free. Yes, it has a lot of storage.
@just4him (317067)
• Green Bay, Wisconsin
24 Aug 16
@BelleStarr Just go to Dropbox dot com and check it out. It's easy to get started and so easy to save everything to it. It even comes with Windows 10.
1 person likes this
@bunnybon7 (50973)
• Holiday, Florida
20 Aug 16
I need do that also. still can't figure how the cloud works. lol
1 person likes this
@CinnamonGrl (7084)
• Santa Fe, New Mexico
19 Aug 16
I don't take a lot of photos, so they are mostly just under the date and I have to guess LOL. I can see that people who take a lot of pictures have their work cut out for them.Your photo here is beautiful. Was it taken on your property? Gorgeous surroundings.
2 people like this
@BelleStarr (61102)
• United States
20 Aug 16
It was taken on a press trip to Rockford , Ill Thank you.
@BelleStarr (61102)
• United States
20 Aug 16
I need to hire someone I think except they wouldn't know what they were pictures of lol
1 person likes this
@BelleStarr (61102)
• United States
22 Aug 16
You are one of the most talented photographers I know and I know you must have tons of photos. I think this makes good sense. I just feel overwhelmed. But I think this might work for me
@PainsOnSlate (21852)
• Canada
22 Aug 16
i have no suggestions because I am in the same place as you! Thousands and no organization.
1 person likes this
@BelleStarr (61102)
• United States
23 Aug 16
It hangs over me all the time, I know I need to do something but it is overwhelming.
1 person likes this
@BelleStarr (61102)
• United States
25 Aug 16
@PainsOnSlate Yes I was more organized when mine were on discs
1 person likes this
@PainsOnSlate (21852)
• Canada
24 Aug 16
@BelleStarr When I got my mac I put all my photos on it and it was quite organized. Now its not, The dates get screwed up now - don't know why but its made a big mess. I used to put my photos on Discs. Now that I put them on the computer I wish I had left them on the CDs.
1 person likes this
@BelleStarr (61102)
• United States
20 Aug 16
Thank you, from a garden in Rockford, Ill.
1 person likes this
@MarymargII (12422)
• Toronto, Ontario
25 Aug 16
I have that nagging feeling all the time re: my photos-- I also have to organize them but dont know how--I'm going to have to kidnap my son one day and not let him leave till I get what to do---LOL!
1 person likes this
@sueznewz2 (10409)
• Alicante, Spain
21 Aug 16
OOhhh boy ... I dont envy you that task... I find it difficult enough organizing my own much smaller collection..., but I title my folders by genre ... too and mostly by an occasion... I'm not very organized, but I have quite a good memory recall on events and places we visited, so I use them as folder titles, then I know where to find the photo i'm looking for... eg America trip 2000 and then a sub folder las vegas.... good luck with your task .... 
@responsiveme (22926)
• India
20 Aug 16
I always think I'll get down to it. BTW do you have albums of the old fashioned variety ?
