Essential Tips for Organizing Digital Photos on Your PC or Mac

Back in the good old days, photos were kept in physical albums, which you could get at any time and enjoy a trip down memory lane. But now most people take tonnes of pictures and… forget all about them. If you ask me, that’s a shame. But it doesn’t have to be this way - it’s easy to organize your digital photos on your PC and be able to revisit your favorite moments any time. In this article, we’ll share a few tips and tricks that will help.

1. Take Time to Name Your Photos

This sounds simple beyond words, right? Actually, it’s not because of the sheer volume of photos we take. Those of us who have attempted to name every single one of our hundreds (if not thousands) of images realize how difficult it is.

It's simply unrealistic to try to give each and every shot a unique name. You can, however, give all of the images from a specific date or event the same name and sequence them with a number after each photo. If you’re on a Mac, you can do this with the Photos app. Otherwise, you can use any batch renaming tool - there are plenty online.

2. Create a Folder Structure

It’s very tempting to dump all your photos into the Photos folder on your computer. But it’s not very practical because you’ll create a digital mess.

It's entirely up to you how detailed you want to be when categorizing photographs, but the more directories you have breaking separate individual events, travels, and projects, the faster you'll be able to discover a specific one that comes to mind.

You can create a system that suits you best. Organize folders by dates, events, trips - anything will work as long as it’s intuitive for you and your photos are easy to find.

3. Use Attributes to Identify Photos

This may seem unnecessary after discussing directories. This is due to the fact that many people do not fully comprehend how systems such as keywords, tags, and labels operate. Folders are used to organize and categorize your photographs. Labeling images with keywords is more of a technique to connect photos from different categories, making it easier to recollect the ones you want when the time comes.

It's similar to tagging images on Facebook or, in a broader sense, using a hashtag on Instagram. You're identifying attributes or the subject in that image so that you can recall it in the future depending on one of those things.

Your camera, computer, or photo library can often perform part of the work for you. If you use software that supports facial recognition, it will be your best friend when it comes to photographs. Technology is becoming increasingly proficient at determining which faces belong to the same individual, independent of perspective or lighting.

Geolocation is also useful in this situation. If you're having trouble identifying the correct folder or category for a particular image, merely opening up the image's data will help you recall where you were when it was taken.

4. Find and Remove Similar and Duplicate Photos

Another way technology can help to organize photos on your PC or Mac is software that can find duplicate and similar photos by content. These programs compare images using complex algorithms and identify duplicate photos, photos of the same subject, as well as photos in different formats and taken with different settings.

Put simply, a good duplicate photo-finding app will immediately spot those underexposed and blurry snapshots you really should delete. And all the resized, cropped, and touched-up photos too. This way you’ll not only be able to organize your photos and get rid of the images you don’t need, but you’ll also free up gigabytes of disk space that you can use for more quality content.

5. Add Great Shots to Favorites

Most camera rolls and cataloging systems allow you to choose your preferred shots. In Lightroom, they're called "picks," and you may highlight them by pressing P. Google makes use of stars. You may tap a small heart on your iPhone. It's a quick and easy way to flag photographs that jump out to you and add them to a group of other noteworthy images.

The crucial point to remember is that, as we established earlier, a Favorites system is simply a subset of a keyword or label. As you un-favorite a photo in the software you're using, you're not actually removing it. It's still in its album with everything else, exactly where you left it. You're merely removing it from the selected group you originally designated it to.

Because photos don't have feelings, they won't take it personally, but they will create digital chaos instead. So don’t forget to clean out your favs every once in a while.

6. Consider Cloud Storage Options

Because it is convenient, the Cloud is an attractive method of storage. You join up, sync, and potentially pay a fee, and then you don't worry about it again. It's accessible from any location with an internet connection, and you can instantly share photographs with a fast click.

However, no matter how simple the Cloud is, it is not a stand-alone, permanent solution for preserving your memories or work. Companies go bust, shared folders get removed, and internet connections fail just when you need your photographs the most.

If you only need to back up a few family photos, you can definitely get by with the free storage space you already have as a perk for signing up for another service offered by the same company. Do you have Amazon Prime? With Amazon Drive, you're all set. Do you use Google Drive? Consider using Google Photos. Do you own a photography plan with Adobe? You can choose between 20GB and 1T.

We hope that these tips helped you to organize photos on your computer. Remember, the system you choose must work for you so don’t be afraid to consider our advice and come up with your own, unique solution!