Pictures! How I organize: Revisited

 In 2019 I did this post showing how I organize all my photos.

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of people ask how to sort their pictures. I see a lot of people printing the same pictures over because they don't have a system. I totally get that! I have done it SO many times, EVEN since I've had such a detailed system.

Some of the changes is how I edit. I pretty much just use my iPhone. That's what I use all the time. Although, I do have to dust off the 'big' camera for an event soon.

I used to use this a lot! I think I changed to just editing on my iPhone because I would get a little obsessive with editing, trying to make it perfect. I need to let go of the idea of perfect. So I just use my phone.

All my photos are on iCloud, and I buy a bit of extra storage space, but I still download to my computer and then save to an EXD (external hard drive).

I also cull pictures as I'm editing. I tend to take a LOT of photos sometimes, and after getting 2020 in albums, I had a LOT of printed pictures left over and even more that were left unprinted. 2020 had TONS of doggo photos because of... well, ya know... the plague year.

This year; not so many pictures yet.

I used to sort and load everything into Historian, a program by Forever (Creative Memories), but for some reason I can no longer get into that program. Maybe it's my computer. I don't know. I've tried and tried and it just won't load. One day when my laptop dies I'll be able to get to it again. 

Another new thing is I have started using Amazon to print photos! The quality is good and, guess what? With Prime there is free shipping! (duh) I don't know why it took me so long to try their service. Shutterfly can be really expensive in the shipping costs.

I don't like organizing on Amazon's site, though, because, for some reason, it pulls photos from every place on my computer so I have duplicates like crazy! So I still upload to Shutterfly because I have that really organized, but I upload what I want to print to Amazon. (Hope that link works)

My record of pictures has not changed, except I went from digital (that really long excel sheet) to hand written again. I guess technology is starting to bamboozle me, because I had trouble with that, too! (I still blame the laptop.)

For some reason, I had this log book on the shelf. Don't remember why I bought it, or where I bought it, but there it was, shining bright red at me as I was trying to figure out why I couldn't get my computer to do what I wanted it to do (It's the computer's fault, honest!)

I know this is excessive, but I copied everything into this book.

The Table of Contents page has a key to the colors I used showing if it's Printed, in Shutterfly or Amzon and if it's Scrapbooked. The green writing is for Trips. I went through and noted trips from every year so I can find them easily.

The red P means I've printed them! So I don't print duplicates unless I choose to.

I will admit, this is a lot. It took me a long time to get it all copied in the book, but there is plenty of room for notes, corrections or additions. And it's a great way to practice my penmanship. Really kind of meditative, too. 

So, again, you have to do what is comfortable for you when it comes down to keeping track of your photos. I still think it's wise to print, at least your favorites and big events, and save them online, in the cloud, on a photo site, whatever. Printed pictures can be lost or damaged. Digital photos can be lost, too!