Have albums and boxes of photos tucked throughout your home? It’s time to get photo-organized! Check out these simple steps to organize your personal photos and to easily take them into the digital realm.
Are you swimming in boxes of physical photos? It’s time to get photo-organized!
Gather the Photos
The first step toward getting photo-organized is gathering all of your real pictures. Common places to tuck photos away are in home offices, storage chests and other locations commonly used for storage. You may also want to gather physical photos that you would like to save from your relatives. A good way to ask for photos from relatives is to let them know that you’re digitizing all photos you want to keep and, after the requested physical photos are digitized, you’ll return them to the owner.
Organize the Items
After you’ve gathered all of your physical photos as well as the photos that you’d like to save from relatives, you can then start organizing the pictures. How you decide to organize the images will depend on the number of photos, the sizes, and other details.
If dates are marked on the photos, you may want to organize them chronologically. Photos that are arranged by date offer a fun timeline through which to view them in the future. You could also organize the photos by quality, subject or another detail. This is also the time to decide how you’ll be storing the pictures after they’re organized and digitized. High-quality albums protect photos and keep them organized, but photo boxes can also be great storage options.
Digitize Physical Photos
According to How to Bring Your Photo Memories Back to Life, there are some ways to digitize your physical photos. Scanning your physical photos offers a safeguard against the chance that the physical photos will be ruined due to wear and tear, due to a natural disaster or from another event. Research the options that are available for digitizing your photos and choose the one that will provide a high-quality conversion at a reasonable price. You may also want to compare how much time will be required with each digitizing option.
Organize the Digital Versions
Before you begin digitizing your physical photos, create a process for how you’ll store the digital versions. Will you be storing the pictures on a cloud-based storage system? A cloud-based storage system may be safer than storing the pictures on your computer’s hard drive. Consider such details as how you’ll organize the photo folders, how you’ll name the digitized pictures and more.
Create a Process
After you’ve digitized all of your current physical photos, create a process for scanning any future physical photos that you find. Creating a process helps speed the digitization process and ensures the work of converting your physical photos doesn’t pile up.
Don’t take the chance of your physical photos being ruined. Instead, get photo organized by gathering the photos and organizing them. Then, use one of the many available technologies to digitize the pictures.
