5 Ways to Organize Photos on Your Computer

Every month you capture hundreds of photos using your smartphone. If you are fond of photography, you might be using a digital camera. No matter what device you use, you prefer keeping the photos in a dedicated folder on the computer. Now managing these large volumes of photos on the computer is the real challenge. For most users, there’s no organized way to manage photos. They just click pictures, upload them on laptops, and don’t care much about managing them. Probably, people don’t know what to do next, or they don’t bother to organize their photo gallery. Managing photos on a computer seems challenging, but it doesn’t have to be. In this article, we will learn the ways to implement a photo filing system so that you can sort and manage your photos quickly.

Convert the File Format

After capturing images on your digital camera, you might look to save them on the computer to free up storage on the SD card. That’s good practice, but keep in mind that you might need to change the file format to make the photos accessible on different devices and apps. Most digital cameras save images as RAW so that could be an issue. Similarly, if you store iPhone images on a computer, keep in mind that the phone uses HEIC as the default format. HEIC is a proprietary image format used by Apple on iOS devices. You will need to convert multiple HEIC to PNG to make them accessible on your devices. Also, most image editing software can read PNG files while they can’t access or recognize HEIC files.

Decide a Folder Structure

When it comes to organizing photos on a computer, the folder structure you select plays a significant role. By having the right filing system, you can save, manage, and search your photos quickly. Else, it would be hard to figure out where everything is stored. The folder structure is like a funnel where the top of the funnel is the parent folder followed by the subfolder, and then the folder by which you can recognize all the files. Save these folders in a way that it is easier to figure out the photos stored inside. Maintain consistency in all the folders throughout the device. Not only it helps organize stuff on the computer but helps optimize space on the storage media. When storing files on the computer, pay extra attention to the space available on the drive. 

Follow a Naming Convention 

Once you decide on the folder structure, the next big thing is to name them logically. As mentioned above, the name of the folder should give you a brief about the items stored inside. For the parent folder, you can use the Year in which it is created. Now, for the subfolders, it is practical to save them by the names of the months, based on the photos they store. If you went on an adventure in September, create a folder named Sept. Keep everything you captured in September under that folder. You should name any subsequent folders by the event name instead of using the dates. Except for your birthdays, it’s difficult to remember the dates of any event a few months down the line after it happened. For example, saving excursion pictures in a folder named Waterfall Adventure makes more sense than naming the folder Sept 24.

Keep All the Photos on the External SSD

After uploading the photos on your computer, the first and foremost task is to manage them in a defined folder structure. When you are done with the folder management and all your photos are organized in a desired manner, store all of them on an external hard drive. You must be wondering why you would require moving data to an external storage drive. Well, image files tend to be heavier, and storing large numbers of files on the internal hard drive can slow down your computer in the long run. Moreover, you don’t access your photos regularly so keeping this data on the computer doesn’t make sense. Also when selecting an external storage, go for SSD as they are power-efficient, fail-proof, and faster at data read-write operations. 

Move Important Photos to the Cloud

While you can keep your photos on an external storage media for optimizing space on the computer, you can also opt for a Cloud drive. The major advantage of storing your photos on Cloud Drive is that you can view them from anywhere. To access photos stored on Cloud, you only need your username and password credentials. You can sign in to your Cloud account from any device to view data. If you have decided to store data on Cloud, you have multiple options to select from. Create an account on Google Drive, iCloud (for Apple users), DropBox, or OneDrive. While Google Drive gives you 15GB of free storage, iCloud gives Apple users 5 GB of free space to store data. In addition, Dropbox and OneDrive give you access to 2 GB of free storage.