In case you’ve been in a cave for the past week, it’s 2009. 
And in 2009, it’s all about digital media. Digital photos, digital storage, digital editing. One email I’ve been getting lately isn’t, “What kind of camera do you have?” But, “What do you do with all your photos? How to you fix, store, print and organize them?”
This is a great question. One a lot of people want to focus on in 2009 and beyond. I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I can share what works for me and some of the goals, programs and technology available whether you take 1600 pictures in a single weekend, like Handy Man, or if you’re not sure you’ll take 1600 photos in a lifetime.
Creative Memories consultants like to say, “Don’t let your babies grow up to be jpegs.” They’re right. So are the commercials with the disappearing images on the memory cards.
Mistake One: Having a small memory card, and not unloading it regularly.
Darcy’s Tips: Buy the largest memory card you can afford. I recommend at least 2 GB if you take large resolution photos. Handy Man uses an 8 GB, 4 GB and 4 GB. I only carry a 4 GB. I tend to shoot fewer images. If you have a digital camera that is 2 years old or less, it probably takes quite large resolution images.
Mistake Two: Always shoot in the largest resolution your camera provides.
Darcy’s Tips: Ack, no. Unless you plan to print 11 x 14 ” photos, there is no reason to be shooting wall paper-sized images. It takes up a lot of space of on your memory card and hogs your computer’s storage (more on this soon!). If you shoot and plan to print 4 x 6″ or 5 x 7″ images, you can choose a smaller resolution. Be honest with yourself! Will you really print huge photos? If not, you’re not maximizing your storage and you’re probably slowing down your computer.
A 5 x 7″ photo is the same as approximately:
360 x 500 pixels in 72 pt resolution (best for web) -or-
1500 x 2100 pixels in 300 pt resolution. (only for print)
Even at “large”, Blogger only posts photos at 500 pixels in width. To post anything larger, you have to use a website like Photobucket or Flickr – and I’m going to teach you how.
Now – if you do plan to print large photos or want the option to crop and have maximum control over your photo editing then the above advice does not apply to you. Instead, follow the ‘buy the largest memory card you can afford and unload it regularly’ tip is for you.
So, now what? You’ve taken your photos. Your memory card is full.
Mistake Three: Leaving photos on your memory card.
Darcy’s Tips: If you gain nothing else from this blog post, gain this. The single-most risky thing you can do is to leave the only copy of your memories on a flimsy, tiny, easy-to-lose, soon to be outdated memory card.
Remember cassette tapes and floppy disks? No, me neither.
In not-so-many years, your memory card will be as much a novelty as those nostalgic items. And instead you will be paying a retrieval place to pull off your memories for you, just like families are paying places to convert their VCR tapes into DVDs. Yet, incredulously, there are people who just store memory cards.
As soon as humanly possible, upload your photos off your memory card onto your computer. Memory cards are not meant to be permanent storage. Ultimately, they will fail. They will break down. And what will you lose?
Mistake Four: Having no organization in place on your computer; Mislabeling or poorly labeling your photos.
Darcy’s Tips: First things first, date everything. Even if you can’t name the batch, date it.
On my own folders, the photos go in folders by date: year, month, date.
So, photos I took on Christmas Eve are in: Pictures> 2008> December> 24
photos I took on Christmas are in a different folder: Pictures> 2008> December> 25
For me, it is the easiest way to find anything I want.
So now what? Your photos are taken, removed from your memory card and sitting on your computer.
Tune in for the next installment for photo storage and “fixing” at every price range, from free to small mortgage!
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Thank you! I’m going to send my husband to read this…he keeps putting the picturs on the computer, but he lables them with odd things like “new pictures”. This is driving me crazy. Maybe if someone else tells him to date them, it will sink in. LOL
Do you think that flimsy media card will be outdated???:)
Great ideas…I wish I was an organized as you..I have one HUGE, MEGA file..I need to break it down!
-sandy toe
Great counsel! I feel like I download pics off my camera EVERYDAY! ;D We use the same kind of organizational system – everything is under dates. I’ll be waiting for the next installment! ;D
Great advice! I wasn’t sure if I’d like filing by exact date but now that I’ve gotten used to it, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
We also download frequently and organize by date. We do have some older files from when we first got a digital camera that need to be better organized. Can’t wait to read what’s coming next!
Darcy-
Bless your sweet heart. I totally needed this tutorial last year this time!!!
So, I’ve been a good girl this year. I’ve downloaded everything regularly (gotta get my blog fodder, y’know), backed everything up to the house network, mostly burned all the originals to disks, too. BUT.
But my mac’s been a bad bad boy this year. I think everything has broken on it. Stoopid lemon computer. Good thing Big Dude had the foresight to buy that care package with it. The latest? The harddrive. sob.
So even tho I’ve got everything backed up. And I’ve transferred everything over to my new ‘puter, I can’t get LR to “see” any of my edits. Apparently that involves “finding” them all with a new path. And I’m soooo not about finding a new individual path for 10k photos.
Still working on that solution. sigh. All I want to do is take pretty pictures. I never wanted to become some sort of techie wizard.
Wow. That soliloquy came out of left field. Gotta scoot and get bfast for the dudes…
great post!!
great post!!
What good advice!! Thanks!
I need photo storage advice and suggestions, so I eagerly await the next post. I’m great about taking tons of photos and downloading (uploading?) them immediately off the card…and organizing pretty well…but they’re now taking up way too much room on my hard drive and I’m not backed up either. Except by putting most everything on Shutterfly, so I guess that counts…kind of.
Wow- I always thought I was being overly granular, but I'm doing almost exactly what you suggest for folder structure. The one difference is that I use all numbers and repeat the year/month in subfolders: 2008 > 200812 > 20081225. But I chalk that up to being a programmer nerd.
(@ToddPM)
Great post and great blog
My heart is pounding – LOL – I pray you are going to tell people to back up their photos in your next post.
BTW…I am a rabid fan of your blog but I respectfully disagree on your viewpoint of *not* taking photos at the highest resolution possible. For one thing, a higher resolution allows for a higher quality image after cropping.
It could be I’m just a photo geek though and I can’t imagine having the potential for higher quality and not taking advantage of it. As cheap as photo storage is these days (and I’m talking external hard drives) there’s no reason to worry about image size. JMHO of course!
It drives me nuts to have too many pictures on my camera, so I download frequently, but I don’t think I’m quite as organized as you are. I do put them in separate files, but I’m afraid I won’t remember what file I put them in 6 months from now!
Good post, Darcy. This was quite the quandary for me for awhile. I think I finally have it down. But I never erase pix off my memory card until they’re stored in a minimum of two other places – laptop and CD/DVD. Although these days, I also upload “some” to Flickr, “some” to Shutterfly/Snapfish, and I back up onto an external hard drive. I also once made a complete backup of ALL my photos onto DVDs and took them to my mom’s house. I’ve read far too many stories of people whose computer crashed and they LOST all their pix. That’s a scary, scary thought. I do my best not to be there.
Looking forward to the rest of your series!
Great post! I get tired of saying…cause most people Don’t Listen, until it’s too late!
Okay, I’ll just say it. You are so much smarter than I am!!!
Hey, my new blog for the year has changed titles to http://www.mytwolittlewonders.blogspot.com
Shonda
I never understand it when people leave their pictures on their memory card and 6 months later still haven’t downloaded the pics to their computer. As soon as I take a picture, I head straight to the computer to download it (and erase it off the memory card).
Oh how I wish I were that organized. I’m pretty good about downloading, but putting them into folders and naming and all that? Uh, not so much. Luckily, my handy MacBook does categorize downloads by date, though, which is great.
I like your system. Mine are by event within their years. Those that aren’t tied to anything special (everyday life) are just left in the main year folder. I don’t have a ton, so it works for me.