Organizing Digital Photo Files

The convenience of digital photography is unquestionable. Digital photos have saved us all time that would have been spent developing film and picking up prints. Camera Cards can hold up to 600 photos at a time. . . The only drawback is that you end up bogging down your PC space with all of your images, can't remember which you have already backed up and sometimes can't find the image you are looking for, might even delete one you love b/c you need to clean your camera card and take a new shot immediately.

An easy method to organizing all of these digital files is as follows:
1. Create new folder on your desktop by right clicking with your mouse
Then select "new", then select "folder"
Name the folder with the current year
in this folder you will create 12 subfolders: one for each month
in each month you can also create a folder for each event
As you shoot photos download them into the corresponding folder

2. Pick a date to archive all images depending on how often you shoot and how many photos you take at each event. I try to do this once a month.
You will open the folder then select "copy images to cd" from the left, place a recordable cd in your cd burner and follow steps in pop up box.

3. Once the images have been recorded, select all files (all should be highlighted if done correctly) Then select "file" and "Print". If you have the printing wizard you will follow the directions and choose "contact sheet 35 prints/ page" Print out an index sheet to show you the contents of each cd. Take out the cd, look at the back to be sure images have been burned (you should see rings of slightly different sheen, or open the cd on your computer and double check that all have been burned) Then you can delete the images from your computer.

4. I like to put the contact sheets & newly burned cd in clear sheet protectors made for presentations. They have 3 holes that allow them to easily be inserted and organized into a 3 ring binder. Perfect to store your sheets and cds by date and simple to remove when needed. I write extra notes in the margins such as the size & clarity of the file, event addresses, so on and so forth. . .

*It takes a few hours to do but saves you hours of searching for files and information later. Once you have completed the process a few times it will become simplier and you will be faster at it.