In our digital age, it's easy to document in photo images practically every moment regardless of big or little importance. Birthday parties, family reunions, a day at the park, the baby's first step... Just grab that digital camera and start snapping away. You don't have to buy film. You don't have to develop the pictures afterwards. You can take multiple shots of the same thing and then go back later and decide which one you like best.

What do you end up with? Well, if you're anything like me, you end up with several hard drives and dozens of CDs full of pictures named things like dscf0034.jpg. There has to be a better way!

Of course, there is. An ounce of organization up front can save you hours of frustrated searching for a particular picture. Here are two possible methods of organization:

1. manually organize your pictures into folders
2. use graphic software to organize them.

Whatever software you're using to download the pictures will most likely automatically save them to a specific place on your hard drive. Sometimes this is the My Pictures folder under My Documents. Other programs will bury the pictures somewhere deep in their own program files. If you can, select where you want the pictures to go yourself. The My Pictures folder is a good place, but it's most important that you save them someplace where you'll be able to find them again. And always save your pictures to the same place so that you don't have to search through multiple directories whenever you want a picture.

Also, you should archive your pictures on a CD as soon as you download them. Label the CD with the events and dates included in the batch (for example: Grandpa's Birthday 2008). Then just set that CD aside, knowing that you have a copy of the original pictures before you make any changes.

Okay, so you've downloaded your pictures. Now is a good time to quickly flip through them and delete any not worth saving. Remember how you took three shots of the whole family outside the restaurant? Pick the one where everyone's eyes are actually open and get rid of the other two. You've already archived the original batch, so you're not losing anything. You're just narrowing down the amount of pictures you'll have to flip through every time you want to find the good one.

Now let's talk about folders. We've already mentioned that a good place to start is in the "My Pictures" directory. It's easy to remember and find. After that, you'll want to create a folder for each year. So, we'll put all the pictures we take this year in a folder called 2008. The next level should be titled by the event. For example, Family Reunion. Now, if your family reunion was a three day affair and you were snapping pictures the whole time, that's going to be a lot of pictures. Go ahead and create subfolders that hold between 30 and 50 pictures each. You might end up with something that looks like this:

- My Pictures
- 2008
- Family Reunion
- The drive down
- Grandma's House
- At the restaurant
- Picnic at the park

The next step is to name your pictures. Remember that the camera will give your pictures a name like dscf0034.jpg. What does that mean? I have no idea. It tells me nothing about the picture except that it happened to be the thirty-fourth one I took in that particular batch. You'll want to rename your picture so that you can tell what it is - without opening it. One way to do this is to include the name of everyone who appears in the picture. So, instead of dscf0034.jpg, you'll have Suzie-Mike-Tammy-Grandma.jpg. Isn't that better? The best part about this method of naming is that now you can search your computer for the word "Suzie" and end up with a list of all the pictures you've taken of her. Whatever you do, be sure to use a consistent naming system.

Sound like a lot of work? Fortunately, there are some software options that can help make things simpler. Just a quick note before we move on though—even if you're going to use software to organize your pictures, it's still good to use folders. That way your organization isn't tied to a particular program and if you decide to change programs, you'll still be able to find your pictures.

Graphic Software for Organizing Photo Images
All right. Let's talk about software. The advantages of using software to organize your pictures are that these programs make it easy to sort and search your pictures, add keywords or descriptions, and make simple corrections (such as removing red-eye). They can also provide a user friendly way to print or share your photos.

There are a lot of options out there, so I'm just going to give you a brief list.

Program	Price	Free Trial?	System
Adobe Photoshop Album 3.2	Free	N/A	Windows XP or Vista
InfranView	Free	N/A	Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista
Picasa 3	Free	N/A	Windows XP/Vista
XnView	Free	N/A	Windows and Mac
Shoebox Express	$30.00	No	Mac
Corel MediaOne Plus	$49.99	Yes	Windows XP/Vista
iPhoto '08 (part of the iLife suite)	$79.00	No	Mac OS X v10.4.11 or later
Adobe Photoshop Elements for Mac	$89.99	Yes	Mac OS X v10.4.8 through 10.5.2
Adobe Photoshop Elements 7	$99.99	No	Windows XP or Vista

Again, there are a lot of options. Before deciding to purchase a program, you should check out a few and decide what fits your needs best. Start with a free program or, if possible, a free trial version of the program you're thinking about buying. Different programs will have different features. Picasa 3, for example, works with gmail, Google's email client. If you're using a gmail address, this is an easy way to not only organize your photos, but also share them with friends and family by putting them into an online album.

One of the nice things about these programs is that they'll often allow you to tag a photo with keywords. Remember how I mentioned naming your photos with the first names of people in them? You can accomplish the same thing by adding the names as keywords. You can also add other descriptive keywords, such as "camping," "beach," or "vacation." These keywords make it possible to search for certain types of pictures that might be spread throughout many different batches. You can also use tags to label your favorite pictures or the ones that you want to go back and edit later.

Whatever program you chose, you'll want to make sure that you periodically back up from the program itself. That way, you'll have a copy of your pictures with the organization intact. Remember that technology is constantly changing, so use a current form of media. A few years ago, floppy discs were in wide use, but today you'd probably be hard pressed to find a machine that has a floppy drive to read one. CDs and DVDs are more popular now, but who knows what we will be using in five or ten years? You never want to find that your backup is useless because its on an obsolete form of media.

Other Suggestions
To wrap things up, I've got just two more general hints for you. If you've got hundreds of digital images to organize and you're always adding more, it might seem like a lot of work to do all this every time you download images. Try creating a folder called Sort in your My Pictures directory. Then if you're downloading images, but don't have time to organize them just then, stick them in the Sort folder. That's an easy way to remember what has been organized and what has not. It also saves you from feeling like you have to do everything all at once. (Don't let your Sort folder just sit there, though. Go back to it when you've got some extra time and get those pictures organized or you'll be right where you started.)

Finally, once you've organized your pictures, make sure to do something with them so they're not just taking up space on your hard drive. Consider putting some of your favorites into a slideshow and sharing it with your family and friends. Print a few out and display them in picture frames or photo albums. The whole point of taking pictures is to preserve a memory, right? So, get them out where they can be remembered!