The biggest problem with digital photos is that we all have so many of them.  Managing hundreds or even thousands of photos can be a daunting task.  There is no shortage of digital image programs both desktop and on the web.   Regardless of which program you use, the challenge is staying committed to organizing, adding titles and descriptions, and tagging your photos.  Most of us start with good intentions, but we get busy and whatever system we have adopted breaks down.  Professional photographers call the process that they use their “workflow”.   I am certainly not a professional, but my workflow had to meet the following requirements:

• It had to be as quick and painless as possible.
• My files had to be both on my hard drive and available on the Internet.
• Sharing pictures on the Internet had to be dead simple.
• I only wanted to have one copy (the original) saved, not many versions in different sizes for different uses.
• I needed to be able to host pictures on the Internet and easily add them to my family blog.
• I wanted a way to view random pictures as the background on my computer monitor.

Tools

I use an Olympus IXUS camera to take pictures.  I use Microsoft Digital Image Suite 2006 to import and edit pictures.  I think people should use whatever they like best.   For a long time, I used Adobe Photoshop Elements and liked that too.  For online photo sharing and hosting, I use Flickr.

Workflow

• I transfer my pictures from my camera using Microsoft Digital Image Suite.  I do not use the labeling and editing features of the program.   I use it only for importing and minor editing.
• For each common group of pictures (i.e. John’s Birthday or Trip to Yellowstone),  I create a separate folder on my hard drive using the format:  YYYY-MM-DD or 2006-05-15 followed by a description.  It would look like this,  “2006-05-15 Trip to Yellowstone.”  
• This format insures that my folders appear in chronological order.  This system makes it easy to find the pictures that I want.
• I then view the pictures in slide show mode in Digital Image Suite and delete the ones I don’t want.  At this point, my photos are archived on my hard drive.
• I use the Flickr photo sharing site to share pictures and to host them for use on my web site.   I use the Flickr photo uploadr and load the pictures to Flickr.  During the upload process, I tag (without title or descriptions) each photo, paying special attention to tag the photos with the names of all the people in the photo.   It would probably make more sense to tag photos before uploading them to Flickr, so they would be tagged on the desktop and on Flickr, but alas, Digital Image Suite does not facilitate this.  There are other programs that do.
• Now I have all my pictures on my hard drive and on the web to share with the world.    When I want to access my photos, I typically do it on Flickr using tags to find the photos.
• Flickr allows me to share and email a number of different sizes of my photographs.  Flickr automatically creates the reduced size and format images on the fly, so I never have to keep more than one copy of each picture.  When I want to share an album, I just email the link for the album from Flickr to the recipient.
• Flickr’s open technology also allows me to create links to pictures that I can place on my web site to show pictures.   This means that Flickr is hosting the big files and I do not have to host them on my web site, taking up precious disk space.
• I use John’s Background Switcher to retrieve pictures automatically and make them the background image on my computer.   This great free piece of software is quite flexible and allows me to select which pictures to download by using tags.

There you go.  That’s it.   This workflow fulfills all my requirements for organizing and sharing my digital photos.  Using tags, instead of titles and descriptions saves a lot of time, but there is the trade-off of not having all photos titled and described.
 

Tags: Background, digital, flickr, How To, Johns, Microsoft Digital Imaging Suite, photographs, photography, photos Switcher

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Commentary

1. ZebraStripes wrote on 06. Jun 2006

   Thanks for this great introduction to organizing photos. I am going to try it out myself. You are right, it is all about staying committed to be organized.

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