Organizing and Preserving Your Digital Pictures
Ever since I went digital I have had a backlog of pictures that need to be printed. With 35mm pictures I had a backlog that needed to be scrapbooked but at least they were printed. It was so easy to take in the roll of 35mm film and get it processed. I suppose my plight is one suffered by many digital photographers. My biggest issue is since it’s digital I tend to shoot, shoot, shoot, knowing I can delete later. However there never seems to be a later and I have ended up with WAY too many pictures sitting on my hard drive. So I have set some guidelines for myself and it seems to be helping. I still need to process the backlog but I’m keeping up on the current photos.
1. When I download the pictures from an event I immediately sort and delete the ones that aren’t any good. I don’t need 10 pictures that are nearly the same, pick the best one delete the rest.
2. Burn them to a CD-Rom so you have backup. Label the CD with a sharpie so you know exactly what is on there. I bought a big CD organizing case to put my Photo CD’s in so I can flip through and find them easily if I need one.
3. Select the ones you want to print and upload them to a photo printing service. If you have been printing your pictures yourself at home you need to get over that! First of all it is not cost effective in the long run after you pay for ink and paper. Secondly the quality, no matter how nice your printer is, will not touch professional printing. I’m not saying I don’t print at home, I do when I need the picture right away for something, but when I’m printing a whole event I upload them. I don’t order my prints all at once. I usually wait until I have a fair number then order them to save on shipping. I use Snapfish and have had excellent customer service and product from them. I especially like that I can get matte finish on my photos.
4. If you are like me and have just a huge backlog of digital pictures to process go buy an external hard drive for your computer. They run about $100. The drive will come with software that will back up all the files on your computer. If you ever crash and lose your files, you will have them backed up securely on your hard drive. (Hook up the external drive to back up daily, but don’t leave it hooked up so if some virus wipes you out it doesn’t have access to the external drive.) For $100 it is worth the piece of mind! I lost two months worth of pictures last year with a hard drive crash and while it was nothing I’m heartbroken about, I feel foolish that I lost them at all. It could have been easily prevented.
