Spring Fling Digital Photo Organizing Challenge #15in15in2015 (Day 11: Backups 2 Cloud)

Just to state what is (hopefully) obvious: your computer hard drive where you just organized all your digital pictures is NOT a backup. That’s the home of your originals. A backup must be a second (or third or fourth) copy of your files. By the way, Facebook is NOT a backup! (I’ll talk more about why in a minute.)

So I scolded you enough in the last post about backing up your precious photo collection. By now you should’ve done your physical backups, but THE CLOUD is an incredible off-site solution you also need to use for archiving. Note I said also, meaning “in addition to,” so if you haven’t done your physical backups yet, quit jumping ahead. Do those right now and then come back here to zap your pics to the heavens!

THE MAGICAL CLOUD
The “cloud” is a magical place that’s not really in the sky. But if it makes you feel better envisioning it there instead of in a bunch of boring server rooms across the country/globe, go for it. This online-only option for storage is remote (not local to your own home/office/computer) and redundant (assuming you’ve picked a reputable cloud service). It’s secure and private (again, assumptions abound but precautions can be taken if concerned).

 The absolute best part about anything stored “in the cloud” is that it’s accessible from anywhere. Well, technically anywhere that can get an internet signal. And since that ranges from airplanes and cruise ships these days, it’s pretty safe to say that “pert near” anywhere counts as close enough. Of course, this high-tech option has a major problem if there’s a power outage or internet service is down. You can’t get at your photos like you could if they were printed out and put in 3-ring-binder-type photo albums on your bookshelf.

However, your photos in the cloud will NOT end up waterlogged from the fire department trying to save your house from burning down (or completely turned into ash dust if they were not successful in the least). Unlike your physical backups, your cloud-backed-up photos cannot be wiped out by tornados, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and other examples of Mother Nature’s wrath. This is a major advantage of cloud archival storage.

CLOUD CONFUSION
First of all, let me state what should also be obvious…Facebook (or Instagram) is NOT a backup. While it may be “in the cloud,” these social media communities do NOT save your photos at full resolution for easy download at your convenience. That’s how they lose out on being considered a backup resource. Can you download your Facebook photos, posts & entire history? Youbetcha. And you should at least once a year just for the fun of it. Go here to learn where the data is saved, what is saved and how it can be downloaded to your computer as an archive.

Now that you made all your physical backups, you’re probably feeling pretty archive-savvy. Hopefully I don’t freak you out by mentioning the word “cloud” when it comes to backups! Because that magical “place” should definitely be part of your archive strategy. The trick is that it can be a bit overwhelming with all the options out there. The hardest part is trying to figure out which one is right for your situation and making sure everything is set up correctly to do what it should. After that, it’s pretty much on auto-pilot. Get, it clouds, plane…you with me?

“The Cloud” is not really a white puffy shape holding your data, of course. But it is sort of “out there” or “up there.” That’s why it is an excellent segment of your archive strategy — because your physical copies can be destroyed/damaged/stolen/lost/etc much easier than you may realize. Having a whole drawer full of DVD backups won’t save your photos if your whole house goes up in flames. Or gets soaked by the fire department’s hoses trying to put out the fire. Or if a pipe bursts and soaks through the ceiling right onto your computer and where you store all your external hard drives.

Remember how I said those physical backups needed to at least have one copy in an ALTERNATE LOCATION. This is why. No one knows when something bad is going to happen so being prepared in advance is the only way to insure it doesn’t destroy your photo collection too.

Cloud storage is simply the ability to save files on servers in remote locations that can be accessed via the internet from any enabled computer or device. What makes it so convenient is that it’s always there. No need to carry around your external hard drive or pile of DVD cases to have access to all your images at any time in any place.

March 31st is known as WORLD BACKUP DAY! It’s a day dedicated to reminding everyone the importance of backing up their priceless data, primarily photos in our case! Their warning “Don’t be an April fool!” is an annual reminder to do what should be done regularly, but sadly, is not. Learn more about backups and take the pledge with me on this site.

According to Backblaze, 30% of people have NEVER backed up their files. Yet 29% of disasters are caused by accident, 113 phones are lost or stolen every minute, and 1 in 10 computers are infected with viruses each month (sources per World Backup Day website).

For one thing, if you have physical backups stored in the same room/home as your main computer, and something bad happens to your property, BOTH are gone. Whether that be fire, flood, tornado, hurricane, theft, power surge, or other natural or manmade disaster, the point is that your originals (on the computer) AND your copies (on DVDs or an external hard drives) are likely destroyed as well. Double (or triple) bummer.

Sure, you can send the destroyed devices off to Drive Savers, who work miracles on rescuing data (& I highly recommend their expertise if you are up a creek without a paddle), but that involves risk and cost without a guarantee. Are you willing to risk all that just because you’re too lazy to follow a simple archival strategy? Click the banner link to learn more about what they can do and save 10% on any rescues you may need done.

If you follow my 3-2-1 BACK-UP BLAST-OFF plan, you need 3 copies, in 2 different media formats with at least one of those off-site — as a minimum! 3: Technically, the term “copies” would mean 3 versions IN ADDITION TO the original. But I think you are fine having at least a total of 3 — originals plus 2 copies. 2: To get two different media types, you need to mix up your storage choices. In other words, both copies should not be on external hard drives (EHD) due to high failure rates. Instead, you should have one EHD and one set of DVDs or USB flash drives. 1: Now make one of those copies reside off-site in a location far enough away from your primary location that a tornado, hurricane or flood would not ever affect both places at the same time. 

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I’m sure you’ve heard the Benjamin Franklin quote:

“In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Well, I’d like to amend that by adding “data loss” to his list. It’s almost a given that each of us will have at least one data loss (likely due to technological hardware or software failure) in our lifetimes. The only questionable part is when, because you never know when your time has come. So being properly prepared is the only way to survive this calamity.

Everyone asks…can cloud storage count as off-site? Well, technically yes! It is definitely “off-site” and it’s in another media type so that checks off two of the boxes on our 3-2-1 Back-up Blast-off plan! Some experts warn against cloud storage due to its “stormy” issues of security and privacy. Others point out that some cloud companies have come — and gone due to bankruptcy, taking with them your data in some cases.

In my personal (and professional) opinion, the cloud offers an easy, economical, nearly effortless solution to not only backup but also to sync continual changes to an alternate, off-site option that I can access from almost any digital device via the internet. That’s worth it’s weight in gold to me! I can worry less about data security/privacy problems, although some celebrities with photos of themselves in compromising situations would beg to differ. If you don’t have anything to hide, or I should say, if you aren’t afraid to show or share everything you put in the cloud, then no worries.

However, there are plenty of ways you can protect your data in the cloud, such as passwords, encryption, etc. I won’t go into detail in this post but you can search online for assistance in this area.

My number one rule regarding the cloud as a photo backup strategy is that FACEBOOK IS NOT A PHOTO BACKUP SOLUTION! Neither is INSTAGRAM! Gasp! I know many of you are either freaking out or scratching your head right now. Allow me to elaborate. Facebook and Instagram are social media SHARING sites. Facebook currently stores more than 250 BILLION images. And, more than 100 MILLION photos are uploaded to Facebook each day. Wow-za!

If you want to see a cool visual representation of what happens online in just one second, visit this cool webpage for “live” data updates for Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Google and more.

SIDE NOTE: Many of us prefer to have our photos look their very best on Facebook. We’re not satisfied with the extreme compression and down-sampling Facebook has to do to hold all the photos of you and your friends out on the town, cats doing crazy cool things, and selfies, of course! If you are a professional photographer (or want to play one on the internet), you’ll want to follow these specific instructions for how to get your high-quality photos to be well-represented on Facebook. You can also download this guide if you’re a photographer concerned about Facebook’s (lack of) image quality.

Things to keep in mind:

QUALITY LIMITS
Some cloud backup services offer unlimited free storage, but only for photos that don’t go over a certain file-size limit. This means your “backup” is apples for apples. You have the files, but they aren’t the same high-resolution as your originals.

What does this mean? Say you had a JPG photo file that was from your 12 mega-pixel digital camera. Upload that to Facebook and the max you’ll have is 2048×2048 pixels, or 4.19 megapixels. Same goes for Google+. Twitter shrinks a shared photo down to 375×375 pixels or just 0.14 megapixels. And Instagram, the photo-loving site itself, only allows a maximum of 612×612 pixels, or 0.37 megapixels.

Maybe you’ve witnessed this compression phenomenon firsthand when you tried to download a photo or two off a friend’s Facebook timeline, only to find it was too tiny and poor quality for you to print it out or do anything else with it at all. There are a few solutions to working around this fact. One is offered by Facebook when you upload photos into albums at least. Choose the “high quality” option to limit compression. Other experts suggest making your file a PNG24 instead as those are not being compressed. One thing to consider is the higher-quality photo file will cause the page to load slower so keep that in mind and maybe only use it for certain specific photos.

UPLOAD TIME
One issue to consider with a cloud storage solution is the time it takes for your files to be uploaded via the internet. If you are using your home wi-fi to start a backup with a cloud site, it may freak you out how long the initial backup will take. It depends on how much data you have to backup of course, and the speed (or lack thereof) your ISP offers for uploads.

Typically the base level internet packages do not offer much for upload speeds as most of us are more worried about downloading data. But if you intend to do a major cloud backup, it might be worth asking your ISP for an upgraded plan that bumps your upload speeds to a higher level, at least until your initial backup is complete. After that, the incremental backups won’t take nearly as long!

One other way to speed up your uploads is to NOT use wi-fi but plug directly into your router via ethernet cable. This will ensure the highest possible speeds.

CLOUDS NEED INTERNET
One basic fact is that the cloud needs the internet. Without it, you can’t get to heaven, so to speak. Internet access connects you to the cloud. Most of us are pretty connected in today’s world but if you’ll be in a remote area with limited (or slow) internet access, access to cloud storage will be a challenge.

These days you can get online on planes, cruise ships, trains, vehicles, practically anywhere — so this isn’t usually a concern. However, if you are traveling and can’t access free wifi internet, you’ll be paying for service. When this happens, you typically do NOT want to use your expensive data plan for uploading photos. Save that for when you are on your own free (& protected) wi-fi.

What’s awesome about having your photos stored in the cloud is that they are accessible to you from any internet-enabled device. So you can show and share your pics with anyone right from your mobile device (phone or tablet) while you are away from home, visiting family, on vacation or anywhere on the planet.

THE [KITCHEN] SYNC
Cloud storage isn’t the best unless it can sync, meaning update regularly. Say you upload your photos to your cloud provider. Then you go back and edit a few of those photos. You don’t want to risk losing your updates, do you? And you don’t want to manually go to upload the ones you edit each time back to the cloud. You want it to happen auto-magically! And that’s what syncing can do. It checks every so often (some intervals can be determined by you) to see if any files have been changed. If they have, it will upload the new version to the cloud for you. Done deal.

CLOUD CHOICES
I’m not going to delve into great detail over all the options available as this will become its own specific series at a later date. I will mention many of the choices out there and let you do your own research to decide your best solution. You may want to study their privacy policies, security protocols, sharing options, file types, and of course, storage limits.

Google Drive, Crashplan, and Dropbox are three of the heavy hitters for cloud storage. Best of all, these offer automatic uploading and syncing, which are a must-have when it comes to backing up photos. Unless you are the type who manually backs up photos daily. [I doubt those people exist. And if they do, they certainly aren’t reading my Spring Fling Digital Photo Organizing Challenge blog!]

Personally, I use the first two right now. I’ve only used Dropbox for “other” file types and sharing with colleagues but I know many people depend on it for photo storage too.

GOOGLE DRIVE
The giant among all things online is a pro at saving your stuff. Best of all, if you’ve been using Picasa like me to organize your photos, you are automatically linked to Google for a number of awesome features like Web Albums, backups, and so on. Now there is a whole lesson on Google+ and how that works with your photos but if nothing else, Google gives you a way to save your photos on its servers.

iCLOUD FROM APPLE
Signing up gets you 5GB of free storage with options to upgrade for an additional monthly fee. For example, you can pay $19.99/month for 1TB (terabyte) of storage in the U.S. and Canada. However, that number isn’t just for photos — it also includes Mail, Backup, iCloud Photo Library beta, and iCloud drive, as well as a few other apps that use iCloud to keep files up-to-date across devices. None of the media you’ve purchased counts against that storage though.

If you’re an Apple lover like me, you’ve heard of the recently released (in beta) iCloud Photo Library. The Camera Roll and My Photo Stream were merged into a single “All Photos” album on your device. Learn all about its features and functionality here.

AMAZON CLOUD DRIVE
Another giant in the online world, Amazon offers cloud storage (as well as actually operates cloud storage for the large majority of other cloud storage companies). They know the cloud because in many cases, they ARE the cloud!

A recent announcement was made that all can receive unlimited cloud photo storage as an added benefit. You had better be taking advantage of this as well as your free two-day shipping! It’s a no brainer! It has an app that makes mobile uploads (& viewing) a breeze.

The only hitch is that there’s a 5GB limit for videos (& other file types so if you take quite a few clips of action footage, you’ll reach the limit on that. Of course, you can always buy more storage if need be. Since this news came out, I made sure to take full advantage of this solution and am happy about it so far!

CRASHPLAN/BACKBLAZE
A true backup runs like Crashplan or Backblaze. You set it up and after the initial backup upload to their servers, all backups will be incremental — only updating/adding any new files or recently modified ones through syncing. The best part is that you can put these services on “auto-pilot” so you don’t really have to remember to backup. That said, I’d prefer you take matters into your own hands to consciously impact the youth.

TIME MACHINE BY APPLE
Time Machine is backup software through OSX by Apple. It automatically records to an external hard drive that you designate as your backup.

OTHER OPTIONS:

Shutterfly is the photo printing giant of the industry. Founded in 1999, this massive company owns several brands under its umbrella of photo-gift-related publishing. You can enjoy unlimited photo storage for free with no need to purchase to avoid deletion. One really cool feature of Shutterfly is its recent purchase of the This Life app for organizing photos via mobile, desktop and cloud. I’m a definite fan of this system and will be writing a detailed review in the coming months.

Snapfish is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. Owned by printing/computing giant Hewlett-Packard, it still offers unlimited photo storage for free as long as you buy at least one thing — even if that’s one 9-cent photo print — per year.

Dropbox was designed as a file-sharing site — not necessarily a photo-specific site, although it has evolved into a solution that is often adequate for many users wishing to save their photos.

Flickr is an image-hosting site launched in 2004, but acquired by Yahoo in 2005. A new, much-improved user interface design came out about a year ago that brought back many of the fans who’d left. Giving everyone 1000GB of free space, Flickr’s generous storage policy makes it a favorite of photographers and photo fanatics alike.

SmugMug is a 13-year-old family-owned company that stores your photos online, and so much more. Its highlights include the gorgeous gallery sites you can create yourself to feature your photos. You can even opt to sell them should you choose the commerce options in its Business plan for $25/month. The cheapest Basic plan is just $3.34/mo, with a Power user at $5/mo and a Portfolio package for $12.50/mo.

Mylio is not necessarily a cloud hosting solution only. It’s a brand-new photo organizing option that definitely looks like an ideal choice for me. I’m only new to it so I can’t fully vouch for it but intend to “test” it extensively this year. Maybe I’ll be able to do a full review in a few months. I do know that it has the seal of approval from many top photographers in the industry so that should say something.

PictureLife, Trunx, Shoebox and Dropshots are all options with an app that I’ve been using for a while now. I’ll cover these at a later date.

In summary, know that the cloud should be part of your 3-2-1 Back-up Blast-off plan as it satisfies two of the three criteria — a non-physical copy that’s not physically present.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about sharing photos on social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and so on.

Spring Fling Digital Photo Organizing Challenge #15in15in2015 (Day 10: Backups 1)

Back-em up, buttercup! Today we’re talking about the only way you can truly save your photos. Think about all the forward progress you made over the past 9 days. Feels pretty awesome, doesn’t it?

Now imagine all those sorted, named, labeled, captioned, starred, tagged, face identified, album-arranged photos disappearing in the blink of an eye. GONE! One second and all your effort is vaporized. Hurts, huh?

From external hard drives (top shelf) to optical media like CDs & DVDs (bottom shelf), physical backups are an easy, economical solution, but they are only PHASE ONE in your archival strategy!

My goal is to help you avoid the agony of regret by proactively preserving your pictures. To do that, you need to back them up. Sure, you say, duh, I knew that. Oh yeah, well how many of you have actually done it? On a regular basis? With 3 copies in 2 different formats with one being off-site? Yeah, I thought so. Feeling a bit inadequate right now? That’s okay. You’re not alone at all. But we don’t want you to be sob story of what happens when your computer crashes, hard drive fails, tornado wipes out your whole house, or the kids accidentally spill a can of soda over your laptop.

They’re called accidents because they aren’t planned. But you CAN plan on being prepared by taking the steps today to (finally!) get your photos (& other files if you wish) archived.

You must have an archival strategy. This includes not only the choice of media and location of storage solutions, but also the schedule or system for performing regular, routine backups beyond this initial archive of your photo collection.

Would you believe that today’s “Digital Generation” is in danger of losing everything? Their entire life history in photos? While they may be the most photographed generation, they are at risk to have no pictures in a decade? One photographer wrote a thought-provoking blogabout this growing problem. He feels that most of what we shoot today isn’t really important enough to print. Or save. So sad. Hope that’s not the case — and it must not be if you’re here bothering to read this & do my daily steps for 15 days to get organized!

PHYSICAL BACKUPS CAN’T BE BEAT
First of all, let me state what should be obvious…your computer hard drive where you just organized all your digital pictures is NOT a backup. That’s the home of your originals. A backup must be a second (or third or fourth) copy of your files. By the way, Facebook is NOT a backup! (I’ll talk more about that next when I cover DIGITAL backups.)

Anyone remember these? Floppy disks that weren’t even floppy! Only the first larger versions were if you old folks remember that. Then we went to these sturdy plastic versions. But they were replaced by CDs, which then went to DVDs, and now we’re starting to see Blu-Ray discs as an even larger-capacity solution!

Consider the life expectancy of your media choice. If something has an average life span of 5 years, that means HALF of those devices will fail before that! Here in Vegas, we call that “the roll of the dice!” Can you easily make another copy of your media? Can you easily update your backup to add in your newer files? Can you be sure that technology will be around 5 years from now?

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES
One easy physical way to back up all your photos from your computer hard drive is to use an external hard drive, or EHD. This is like a second computer (minus the operating system & such) so it makes sense to copy your photos onto it.

With the price of EHDs dropping and the capacity rising, you can find a huge terabyte hard drive for less than $70. That’s a small price to pay for the peace of mind and safekeeping of your entire digital photo collection, especially if you consider at least a few of those shots to be pretty priceless!

Most of them simply plug in via USB to your computer, making it fairly simply to copy the files over. And should the need arise, you can easily restore your photos from that EHD backup to a new computer if that’s the case. (Congrats on the new hardware, by the way! I’m jelly! That’s jealous, for you non-hipster lingo peeps!)

Portable hard drives are an ideal peripheral product because they don’t require external power, are small enough to carry conveniently, and work with multiple computers for file sharing/syncing. Most models come with backup software to ensure automatically scheduled backups and file syncing in a compact, phone-sized package. Granted, the smaller they are, they easier they are to lose, or drop — both of which will ruin your backup strategy!

Western Digital is a respected name in data storage. This thin 1 terabyte USB drive with auto backup software is on sale at Amazon for just $65 (Prime eligible)! The 2TB model is priced at $99. Wowza! Click the image to order from Amazon or to shop for other brands, capacities, and styles.

I own numerous external hard drives. My first ones were larger and required a power source. My most-recent ones are thin, tiny and only need USB power. Surprisingly, the smaller ones hold more photos and cost much less than the earlier editions!

The other problem is that some 90% of EHDs will fail. Typically within the five years of life. With. No. Warning. Could be 6 months in, or 2.5 years or 4-plus years. Since you don’t know when it will one day croak, you can’t simply depend on just this backup either. And you have to plan to upgrade your EHDs every couple years. Kind of like trading in your car/phone/computer for a newer, updated model.

By all means, use an EHD, but with caution and care, realizing their days are numbered and you’ll never know when its death will suddenly cost you all of your priceless digital photos. Better yet, get two of them and rotate them every so often, keeping one drive off-site. I’ll talk more about this in a bit.

USB/THUMB DRIVES
You might be lured into thinking a simple USB flash/thumb drive can solve all your problems as a small, economical backup source. And you might be just fine. In fact, some research shows that these are often a very stable storage device with a life expectancy of 5 to 8 years, slightly longer than optical media like the standard DVD.

Until, that is, the USB drive gets lost because it’s so tiny and portable. Or left in a pocket that goes through the washing machine. Or splashed by a spill of coffee or water. In other words, these tiny backups are the ultimate in convenience, but they can also be damaged or lost, effectively deleting all your photos. So this isn’t the only option you should use as a backup either.

OPTICAL MEDIA OPTIONS
If you don’t have a zillion (or so) photos to back-up, you might be able to back them up to optical media such as a CD or DVD. These media are often extremely economical and easy to burn from your computer hard drive. My suggestion is to stick to DVD for the greater file capacity as it holds 4.7GB vs. 700MB on a CD. I’m sure you have more than 700MB of photos. Otherwise you are crazy…go take more pictures! Now! The next step beyond DVD is the Blu-Ray disc that can hold up to 50GB on a dual-layer disc. That’s about 10 standard DVDs or 70 recordable CDs! And there’s talk of even larger capacity discs on the horizon — one company is offering a 100GB version any day now!

THE GOLD STANDARD
When it comes to DVDs, there are plenty of cheap, department-store brands sold in bulk. That said, there are also more-expensive options that are expressly made for archiving. These are often called “gold” DVDs, but the color isn’t the only way you can tell. Usually a premium price tag buys you greater peace of mind that the media will not fail as easily or as soon. Of course, most of them don’t offer a warranty or refund if it does before their advertised life expectancy. And even if they did, it doesn’t mean you get your photos back — just some cash back, which may help you buy file recovery software to try to rescue your lost JPGs. For the sake of today, I’ll keep this positive!

Most DVDs burn data into an organic dye layer that begins to degrade and fade right away, leading to “data rot.” In fact, the National Archives warns that the shelf life of a standard recordable DVD may be as short as 2 years, although a general estimate is 3-7 years on average.

Get Delkin’s Archival Gold DVD-R “100 Year Disc” with Scratch Armor Surface 25-pack spindle for just $79.95 (Amazon Prime).

A Delkin Archival Gold DVD is advertised to last 100 years, while their 25GB Blu-Ray version is promoted with a 200-year life expectancy! According to their website, “Archival Gold is the only storage medium guaranteed 100% uneditable, inerasable and tested to endure up to 200 years, based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology.” Now that’s a few generations worth!

Verbatim claims to be the “Number 1 Optical Brand in the World” as it sells a full-line of discs, including UltraLife™ Archival Grade Gold DVDs for 100-year life. It also offers a Photo DVD-R product specifically for archiving photos. It uses patented AZO™technology to secure the original quality of the digital image, plus a Crystal coating applied to protect the recording layer and label surface from data-damaging scratches.

SET IN STONE
When it comes to archival, stone scribbles have stood the test of time for the most part. Just like cavemen scribed their lives on the walls of their cave, the M-Disc actually etches your data onto a stone-type surface, offering what the company promotes as 1,000-year storage solution. Now that’s what I call long term! I’m a big fan of the M-Disc product line but it does require a compatible drive to burn them so read all about them on their website. Or click the image of the 15-pack spindle below to buy them (& the external drive) on Amazon!

Click to shop for a 15-pack of 25GB M-Disc Blu-Rays & the compatible drive for recording them right on Amazon! And yes, they are eligible for free shipping with PRIME!

R+ OR R- BUT NOT RW
Whether you go with DVD-R or DVD+R depends on your computer and DVD drive. However, it should go without saying not to choose RW discs but if you don’t pay attention, you might end up with a spindle of these. While they are great for storing documents you need to temporarily access and transport, they are terrible for long-term archival storage because they can easily (albeit accidentally) be written over. Does anyone remember the long-ago days of the lowly VCR tape when you’d discover you taped over something else you wanted to keep? Argh! Choose DVD-R or DVD+R only.

OFF-LABEL USE
While I’m a big fan of labeling your backup discs, please be very careful with anything that goes ON the actual disc. You’re better off printing something that goes on the case and using a basic Sharpie pen to identify the contents of the disc. I’ve heard far too many horror stories of paper sticker labels that get ripped up and caught inside your computer’s disc drive, ruining both at once!

Now there are inkjet printable discs that eliminate the potential paper problems of earlier options. Look for this option when purchasing your DVDs. You can design a printed “label” for each DVD that includes a representative photo (or collage), and any text and dates to help identify the photos included on it.

PRINT FILE WINDOW
One thing you’ll want to do besides labeling your actual DVD is printing out the file directory list of what’s on it. To do this, you can use the PRINT SCREEN, PASTE & PRINT process in Windows. Or you can run a command to generate a list.txt file for editing later using thesestep-by-step directions.

On a Mac, it used to be as easy as choosing the Print Window option from the menu bar before OSX came to be. Since then, it requires some jumping through hoops or taking a screen shot to paste into something else so you can print it.

Or you could try out a nifty software app aptly named Print Window that lets you control which folders/files to expand and print, plus adjust the font and size. It has auto-format options for fitting onto a CD jewel case or DVD box case. You can even make a photo proof contact sheet showing thumbnails of all your images! How handy would that be? I’m sold on this idea but will have to try out the free version. The full version is $20 but if it helps me print files & folders for all my archives, including contact sheets of all my images, it would be well worth it. Of course, printing these in color will be rather costly ink-wise, especially if you have as many images as I do. Saving them as a PDF you can open and reference at any time probably makes more sense than a full physical copy.

Picasa’s “Print Contact Sheet” can be a helpful feature! Click here to view it larger.

Better yet, Picasa has a built-in feature to print a contact sheet from a folder. Simply select a certain folder first, then click the FOLDER menu to choose “Print Contact Sheet..” and you’ll see them nicely organized by thumbnails with the album name and date. You’ll have an option to either “shrink to fit” or “crop to fit” the pics into the thumbnails. Click on the other choice to see your options & pick a fave. I noticed it rotates any vertical photos sideways, probably to show enough of the image, although it still bothers me a bit.

DATA CORRUPTION
Any archival solution runs the risk of data corruption, transfer failure or device death/obsolescence. Some experts say you should regularly check your data source by “running” it once in a while to actively seek and open a few files. That way, if you start to see any fishy behavior, you might be able to salvage the majority of your data before the whole thing blows. For your long-term archival storage, the pros suggest occasional testing of the data once every 6 months and migrating to a newer (or just different) media source every 3-5 years.

SAFE STORAGE
Aside from the obvious advice about putting the cap back on USB thumb drives, you’ll need to keep CDs/DVDs in their cases, and carefully handling them by their edges only to avoid fingerprints and scratches.

Don’t forget about storage solutions to keep your special backup disks safe from scratches, extreme temperature swings, dust, and such. Careful handling and using the case is a start. If you end up with a large collection of discs, you’ll need to find a way to store them.

This handsome double-wide CD/DVD storage box safely & smartly stores your archives in a classy way that looks great on display. For less than $10 with Amazon Prime, you can also opt for the one to hold DVDs in their larger box cases.

To be literal, I suppose you could keep them in a fireproof, theft-proof safe in your home. Or better yet, at the bank in a safe deposit box, which gets you the ultimate in protection as well as off-site benefits.

However, you can just keep the cased discs in a cool, dark, dry space, such as your a shelf in your bedroom closet, in a dresser drawer or in a box under a bed.

Do NOT keep optical discs in the garage, basement or attic, as the extreme temperature swings and humidity will degrade the data. Ideally, your data archives need to be kept in a space that’s heated and cooled, depending on your location and season, as well as one that handles humidity. That’s why an off-site storage space won’t work unless it’s an indoor one that’s climate-controlled.

To avoid heat, cold, humidity, dust, debris, scratches, fingerprints, or sunlight, please do NOT store optical discs or delicate drives inside your vehicle, kids’ rooms, bathroom, kitchen, laundry room, outdoor storage shed, shoebox buried in the yard, etc. Try to keep them away from water, dust, bright sunlight, harsh surfaces, kids, and extreme temps.

PHOTO PRINTS
I can’t talk about physical backups without mentioning the lowly photo print! Remember these? Back in the days of film, everyone HAD to print their pictures just to see what you shot. Now it seems like if we’ve “seen” it in our camera or phone, we don’t even bother getting a physical copy to hold. And that’s a crying shame!

Should you (or could you) print ALL of your digital photos? Probably not. I know I couldn’t. I wouldn’t want to pay for all those prints, no matter what the sale offer. Let alone the shipping cost. I also don’t want to pile up a zillion (that’s about how many I have) photo prints that I would then have to sort, organize, label, and store somehow.

It just doesn’t make sense to turn an all-digital collection into a physical prints one, as that has its own issues with space, clutter, and safe-keeping, of course. How many of you have had a toddler tear/Sharpie/crumple/etc a printed photo? So that’s not the only solution either.

But you SHOULD print SOME (or all) of your STARS! If all else failed, and I mean your digital backups on hard drives, thumb drives, DVDs, and such, you’d still have printed copies of your most prized photos. And those can be scanned into digital files again if absolutely necessary. At that point, your slight quality degradation from losing an iteration of your image will be the least of your worries. If this sentence didn’t make much sense to you, that’s okay. It’s just pointing out the fact that a copy of a copy is never as nice as the original. If you’ve ever tried to photocopy a crappy photocopy, you know what I mean. It doesn’t get better, that’s for sure!

I’m not going to analyze or advise on WHO/WHERE to get photo prints made, but I can tell you that the quality and service you’ll get from a local photo retailer (real store run by photo experts) will always outperform any online option or discount department store. You can Google side-by-side comparisons of quality (paper and color and clarity) for about any mainstream service on the market. You do want the colors to be true and sharp. And if the paper isn’t archival-quality, it won’t last as long as it should, defeating the point of having it as a backup to your backups. But if you aren’t prepared to handle the prints when they come into your home, you’ll soon be looking for blogs on how to organize prints. What’s that you say? You already have that problem too? No worries. I’ll be covering that soon but this is my primary concern — and should be yours too!

But the primary point for printing your photos is to ENJOY them, share them and show them off. Put them in frames around your home and office. Don’t let them be held hostage on your hard drive! Or be an unknown entity on a shiny circular DVD. Let them come to life in your own life!

I’ll talk more about ideas for printing beyond the basic 4×6 photo print but if you do nothing else, printing your starred favorites and putting them out to be seen and shared will still be considered a victory!

Groovebook is a great phone app to quickly (& cheaply) print the pictures off your mobile phone! Each month, you can get 100 pics printed (& shipped to your door) for $2.99. Try them out for a free Groovebook with my KRUSE58 code! I’ve been doing this a full year now, and many months I end up ordering a couple to get all mine printed.

GET IN THE GROOVEBOOK
I’ve become a fan of the Groovebook app, which was recently bought out by Shutterfly after appearing on the TV show Shark Tank. For $2.99/month, it prints 100 photos from my mobile phone and ships them to my door. It’s super simple to select the ones you want to upload, and then the app automatically processes the print order on your monthly deadline day and ships you this fun booklet of your prints.

Each print has a perforated edge so you can choose to keep them in the book as a whole, like a mini photo album of sorts. Or, tear out the ones you want to share with loved ones, frame or scrapbook. Photo quality is not the highest but it’s an almost hands-off, relatively instant way to get pictures printed off my iPhone at least. I’ll talk about this more in a later post about playing & publishing your pictures. Use CODE (KRUSE58) to get a free Groovebook sample of your own!

PHYSICAL LIMITS
Obviously, any physical backup system is at risk for natural disasters, including fire, flood, tornado/hurricane, theft, and unsupervised toddlers. So even if you have your photos on your main computer hard drive, an external hard drive, a set of DVDs, flash drives and prints organized into albums…you’ll lose them all in an instant with Mother Nature’s wrath or a homeowner incident if they are all kept in the same general location (your home or office).

Drive Savers is a trusted name in data recovery so if you have something happen, call them right away! Here they explain the 3 main types of catastrophic circumstances — physical, logical (if you can call accidentally deleting your photos “logical”) & what I call, Mother Nature’s wrath. They also have a fun part of their site called the “Museum of Bizarre Disk-asters” highlighting catastrophic circumstances & their rescues! Learn all about them by clicking this image.

Redundancy (multiple copies) is a key strategy in archiving but if all those copies are in the same physical geographic location, you’re risking it all. “Colocation” is a technical term that can refer to off-site data storage but it applies to your own photo backup too. Move at least one copy of your backups to a second location that’s outside your primary computer’s location. Even better is to make sure your backup-to-the-backup is in an off-site location that’s outside your same region. In other words, a tornado/hurricane/earthquake can wipe out a stretch of a town that could include BOTH your home and your mom’s house if you’re only a few blocks away. Think further out like a different town, or state! Sure, you may have to ship it there or deliver it when you go to visit but you can rest easy knowing that the same natural disaster is not likely to affect both copies!

Click to buy the perfect cases for all your CDs & DVDs! Slim to fit more on a shelf & colorful for coordinating your files! Image links to this best-selling product on Amazon, currently just $10.48 & Prime eligible!

JUST IN CASE
The easiest way to keep your optical media safe is to store them in cases. If you buy the economical disc spindle, you’ll want to buy coordinating cases. There are now slim versions that don’t take up as much space on a shelf.

You can also store them inside vinyl sleeve pocket sheets that go into 3-ring binders. Some are made to look extra nice like high-end photo albums you wouldn’t mind looking at on your bookshelf or desk.

Other disc storage devices depend on how many you’ll need to hold. Always buy more space than you currently have discs so there’s room to grow/add as you continue your archiving efforts. Tomorrow I’ll cover the digital side of archiving by backing up to the CLOUD! Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it until you understand.

Want a fancy but durable, dust-free case for 80 discs? Here’s one economical ($14.89) version on Amazon Prime.

Upgrade to gorgeous shelf storage for your DVDs/CDs with these leather-look albums on Amazon. The pages inside are sleeves for discs so each album holds many discs.

DAY 10 — 15 MINUTES. LET’S GET PHYSICAL WITH OUR BACKUPS!

Set your phone’s timer or stopwatch for 15 minutes and determine your backup strategy by deciding how you’ll backup your photos — to CD/DVDs, flash/thumb drives, external hard drives. Decide which photos to print and how you plan to print.

Now open Picasa and click on at least one album or folder. Under the TOOLS menu, choose “Back Up Pictures…” to then see all your available photos to select for backup. After you check all the boxes for the ones you want (or just “select all”), Picasa will total up how many GBs you’ll need, even how many DVDs or CDs that would take. Of course, if you backup to a large-enough external hard drive or flash drive, you’ll only need to do the backup “BURN/COPY” process once.

Be sure to create a backup “set” to identify which pictures, where to back them up, whether to include all files, all pictures (no videos), or just JPEGs with camera information. I recommend ALL to be safe, but you can test how big the backup would be with the various options. Maybe you’ll just want to backup videos elsewhere or whatever may be. After you create this “set,” you can choose it next time to do an “incremental backup,” meaning just the ones that have been added or modified since the initial backup. Yes, you’ll be revisiting this step in the future so get familiar with it!

In summary, your DAY 10 DUTIES:

1. DETERMINE YOUR ARCHIVAL STRATEGY BY CHOOSING THE MEDIA TYPES YOU WILL USE FOR BACKUPS.
2. ORDER ANY PERIPHERAL PRODUCTS YOU NEED FOR ARCHIVING (CD/DVD/BLU-RAY DISCS & RECORDING DRIVES, EXTERNAL/PORTABLE HARD DRIVES, USB FLASH DRIVES, CASES & STORAGE SOLUTIONS).
3. OPEN PICASA AND LOOK UNDER THE TOOLS MENU FOR “BACK UP PICTURES.”
4. CREATE A BACKUP SET TO CHOOSE THE MEDIA & FILE TYPES, THEN SELECT ALL THE ALBUMS & FOLDERS TO BURN/COPY YOUR BACKUP TO THE SOURCE YOU CHOOSE.
5. AFTER CREATING/BURNING MULTIPLE COPIES OF YOUR ARCHIVE, PUT THEM IN APPROPRIATE LOCATIONS USING PROPER SAFE STORAGE SOLUTIONS. 
6. MARK YOUR CALENDAR (SCHEDULE A REMINDER IN YOUR PHONE) TO SYNC UPDATED PHOTOS TO YOUR BACKUP SOURCES & SWAP OUT THE DEVICES AS NEEDED.

WHOA WARNING
Be sure to backup your ALBUMS as well as your folders! Because, if you remember, the FOLDERS are where your photos actually reside. Your ALBUMS need to be saved too so Picasa can retain all your organization as well. Otherwise if you load these onto another computer later, all that effort will be lost. You’ll still have your JPGs of course, and the tags that you identified them with, but not all that helpful organization and details from your ALBUMS. You can also backup your PEOPLE albums, or FACE/NAME tags. Re-read my post on that to make sure your faces get saved correctly WITH the photo file so you don’t lose all that priceless “people” info!

TALKING TIME LIMITS
This step might take some time as burning optical media discs depends on the speed of the drive. It may be something you let run overnight or while you go somewhere until it finishes. It may also take a little time messing around with printing your files/folders to go with the discs and drives. Unless you’ve already used this feature, your first few will take longer but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to archive as fast as can be.

Remember, this is your initial backup so it will take the longest. After this, your backups will only be incremental, meaning much less waiting while your files copy! Unless, of course, you wait far too long (like 6 months to a year) before doing another backup…then you’ll have to wait a while too!

© Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Spring Fling Digital Photo Organizing Challenge #15in15in2015 (Day 9: Albums)

Who wants to be a photo organizing rock star and record your first album? That’s what we’re doing today in our 15-minute “recording” session. These will be your “Best of” or “Greatest Hits” collection that’s sure to go platinum! To be number one on the charts, you have to choose your best photos and sort them into albums to best save and share them.

BE A PHOTO ORGANIZING ROCK STAR — MAKE ALBUMS
Back in my day, music “albums” were also known as records, or vinyl. Today, youngsters with their divine digital birthright can’t comprehend this prehistoric music concept as they hardly understand CDs, let alone LPs!

Although the term continues to linger in the industry much like the fact that iPhones use a “camera ROLL” to hold your photos, the word album still generally refers to a collection of music worth sharing. Another way to think about albums is like a playlist in iTunes. It’s just a set grouping of favorites you chose and organized in a certain way.

Well it’s the same concept for photos! An ALBUM we make in Picasa is a collection of your photos — not all of them, preferably just the STARS! No, we’re not talking about those 1980s edition photo albums with the sticky page you peel back to stick your prints inside.

(Side note: If you think you’re all set with your photographs from the past because you have your prints stored “safely” in photo albums like the ones mentioned, I hate to burst your bubble but these have been proven UNSAFE for photos, and are actually eating your pictures up as time goes on! Please pull out all your prints from these old photo albums immediately to avoid any additional damage! Now back to our regularly scheduled post about digital…)

ALBUMS AREN’T FOLDERS
The big thing to remember is that Picasa doesn’t treat ALBUMS the same as FOLDERS. Your photos only exist in their folders! Making an album in Picasa does NOT duplicate them on your hard drive. An ALBUM simply points to the photos that reside in their usual location. They’re basically a “virtual view” of your photos.

So to delete a photo for real, do it from your FOLDERS section and the image will be gone for good. Delete it from an album and it just removes the reference to it in that instance. It doesn’t do anything to the real JPG.

By the way, Picasa only shows folders that have at least one photo in them. So if you have some empty folders, they won’t show here until there’s at least one JPG in it.

Take extra caution if you want to delete an entire folder because it will also delete any subfolders inside it. That’s why using the “tree view” helps avoid mistakes like this because you can see the parent folder and any related “children” folders inside/under it. Only delete from the lowest-level subfolder so you don’t accidentally delete a folder, or nested folders, by accident.

Flat folder view arranges them by date or name (view options) but the tree view shows them exactly as they are on your hard drive. Under “view options,” you can sort by name or date, and reverse sort to get the opposite effect.

In Picasa’s Collections List along the left side, you’ll see ALBUMS, PEOPLE, PROJECTS and FOLDERS. (You may see a few other categories but these are the main ones). TIP: In the FOLDERS section, if you select the “tree view” instead of the default “flat folder view,” you can see them in the same hierarchical structure as you have them on your hard drive — the same thing we did on the first few days. The tree view helps you see the event sub-folders in relation to your sorted date folders. We covered PEOPLE and name tags yesterday. We’ll talk about PROJECTS another day. So today is ALBUMS!

NEW ALBUMS ROCK
Say you went on an incredible vacation and took 1000 (or whatever exorbitant number) of photos of your trip. No one, I repeat…NO ONE, is going to want to look at ALL of your pics no matter how amazing you say they are. Unless you are a National Geographic photographer, then maybe. You’ll need to cull the collection down to a more-reasonable summary or highlight reel that people will enjoy (rather than endure) viewing.
If you’ve already done your STAR process to find your favorites (& you should’ve since that was Day 5!), this step is uber-easy. Click on a folder with quite a few pictures in it. (Make sure this folder has marked stars in it.) Click the “SELECT STARRED PHOTOS” yellow star icon at the top left near the folder name. It will highlight any star photos in that folder and show them as tiny thumbnails in the Photo Tray (lower left corner). Just click “Add selected items to an Album” with the “blue book” button just to the right of this.

A drop-down menu asks you to create a “New Album” (or put them in an existing album if you have one or more). New Album pops up a Properties window (shown below) so you can add details beyond just the name and date. Yes, you should fill in the “optional” details of Place taken & Description (caption/story)! If you plan to view this album in a slideshow or movie (& you probably will), you can check the box to use music and find that file on your computer too.

For this example, I selected some STAR shots from my New Year’s Eve fireworks photos. Now I can create an ALBUM of Strip Fireworks Photos. I can add past year’s fireworks to this same album. And even ones from July 4th if I want! So all my best Vegas Strip fireworks shots will be in one place for easier viewing and sharing!

You can add more photos to this ALBUM at any time from any other folder. If you went on vacation to several of Utah’s National Parks, you could make albums for “Best of Bryce” and “Best of Zion” but you could also group those together into a “Best of Utah” album. Again, these are NOT copying the photos — just pointing to them where they already safely reside in their sorted & labeled folders on your hard drive.

Another excellent use of ALBUMS would be for grouping your favorite photos of a certain person, maybe your children. Of course, you can always use the PEOPLE feature for this but sometimes you want to see just your all-time faves, not ALL their pics. To make this album, look in the PEOPLE collection under that person. Click to “select starred photos” and create an album for the “Best of FILL-IN-THE-BLANK NAME.”

Now after you are done uploading new photos and doing your star/caption/tag efforts, you can quickly drop the ones you love most into these special “highlight reel” albums. That said, this is ideal for any high school seniors who want those graduation slide shows! Make your own by clustering them into an ALBUM right in Picasa. Now click the green arrow “PLAY FULLSCREEN SLIDESHOW” for your new “blue-book” album and modify the effects as you wish. You can also create a COLLAGE or a full-fledged MOVIE PRESENTATION complete with title slides, clips, captions and more.

Another fun option in Picasa is to look under the CREATE menu for “Create a Gift CD.” This lets you put specific photos together onto a CD, and even lets you opt to include a copy of Picasa so the recipient can view them easily, along with an optional slideshow as well.

DAY 9 — 15 MINUTES. ROCK THE STAR ALBUMS!

Set your phone’s timer or stopwatch for 15 minutes and open Picasa. Figure out what photos you’d like to pull into an ALBUM from your starred favorites. Open that FOLDER, click the “select starred photos” star icon and put the selected items into their own album with the “blue book” icon to the right of the photo tray. Create a new album (fill in properties pop-up window) and then fill from other folders as you wish. You can also right-click on any photo to “add to album” or create new album with it.

By pulling out your best photos and arranging them into sorted photo ALBUMS that make sense, you’ve made your entire photo collection more meaningful! As a reward when done making your rock “star albums,” enjoy playing your full-screen slideshows (with or without captions on)!

In summary, your DAY 9 DUTIES:

1. OPEN PICASA & VIEW A FOLDER WITH STARRED PHOTOS IN IT THAT YOU WANT TO PUT INTO AN ALBUM.
2. CLICK THE YELLOW STAR ICON TO “SELECT STARRED PHOTOS” SO THEY GO INTO THE PHOTO TRAY.
3. CLICK THE “BLUE BOOK” ICON TO THE RIGHT OF THE TRAY TO CREATE A NEW ALBUM.
4. FILL OUT THE NEW ALBUM PROPERTIES FOR BETTER SEARCHING & REFERENCE LATER.
5. PULL IN ANY OTHER PHOTOS TO THIS ALBUM & MAKE OTHERS AS NEEDED TO SORT OUT YOUR BEST “STAR” PHOTOS FOR EASY SHARING & SAVING. 
6. VIEW FULL-SCREEN SLIDESHOW, MAKE A PHOTO COLLAGE OR MOVIE PRESENTATION, OR CREATE A GIFT CD WITH YOUR “BLUE BOOK” ALBUMS.

WHOA WARNING
Remember, ALBUMS are just virtual playlists that reference your photos from their location in FOLDERS. If you make albums and delete all your folders, you will have a mess because the albums won’t be able to find the actual photo! Same goes for moving your folders around. If you change the location, the album will get “lost” trying to find those photos again. You can usually correct this but that’s why I didn’t tell you about this until AFTER we’ve done all our organization, sorting and folder naming. Hopefully you don’t have to modify them much so your albums stay together.

An easy way to remind yourself is that folders are always shown as blue manilla folders and albums are always shown as blue books. 

TALKING TIME LIMITS
This shouldn’t take too long and it should be a fun process. It depends entirely on how many albums you choose to create. Don’t skip this step as it’s a valuable one because it physically shows you the best of the best — your favorite photos you cherish the most! These are the ones you’d be heartbroken if they were lost…whether that be to theft of your laptop, hard drive crash, accidental deletion or failed backup. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post about just that — backups!

© Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Spring Fling Digital Photo Organizing Challenge #15in15in2015 (Day 7: Tags)

To carry on our story-saving, memory-preserving caption-writing efforts of yesterday, we’re going to learn about keywords, also known as tags, which are helpful facts that will give your photos an added level of organization by making them easily searchable.

JUST GOOGLE IT
Think about how you simply go to Google and type in whatever words are in your brain to describe the topic you seek. Those word choices are “search terms” that are essentially metadata. Imagine if you could Google “Paul’s 4^th birthday” and it would magically find all those photos in an instant and show them to you. That would be pretty awesome, right? Well, guess what? We’re going to do that process for your pictures so you can type in some basic terms/keywords/tags and let Picasa be your Google to pull the pics with those matching words. Woohoo!

Now just to clarify for you security-scaredy-cat folks, your photo metadata CANNOT really be read by Google or any other search engines. I’m merely pointing out that it works in a similar fashion to a search engine, but this searching is all done on your own computer to find your own photo files!

Maybe I should’ve used the example of a stock photo website instead. It allows you to search for specific terms to find the perfect image from its vast gallery. Without those search terms (keywords) tagged to the images, they won’t be easily found.

If you’ve looked at a stock photo site, click on an image and check out the keyword list. I’m sure you’ll find a few that don’t seem like words you’d use to describe that photo, but that’s why the success of keywording partially depends on thinking like the person who will be searching. Great news if it’s going to be you most of the time! You know you best!

METADATA MANIA
What in the world is metadata and why must I learn another tech term? Metadata is hidden information attached to every image file that provides additional details for your reference. Why on earth do I care, you ask?

In addition to the image data of your JPG, each image also contains technical information from the camera that captured it. Facts about the camera model, date/time, lens, aperture, ISO, flash, and location (if geo-tag enabled) are recorded to an EXIF file that always stays with the image. You can usually view this info by clicking the “get info” or “properties” menu for any photo, although it’s not often editable.

Commonly called “keywords” or “tags,” metadata is “hidden” data that is tied to your JPG, adding helpful information that can be used to find a specific photo when searching. Obviously, the camera does its job and auto-generates the “capture” specifications and the “when” with the date/time (if your camera is set properly!). But you’ll need to fill in the other blanks about who, what, where and why.

The computer allows us to add these fields of keywords to any image. In addition to the camera’s EXIF, two other types you can add with a computer are called IPTC from the 1970s and the newer style XMP developed by Adobe in 2001. These include geographic location, copyright notice, creator, contact info, and of course, captions, among other details.

People tend to prefer the word “tags” because it makes you think of price tags or gift tags that are attached to items and give you helpful information such as “This is THAT much?” or “That’s for me?”

In today’s social media-savvy world, we could also think of them a bit like #hashtags, which are primarily found on Instagram and Twitter. If you don’t understand those, don’t stress as this isn’t about that but it may help some of you get a grip on what tags are and why we do it.

Web designers use keywords when creating sites to improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Maybe we should call what we’re doing Photo Recall Optimization (PRO)? I know I’d like to be a PRO at it! And with Picasa’s tags and captions, I can be!

TAG, YOU’RE IT
Picasa makes it super easy to add tags to any photo. Just click on the small yellow “tag” icon in the lower right corner of a photo in the editor mode. The right panel now becomes a tag editor window. Type in your words and hit “enter” to have them saved. If you need to delete a tag, click on it to highlight it, then click the small x at the far right.

You can also set up to 10 “quick tags” that you use the most by clicking the tiny orange “gear” logo in that section. These stay at the bottom so you can simply click once to include them without typing anything again. To save you time, the top two spots are reserved for your most-recent tags, unless you opt otherwise.

To be honest, this is one area of Picasa that I think is lacking. The irony of that fact is that Picasa is from Google, THE search engine king! I’d love to see better use of Picasa’s Tags panel by showing more of my tags so I can just click them to apply, or maybe have an alphabetical auto-fill so as I start to type, my choices are filled in fast. And I’d also prefer to have a way to sort them into a hierarchy with categories or grouped by sub-topics such as People, Places, and so on.

Adobe Lightroom offers more advanced tagging features like this. Because I can’t get this level of sorting from my tags in Picasa, I have to be smart about which ones I choose and make sure my captions are complete so they can serve as useful search terms too.

WHAT2TAG
But what, you ask, am I supposed to put down for tags? Good question. There isn’t a right or wrong answer, per se. It’s more of a matter of thinking about how you think. Or more importantly, how you’ll think in the future. Or how you think your loved ones might think.

Before you start typing in text willy-nilly, think for a few minutes about the words you would use to jog your memory when you want to find a photo. Scroll through your photo collection in Picasa for visual cues to start making a list in your head. If you want, you can jot a few notes down on paper but the idea is to get your brain in the right frame of mind.

Remember how we used the 4Ws of Who, What, Where and When when writing captions? These still apply for tags too! Except you don’t have to write full sentences or use punctuation. (If you didn’t, don’t freak out as there is no technical rule regarding this.)

WHODUNNIT
Looking at the WHO category, or PEOPLE for tagging…there are a few key groups such as family, friends, and don’t forget your pets! Family should be specified by first name, although I also suggest using their “title” as well, especially if you have more than one person sharing that name, i.e. grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, son, daughter.

FACE OFF
One fun feature of Picasa (& some other photo managers) is its facial recognition capability that learns and automatically labels faces for who they are! This can reduce the need to have name tags. We will cover this in our next post!

WHATCHA DOIN
This may be one of the biggest, broadest categories of all because it includes the EVENTS like holidays, birthdays, vacations, weddings, and reunions, as well as ACTIVITIES such as camping, swimming, cooking, horseback-riding, bike-riding, etc. As you can see, if you participate in two similar-sounding but vastly different activities, you’ll want to separate them into specific tags. Instead of just using “riding” by itself, you should clarify the type of riding — “horseback-riding” or “bike-riding” or “motorcycle-riding.” Of course, you could still just use “riding” by itself if you also added the other word by itself too — horseback, bike and motorcycle could be search terms. It should work to combine searches such as “bike + riding,” which should give you any pics that match both bike AND riding. Imagine all the verbs you can “do.”

I love this shot of my son bawling from August 2010! You may think that’s odd to say, but if you’re like me, 100% of your photos are of smiling/happy people. Capturing a different emotion (sadness, anger, tantrums, etc. that are typical at the age of 5) gives a unique perspective of reality. And this is all because I wouldn’t let him bring the toad (that’s barely seen inside his hands) home with us to become a pet. Mean Mom! 

SMILING OR CRYING
For most candid camera shots, the people in the photo are likely smiling as we’ve all learned to “say cheese” and “smile for the camera” since childhood. I know there are digital cameras on the market that can detect when everyone in a group is smiling so it snaps the pic real quick. As much as we adore beautiful smiles, chances are that 90% of your photos are of smiling people. Maybe more!

What we don’t usually photograph though is our kids having meltdown moments, tantrums, bawlfests and crybaby sessions. Yet that may be the one shot we’d like to find someday. If you put “smiling” in as a tag, you have a zillion more to tag, and it’s hard to find that special shot someday later. But if you put “crying” or “frowning” as the tag on those few photos, you’d be all set for quickly finding them for the ultimate embarrassment when the perfect time comes.

That said, a pro photographer told a story that he DOES tag his senior portraits as “smiling” because most Moms want a pic of their child smiling and this photog didn’t want to look through the photo shoot to find the few with good smiles. So maybe it’s not such a crazy idea, but for my own use, I’m going to stick to the NON-smiling tags.

DAWN OF A NEW AGE
That’s right. This is the dawn of a new age — the age of organized digital photos! Don’t stacks of older print feel rather prehistoric right now after all this tech talk for a week? Age is an important factor for many of us as Moms trying to sort out our kids’ childhoods.

One helpful idea is to have digital photos tagged as baby, toddler, preschool, elementary, middle-school, high-school, and college. Suppose you wanted to add another level of detail like first-grade, hs-sophomore, college-senior, etc. Just make sure you don’t overlap “senior” to mean the one in high school, college or the old folks! Be more detailed for early childhood with 0-3months, 3-6months, 6-9months, 9-12months, and 1year.

Other than the age of the person in the photo, you could also “age” your time period to a certain decade: 40s, 60s, 80s. But the photo folder date will already be able to give you that information so I don’t think this would be a very helpful tag choice.

TIME WILL TELL
You may wish to add a tag to describe the relative time of day the photo was taken too. Although I think this could become overkill in a hurry if you listed day/night or am/pm or morning/evening/noon. I can see the point for sunrise and sunset though as sometimes you want to find a specific shot for that. But these aren’t as critical as the other tags so only do this if you can justify that it matters to you and your future searching ability. I won’t ask for proof but you’ll know best.

WHERERU
The 4th W of Where would be the PLACE tag. Of course, you can label the locations of your photos in Picasa’s tag editor. There are so many places you may want to include in your list though — home, school, work, church, park, backyard and restaurant usually apply to all of us. Then there’s the zoo, park, daycare, farm, starbucks, ocean, beach, cruise, disney, vegas, etc. You will have to determine how many of these you intend to include and it really only matters if you would ever possibly want to search for the photo by that term or sort these matching photos into a new group.

For example, say you go to a certain spot several times on different occasions. Yet you’d like to maybe see ALL your photos from that place in one group. If that’s the case, you’d better make it a tag.

GEOTAG = METADATA MAP
On that same topic, there’s another field of metadata for location information that can be as specific as latitude and longitude coordinates, or just search for it on a Google map to have it tied to your photos that were taken there.

If you travel, it can be fascinating to see your photos on a map. If you don’t leave the state much, you can probably skip this step! But seriously folks, get outta Dodge once! There’s a whole wide world out there waiting to be explored — and photographed!

Adding a geotag is also easy in Picasa. With one or more photos selected, click on the small red thumbtack “place” icon to load the Places Panel. From there you can search for an address or simply click on the map to place the dot. It will ask you if you’d like to place the photo(s) there. You can click yes to confirm, no to cancel or move the pinpoint as needed. The fastest way is to select multiples, of course.

GENERIC SEARCH TERMS
Depending on what types of photos exist in your collection and what you intend to do with them, you may find it helpful to include other generic search terms such as: landscape, scenery, nature, landscape (just make sure it refers to photos of the terrain; not all horizontal photos!), and portrait (close-up photo of a person not all vertical photos!). If you tend to take a lot of food & drink photos for Instagram, maybe you should have separate “food” and “drink” tags, although I’m guessing you could group these together as “food & drink” too.

SPECIFIC SEARCH TERMS
Now you’ll need to think about your life and photos specifically. What words are common in your family that might be useful for searching/sorting later? If your child likes to make Lego creations like mine did, you may have quite a few photos of various structures and playtime. In that case, adding the tag “Lego” might prove wise if you’d like to just search to pull up all Lego photos someday.

What about weather? Depending on where you live, you may want to add a term or two. For example, living in Vegas, where it rarely rains or snows, I would be able to tag select photos with “rain” or “snow.” But it would be ridiculous to tag all the rest “sunny” since there are so many of those! Although maybe folks in Seattle would say the opposite — they’ll tag “sunny” because it’s more rare and leave “rainy” as a regular term.

If you take quite a few pics of fireworks, the moon, clouds or whatever you “obsession” seems to be, definitely make a tag for it and use it consistently in the future too.

INHERENT INFO
In Picasa, the far right column can become a panel of information for PEOPLE/FACES (mug shot icon), PLACES/MAPS (red thumbtack icon), TAGS/KEYWORDS (yellow tag icon), and PROPERTIES/INFO (i in blue circle). Just click through these to see various dates and details that are part of your photos metadata. The last panel for Properties will give you a long list of info you probably didn’t know even existed on every image, even ones shot by your smartphone camera!

DAY 7 — 15 MINUTES. METATAG MARVEL.

Set your phone’s timer or stopwatch for 15 minutes and open Picasa. Navigate to your most-recent photo month/event folder. While viewing the thumbnails in the Library view, select multiple photos* that will have the same batch of basic keywords. Usually you can apply most of the tags to the whole group of pics, and then specify further details from there. This makes it quite easy to add the keywords to all those photos without doing it individually for each one!

*How to select multiple files at once: MAC: Click & hold down the SHIFT key, then click on the first item in the list so it’s highlighted. Now go to the last item of the group (all in a row), you’d like to pick & click that one. Every image in between the two you clicked on is now highlighted.

A good example would be a grouping of vacation pictures. They can all be tagged “vacation” and maybe “travel” and possibly “springbreak” or “summer,” depending when you went. Add in a location tag of whatever state you visited at least; city too if it’s major enough you might sort by that term someday. You’ll then want to mark them with whatever other terms you might want to find later: mountain, tree, sunset, red (colors), purple dress (fashion), sailing (activity), etc.

TAGGING TIPS: 

• Use only singular words whenever possible.
  (mountain, tree, flower, birthday — not mountains, trees, flowers, birthdays)
• Remember (or write down) a list of the words you choose for consistency
• Only use lowercase unless it’s a proper city/state or name
• Save specific locations for geotag (Places) 
• Use facial recognition for People & turn on Name Tags feature for your photos with faces

In summary, your DAY 7 DUTIES:

1. OPEN PICASA & VIEW YOUR MOST-RECENT PHOTO FOLDER (2015-03) IN THE LIBRARY. 
2. SELECT THE LARGEST BATCH OF MULTIPLE PHOTOS THAT YOU CAN APPLY MANY OF THE SAME TAGS.
3. CLICK THE SMALL YELLOW TAG ICON TO OPEN THE TAG PANEL.
4. WRITE YOUR TAGS & SAVE THEM TO YOUR PHOTOS.
5. SAVE SOME “QUICK TAGS” TO SPEED UP YOUR TAGGIN.
6. GO BACK THROUGH ALL PHOTOS (START WITH STARS). TRY TO KEEP TAGGING ALL 2015 PHOTOS AS YOU IMPORT OR DURING THE EDITING PHASE WHEN YOU CAPTION.
7. TAG PAST YEAR’S PICS (STARS FIRST, THEN THE REST) AS YOU HAVE TIME.

WHOA WARNING
Places (Geotags) & People (Faces) can be handled separately in Picasa if you prefer. Decide whether you’ll use the distinct metadata features for this information or whether you want it all to be in the same tags/keywords field. Personally, I’d use the options that the software allows wherever possible. These are far more visually appealing and offer additional search capability than the standard text-only tags.

TALKING TIME LIMITS
Not gonna lie. This can take a while. If you get carried away tagging, this may suck you in. Don’t let it. Remember, this step is NOT the most important. If you’ve sorted your photos into the well-named folders and captioned your photos with searchable words, you are already miles ahead when it comes to finding the photos you want faster in the future. Do a few tags for what you think might be helpful and let it go. You can always come back to tagging at a later date if you feel the urge. If you do, just remember to sync or update your backups so those images have the tags you added.

© Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

SPRING FLING DIGITAL PHOTO ORGANIZING CHALLENGE #15IN15IN2015 (DAY 2: NAMING)

You’re back! I’m glad you weren’t too overwhelmed by yesterday’s #15in15in2015 kickoff for the First Day of Spring. Since we had to cover some initial housekeeping yesterday because it was the first post of the Spring Fling challenge, today we’re getting right into the nuts and bolts, or should I say, file cabinets, drawers, hanging folders, and manila file folders. Yep, I’m using a visual reference from the physical paper world to help you think about how to handle your digital life.

FILE CABINET FOR JPGS
The file cabinet is your computer hard drive’s PICTURES folder. The file cabinet drawers represent each YEAR of your photo collection. Hanging folders serve as the MONTHS in your collection. And inside each month, you can add further detail with a manila file folder that specifies events, people, and places.

These themed topics are usually the major milestones and moments that we mostly photograph in our lives. Think birthdays, weddings, graduations, holidays and vacations. Although frankly our “everyday” moments are quickly becoming just as photographed thanks to Instagram’s plethora of cat & coffee candids, so maybe you’ll want a generic “catchall” folder for each month’s “miscellaneous” moments too.

If you think of organizing your digital files as if you would paper ones, it’s pretty simple to determine the basic structure for your folders and JPGs. The best part is that once you’ve established the system once, it’s a cakewalk to maintain as you add photos and grow your collection. Not to mention the fact that you’ll be able to find a photo you want much faster than before, if you even could before! And that’s the true beauty of a well-named chronologically based folder organizing system.

But wait, you whine! That’s not how my brain works! I can’t remember what year we visited Disneyland for Spring Break, this system will never do the trick for me. Slow down, I’m not done. There’s more to it than dates. We’ll add details to jog your memory. And maybe searchable keywords later too. Relax and trust my system. Let’s learn more before you jump ship.

2N = NAMING & NUMBERING
The 2Ns are the key to organizing and the secret to finding a photo sooner than later! Without proper naming of files, the computer’s default to prioritize numbering will throw off the best attempts at organizing. You’ll see why in a minute. Do not be afraid to rename folders! It can be done and undone multiple times over until you get a naming scheme that works the way your brain thinks. Don’t just use what you read online or in a book, or go blindly with whatever some organizing pro says (unless it’s me…ha!).

Try out this theory on your own photo collection. Test it on a small batch first to see how it suits your situation. Are the names/terms ones you’d normally use? Does it offer enough variety or flexibility to adapt as needed? Is it overly complex to integrate or far too simple to really make an impact? Don’t be afraid to make a hybrid of a couple styles to best match your specific needs. It’s not a “one size fits all” but if you don’t have a preference that you know of yet, I do recommend you try these dated (& eventually detailed) folders.

APRIL FOOLS FIRST
You’re not a fool but your computer will always start the year in April if you label folders using only words because it sorts alphabetically. To make January show up before April in your list of photo folders, you have to follow my specific naming structure for them to be displayed in order on your computer. That means using two-digit dates, such as 01 for January so it is listed numerically before the alphabetical leaders of April and August.

02-TO-DO
My other “rule” is to re-use the year in your folder name as well because once the files are moved out of that YEAR folder, that info won’t be as obvious anymore. So the best folder name would be 2015-01 then 2015-02 and so on. Why don’t I put the month first? Well, I don’t want my Mac’s Finder to list a bunch of January folders, then Februarys…etc…through all my years’ worth of pics. I tend to think of the year first & then the month so it makes sense to me. (I have yet to hear a solid argument for putting the month first but go ahead & try me in the comments if you think you have one!)

TO-DASH OR_UNDERSCORE SPACES
That is the question. While computers of our past did not like spaces in folders & filenames, today’s can handle it just fine. However, tech experts recommend naming files shorter terms tied together with either dashes/hyphens or underscores because the internet does not like spaces. In fact, it turns them into these — %20. So to dash-or-not-to-dash. Or dash_or_not_to_dash. These are your choices. Or I guess if you want to be a renegade, you could use “dash or not to dash” as a filename. I’ll never really know but the web might wreck your well-laid plans. I highly suggest you start with one way that you like looking at and stick with it forever after. It’s a personal preference so pick a way and there you’ll stay. [Full disclosure: I still use spaces in my folder names, but not in my file names. Can’t really say why but it’s what I do & it works well for me so far.]

We’ll discuss other rules for naming files when we add more details, but for now, our folder names are just fine with numbers — and dashes or underscores, unless you want to be a renegade Space Cowboy like me.

Your instructions are below. Put any questions in the comments or email me directly. I welcome your feedback! See you tomorrow for Day 3, which is already one fifth of the way to finished!

DAY 2: 15 MINUTES — THE “YEARS & MONTHS MAKE & MOVE” PROCESS

Set your phone’s timer or stopwatch for 15 minutes and start making new folders within your YEAR folders for the MONTHS. Don’t forget to follow my specific naming structure in order to keep them displayed in order on your computer.

You already have a 2015 folder, right? And your January-March photos should be in it, right? (If not, please do this first). Adding a sub-folder of 2015-01 becomes home for your January pics. Do a 2015-02 for February & 2015-03 for March. But this month isn’t over yet, you say. And you plan to take more photos yet this month. No problem. Where should you put the March 20-30th photos once you download them from your camera? In the 2015-03 folder you made inside the 2015 folder you say? Why that’s 100% correct? You got an A+ on your pop quiz!

Now guess what you get to do? More of the same! Go back through 2014 working your way backward through the past year month by month. Using the full 4-digit year and 02-digit months to name folders, you’ll fill them with your specifically dated digital photos.

Don’t take time to look too closely at your photos, delete doubles or worry about editing at this time. Your only goal is to get them quick-sorted into their date/name folder hierarchy. And try not to stroll down memory lane! Once we get your photos all taken care of, there will be plenty of time to play…trust me!

Go back as far as your time allows. If you didn’t finish in the allotted 15 minutes, try to find another 15-minute session to “file” your digital files in their right file cabinet drawers and hanging folders.

In summary, your DAY 2 DUTIES:

1. FIND YOUR PICTURES/MY PHOTOS FOLDER & MAKE A 2015 FOLDER (if you didn’t over-achieve yesterday). THEN ADD 3 MORE FOLDERS FOR THE MONTHS (JAN-MAR) INSIDE THE 2015 YEAR ONE.
2. MOVE ALL JANUARY-MARCH 2015 PICS INTO THEIR NEW FOLDERS.
3. CREATE A 2014 FOLDER INSIDE THE MAIN “PHOTOS” FOLDER.
4. NOW MAKE YOUR MONTHLY FOLDERS FOR 2014 & MOVE YOUR PHOTOS INTO THEM. (VIEW YOUR PHOTOS AS A “LIST” & SORT BY DATE TO EASILY SELECT THE BATCHES FOR EACH FOLDER.)
5. IF YOU STILL HAVE TIME OR ARE FEELING AMBITIOUS, REPEAT THIS “YEAR & MONTHS MAKE & MOVE” PROCESS FOR ALL OTHER YEARS YOU HAVE PHOTOS ON YOUR HARD DRIVE.

WHOA WARNING
What if you know you have photo files on your hard drive that are NOT showing the date the photo was taken? Maybe they list the date they were scanned or the date you renamed or edited them once before? If you know the year/month and can quickly move it into the right folder, go for it. If you aren’t sure, leave them loose in the main PICTURES/PHOTOS folder or better yet, create a new sub-folder inside it called 00-DATES (so it will always be at the top of your list) to remind you to investigate at a later date. Ha, we can call it Date-Gate!

While we’re tackling the marathon of organizing your digital photos, we’re doing it in short sprints of 15-minute work sessions. No need for endurance training to survive the #15in15in2015 program from Photo Organizing Pro!

© Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Tis the Season for Spring Cleaning Your JPGs

Spring holds such promise, doesn’t it? Fresh air + fresh flowers = fresh perspective. Time to sweep out the dust of winter’s doldrums & make room for what you love. It’s like a second shot at New Year’s resolutions, right? In case you didn’t get some (okay, almost all) of your grand plans for 2015 going yet, you have another chance to kick it into gear with this hopeful season called “Spring Cleaning!”

All across the globe, people are dreaming up ambitious plans to clean, clear & declutter all their closets, drawers, cupboards, basements, attics, garages, home offices, hobby rooms, [insert any other space that has crossed the line from “lived in” to “can’t live in much longer.”]

Spring and fall seem to motivate us with a seasonal kick in the pants to clean & declutter our homes, vehicles, offices, our whole lives! Maybe it’s the transition to/from Daylight Savings Time in most U.S. states that initiates this urge. After all, we were taught to change the batteries in our smoke detectors when we change our clocks, right? (Show of hands for who has that “knowledge” since early adulthood?) Apparently a seasonal cleaning phase is also an automatic response.

Sadly, the one item that tends to get overloooked in most spring cleaning sessions — or at least put on the “later” list — is your computer. Of course, in today’s digital-diva/dude world, I’d expand that to computerS (plural), plus add mobile phones (smart ones), tablets, and of course, cameras.

To spring clean digitally, you don’t have to trash the whole laptop! I give you permission (no, I’m giving you a command!) to DELETE SOME of the photo files on your hard drive, and ARCHIVE ALL your best JPGs for safe-keeping. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater…that sure is a creepy historical idiom, isn’t it?

Amazingly, we don’t often think of “spring cleaning” our digital files & photos, yet many of us spend the majority of our days/nights using all these digital devices. Why we worry more about our shoe storage or silverware drawer before we deal with sorting, saving & sharing our photos properly, I just can’t comprehend. But if you’re here, you’re a big step ahead of the rest of the planet so a round of applause for you!

Most of us, minus those of you with an Imelda Marcos-ish shoe collection, would grab our computer (or other device) that holds our digital photos LONG before we’d run back into our burning home for a pair of Jimmy Choos. Okay, I don’t actually own a pair of these so maybe I’m off base. But the point is…our digital photos are usually considered our most cherished possessions on the planet, yet we don’t treat them that way!

That has to stop! Seriously. Make a commitment TODAY to use this “spring cleaning season” to tackle your photo files on your computers & other digital devices. I saw that eye roll, missy! I heard those collective sighs. I know it’s a chore. So is cleaning out your junk drawer but this task is so much more rewarding (unless you happen to find an un-cashed check in your junk drawer, then that might win!).

Click here to start! Organize Your Digital Photos in 15 Minutes in 15 Days in 2015! #15in15in2015 I’m serious. It’s possible. But you have to start & do a little (like 15 minutes!) every day for 15 days. Repeat after me: I can do this! I can organize my digital photos thanks to PhotoOrganizingPro.com!

Lucky for you, I’ve created a 15-day how-to guide for organizing your digital photos! [Insert rousing rendition of the “Hallelujah Chorus” here.] Even better than it being just 15 days long? It should only take you about 15 MINUTES A DAY!?! Okay, these are estimates & I can’t judge your JPG junk drawer from here but if you commit to at least 15 solid minutes each day for 15 straight days, you will feel like a SUPERHERO & will have accomplished a ton!

Imagine kicking off your #15in15in2015 plan of attack on FRIDAY March 20th, the First Day of Spring. That means just 15 days later — on April 3rd, you’ll be doing the dance of joy knowing your JPGs are sorted, organized, shared & saved (in several ways & safely archived in multiple places)! Best of all, you’ll have a system all set up for maintaining it with every single photo you take from now on! Isn’t that worth the “investment” of 15 minutes (or so) a day for 15 days?! [Ignore the image below that says Thursday…stock photo from a past year…it’s FRIDAY FOR 2015!]

Please don’t fill my comments telling me that the 1st Day of Spring is FRIDAY March 20th this year. I did realize that but liked this stock photo & didn’t bother changing it. Plus I blame Daylight Savings Time for making me miss this fact when I first picked the picture! Ha!

JPG JUNK DRAWER
Do you have one of these? I’ll bet you do! No shame in admitting it. I’ve yet to find a home without a junk drawer & I highly doubt that you don’t have a mixed-up mess of JPGs that you’d love to have sorted & organized nicely & neatly.

We want to do this because when you want to go find a certain photo, you’ll know right where it will be & can post that #ThrowbackThursday pic to embarrass family & friends (or yourself!). You can show your kids their baby pics — maybe on both a digital device AND in print in some fashion…4×6 prints, scrapbook pages, custom photobooks, canvas prints or other photo-gift.

While your JPGs aren’t a “physical” mess taking up space in the traditional sense of the word “clutter,” their digital presence can hog up “space” on your hard drive, phones and tablets. Just like you sort out the various “junk” items in your junk drawer to group like items together & put them in special “containers” to best hold them for easy access, so also are you going to do that with your digital photo files. Sort & organize photos into folders by date and event/theme, with captions & tags to easily identify images for faster finding when searching.

That said, the primary point of all this effort is to preserve the stories behind the photos! That’s what really matters most. You’re not doing this for your own benefit — you’re doing it for the sake of your children, their children and their children of generations to come who will be fascinated by your photos, but will need the stories that go with them to truly appreciate all your preserved photos.

DUST OFF THE DELETE KEY
That’s right, this is the secret to saving your sanity! Drowning in JPGs? Time to be selective. For starters, delete the duds and duplicates. You can. I give you permission!

I’m not asking you to throw out the ones of your kids taking their first steps…or of your grandparents who are no longer with us…or new puppy who now looks a lot bigger. I’m asking you to ditch the ones with a finger in the way, the accidental foot in the parking lot shot, the really blurry sports shots that can’t be salvaged by even the best Photoshop wizards, the unflattering shots of your loved ones (you can keep the ones of your enemies for ammo). Just kidding!

This is just a small taste of the 15-day plan to get your digital photos organized once & for all! Ready to start today? Click here for the Day 1 post & begin your JPG journey.

Need a little more time to get your head around this goal before you commit & kick it off? Check back here on the First Day of Spring (Friday, March 20th) for our official Spring Fling launch session! (Be sure to follow this blog to stay up-to-date with new how-to tips!)

What is your biggest challenge in organizing digital photos? What would you do if you suddenly lost all your digital photos? Has that ever happened to you (or someone you know)? Let me know in the comments below!

© Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

DAY 10: ORGANIZE YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOS IN JUST 15 MINUTES IN 15 DAYS IN 2015 (#15in15in2015)

Back-em up, buttercup! Today we’re talking about the only way you can truly save your photos. Think about all the forward progress you made over the past 9 days. Feels pretty awesome, doesn’t it?

Now imagine all those sorted, named, labeled, captioned, starred, tagged, face identified, album-arranged photos disappearing in the blink of an eye. GONE! One second and all your effort is vaporized. Hurts, huh?

From external hard drives (top shelf) to optical media like CDs & DVDs (bottom shelf), physical backups are an easy, economical solution, but they are only PHASE ONE in your archival strategy!

My goal is to help you avoid the agony of regret by proactively preserving your pictures. To do that, you need to back them up. Sure, you say, duh, I knew that. Oh yeah, well how many of you have actually done it? On a regular basis? With 3 copies in 2 different formats with one being off-site? Yeah, I thought so. Feeling a bit inadequate right now? That’s okay. You’re not alone at all. But we don’t want you to be sob story of what happens when your computer crashes, hard drive fails, tornado wipes out your whole house, or the kids accidentally spill a can of soda over your laptop.

They’re called accidents because they aren’t planned. But you CAN plan on being prepared by taking the steps today to (finally!) get your photos (& other files if you wish) archived.

You must have an archival strategy. This includes not only the choice of media and location of storage solutions, but also the schedule or system for performing regular, routine backups beyond this initial archive of your photo collection.

Would you believe that today’s “Digital Generation” is in danger of losing everything? Their entire life history in photos? While they may be the most photographed generation, they are at risk to have no pictures in a decade? One photographer wrote a thought-provoking blog about this growing problem. He feels that most of what we shoot today isn’t really important enough to print. Or save. So sad. Hope that’s not the case — and it must not be if you’re here bothering to read this & do my daily steps for 15 days to get organized!

PHYSICAL BACKUPS CAN’T BE BEAT
First of all, let me state what should be obvious…your computer hard drive where you just organized all your digital pictures is NOT a backup. That’s the home of your originals. A backup must be a second (or third or fourth) copy of your files. By the way, Facebook is NOT a backup! (I’ll talk more about that next when I cover DIGITAL backups.)

Anyone remember these? Floppy disks that weren’t even floppy! Only the first larger versions were if you old folks remember that. Then we went to these sturdy plastic versions. But they were replaced by CDs, which then went to DVDs, and now we’re starting to see Blu-Ray discs as an even larger-capacity solution!

Consider the life expectancy of your media choice. If something has an average life span of 5 years, that means HALF of those devices will fail before that! Here in Vegas, we call that “the roll of the dice!” Can you easily make another copy of your media? Can you easily update your backup to add in your newer files? Can you be sure that technology will be around 5 years from now?

EXTERNAL HARD DRIVES
One easy physical way to back up all your photos from your computer hard drive is to use an external hard drive, or EHD. This is like a second computer (minus the operating system & such) so it makes sense to copy your photos onto it.

With the price of EHDs dropping and the capacity rising, you can find a huge terabyte hard drive for less than $70. That’s a small price to pay for the peace of mind and safekeeping of your entire digital photo collection, especially if you consider at least a few of those shots to be pretty priceless!

Most of them simply plug in via USB to your computer, making it fairly simply to copy the files over. And should the need arise, you can easily restore your photos from that EHD backup to a new computer if that’s the case. (Congrats on the new hardware, by the way! I’m jelly! That’s jealous, for you non-hipster lingo peeps!)

Portable hard drives are an ideal peripheral product because they don’t require external power, are small enough to carry conveniently, and work with multiple computers for file sharing/syncing. Most models come with backup software to ensure automatically scheduled backups and file syncing in a compact, phone-sized package. Granted, the smaller they are, they easier they are to lose, or drop — both of which will ruin your backup strategy!

Western Digital is a respected name in data storage. This thin 1 terabyte USB drive with auto backup software is on sale at Amazon for just $65 (Prime eligible)! The 2TB model is priced at $99. Wowza! Click the image to order from Amazon or to shop for other brands, capacities, and styles.

I own numerous external hard drives. My first ones were larger and required a power source. My most-recent ones are thin, tiny and only need USB power. Surprisingly, the smaller ones hold more photos and cost much less than the earlier editions!

The other problem is that some 90% of EHDs will fail. Typically within the five years of life. With. No. Warning. Could be 6 months in, or 2.5 years or 4-plus years. Since you don’t know when it will one day croak, you can’t simply depend on just this backup either. And you have to plan to upgrade your EHDs every couple years. Kind of like trading in your car/phone/computer for a newer, updated model.

By all means, use an EHD, but with caution and care, realizing their days are numbered and you’ll never know when its death will suddenly cost you all of your priceless digital photos. Better yet, get two of them and rotate them every so often, keeping one drive off-site. I’ll talk more about this in a bit.

USB/THUMB DRIVES
You might be lured into thinking a simple USB flash/thumb drive can solve all your problems as a small, economical backup source. And you might be just fine. In fact, some research shows that these are often a very stable storage device with a life expectancy of 5 to 8 years, slightly longer than optical media like the standard DVD.

Until, that is, the USB drive gets lost because it’s so tiny and portable. Or left in a pocket that goes through the washing machine. Or splashed by a spill of coffee or water. In other words, these tiny backups are the ultimate in convenience, but they can also be damaged or lost, effectively deleting all your photos. So this isn’t the only option you should use as a backup either.

OPTICAL MEDIA OPTIONS
If you don’t have a zillion (or so) photos to back-up, you might be able to back them up to optical media such as a CD or DVD. These media are often extremely economical and easy to burn from your computer hard drive. My suggestion is to stick to DVD for the greater file capacity as it holds 4.7GB vs. 700MB on a CD. I’m sure you have more than 700MB of photos. Otherwise you are crazy…go take more pictures! Now! The next step beyond DVD is the Blu-Ray disc that can hold up to 50GB on a dual-layer disc. That’s about 10 standard DVDs or 70 recordable CDs! And there’s talk of even larger capacity discs on the horizon — one company is offering a 100GB version any day now!

THE GOLD STANDARD
When it comes to DVDs, there are plenty of cheap, department-store brands sold in bulk. That said, there are also more-expensive options that are expressly made for archiving. These are often called “gold” DVDs, but the color isn’t the only way you can tell. Usually a premium price tag buys you greater peace of mind that the media will not fail as easily or as soon. Of course, most of them don’t offer a warranty or refund if it does before their advertised life expectancy. And even if they did, it doesn’t mean you get your photos back — just some cash back, which may help you buy file recovery software to try to rescue your lost JPGs. For the sake of today, I’ll keep this positive!

Most DVDs burn data into an organic dye layer that begins to degrade and fade right away, leading to “data rot.” In fact, the National Archives warns that the shelf life of a standard recordable DVD may be as short as 2 years, although a general estimate is 3-7 years on average.

Get Delkin’s Archival Gold DVD-R “100 Year Disc” with Scratch Armor Surface 25-pack spindle for just $79.95 (Amazon Prime).

A Delkin Archival Gold DVD is advertised to last 100 years, while their 25GB Blu-Ray version is promoted with a 200-year life expectancy! According to their website, “Archival Gold is the only storage medium guaranteed 100% uneditable, inerasable and tested to endure up to 200 years, based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology.” Now that’s a few generations worth!

Verbatim claims to be the “Number 1 Optical Brand in the World” as it sells a full-line of discs, including UltraLife™ Archival Grade Gold DVDs for 100-year life. It also offers a Photo DVD-R product specifically for archiving photos. It uses patented AZO™ technology to secure the original quality of the digital image, plus a Crystal coating applied to protect the recording layer and label surface from data-damaging scratches.

SET IN STONE
When it comes to archival, stone scribbles have stood the test of time for the most part. Just like cavemen scribed their lives on the walls of their cave, the M-Disc actually etches your data onto a stone-type surface, offering what the company promotes as 1,000-year storage solution. Now that’s what I call long term! I’m a big fan of the M-Disc product line but it does require a compatible drive to burn them so read all about them on their website. Or click the image of the 15-pack spindle below to buy them (& the external drive) on Amazon!

Click to shop for a 15-pack of 25GB M-Disc Blu-Rays & the compatible drive for recording them right on Amazon! And yes, they are eligible for free shipping with PRIME!

R+ OR R- BUT NOT RW
Whether you go with DVD-R or DVD+R depends on your computer and DVD drive. However, it should go without saying not to choose RW discs but if you don’t pay attention, you might end up with a spindle of these. While they are great for storing documents you need to temporarily access and transport, they are terrible for long-term archival storage because they can easily (albeit accidentally) be written over. Does anyone remember the long-ago days of the lowly VCR tape when you’d discover you taped over something else you wanted to keep? Argh! Choose DVD-R or DVD+R only.

OFF-LABEL USE
While I’m a big fan of labeling your backup discs, please be very careful with anything that goes ON the actual disc. You’re better off printing something that goes on the case and using a basic Sharpie pen to identify the contents of the disc. I’ve heard far too many horror stories of paper sticker labels that get ripped up and caught inside your computer’s disc drive, ruining both at once!

Now there are inkjet printable discs that eliminate the potential paper problems of earlier options. Look for this option when purchasing your DVDs. You can design a printed “label” for each DVD that includes a representative photo (or collage), and any text and dates to help identify the photos included on it.

PRINT FILE WINDOW
One thing you’ll want to do besides labeling your actual DVD is printing out the file directory list of what’s on it. To do this, you can use the PRINT SCREEN, PASTE & PRINT process in Windows. Or you can run a command to generate a list.txt file for editing later using these step-by-step directions.

On a Mac, it used to be as easy as choosing the Print Window option from the menu bar before OSX came to be. Since then, it requires some jumping through hoops or taking a screen shot to paste into something else so you can print it.

Or you could try out a nifty software app aptly named Print Window that lets you control which folders/files to expand and print, plus adjust the font and size. It has auto-format options for fitting onto a CD jewel case or DVD box case. You can even make a photo proof contact sheet showing thumbnails of all your images! How handy would that be? I’m sold on this idea but will have to try out the free version. The full version is $20 but if it helps me print files & folders for all my archives, including contact sheets of all my images, it would be well worth it. Of course, printing these in color will be rather costly ink-wise, especially if you have as many images as I do. Saving them as a PDF you can open and reference at any time probably makes more sense than a full physical copy.

Picasa’s “Print Contact Sheet” can be a helpful feature! Click here to view it larger.

Better yet, Picasa has a built-in feature to print a contact sheet from a folder. Simply select a certain folder first, then click the FOLDER menu to choose “Print Contact Sheet..” and you’ll see them nicely organized by thumbnails with the album name and date. You’ll have an option to either “shrink to fit” or “crop to fit” the pics into the thumbnails. Click on the other choice to see your options & pick a fave. I noticed it rotates any vertical photos sideways, probably to show enough of the image, although it still bothers me a bit.

DATA CORRUPTION
Any archival solution runs the risk of data corruption, transfer failure or device death/obsolescence. Some experts say you should regularly check your data source by “running” it once in a while to actively seek and open a few files. That way, if you start to see any fishy behavior, you might be able to salvage the majority of your data before the whole thing blows. For your long-term archival storage, the pros suggest occasional testing of the data once every 6 months and migrating to a newer (or just different) media source every 3-5 years.

SAFE STORAGE
Aside from the obvious advice about putting the cap back on USB thumb drives, you’ll need to keep CDs/DVDs in their cases, and carefully handling them by their edges only to avoid fingerprints and scratches.

Don’t forget about storage solutions to keep your special backup disks safe from scratches, extreme temperature swings, dust, and such. Careful handling and using the case is a start. If you end up with a large collection of discs, you’ll need to find a way to store them.

This handsome double-wide CD/DVD storage box safely & smartly stores your archives in a classy way that looks great on display. For less than $10 with Amazon Prime, you can also opt for the one to hold DVDs in their larger box cases.

To be literal, I suppose you could keep them in a fireproof, theft-proof safe in your home. Or better yet, at the bank in a safe deposit box, which gets you the ultimate in protection as well as off-site benefits.

However, you can just keep the cased discs in a cool, dark, dry space, such as your a shelf in your bedroom closet, in a dresser drawer or in a box under a bed.

Do NOT keep optical discs in the garage, basement or attic, as the extreme temperature swings and humidity will degrade the data. Ideally, your data archives need to be kept in a space that’s heated and cooled, depending on your location and season, as well as one that handles humidity. That’s why an off-site storage space won’t work unless it’s an indoor one that’s climate-controlled.

To avoid heat, cold, humidity, dust, debris, scratches, fingerprints, or sunlight, please do NOT store optical discs or delicate drives inside your vehicle, kids’ rooms, bathroom, kitchen, laundry room, outdoor storage shed, shoebox buried in the yard, etc. Try to keep them away from water, dust, bright sunlight, harsh surfaces, kids, and extreme temps.

PHOTO PRINTS
I can’t talk about physical backups without mentioning the lowly photo print! Remember these? Back in the days of film, everyone HAD to print their pictures just to see what you shot. Now it seems like if we’ve “seen” it in our camera or phone, we don’t even bother getting a physical copy to hold. And that’s a crying shame!

Should you (or could you) print ALL of your digital photos? Probably not. I know I couldn’t. I wouldn’t want to pay for all those prints, no matter what the sale offer. Let alone the shipping cost. I also don’t want to pile up a zillion (that’s about how many I have) photo prints that I would then have to sort, organize, label, and store somehow.

It just doesn’t make sense to turn an all-digital collection into a physical prints one, as that has its own issues with space, clutter, and safe-keeping, of course. How many of you have had a toddler tear/Sharpie/crumple/etc a printed photo? So that’s not the only solution either.

But you SHOULD print SOME (or all) of your STARS! If all else failed, and I mean your digital backups on hard drives, thumb drives, DVDs, and such, you’d still have printed copies of your most prized photos. And those can be scanned into digital files again if absolutely necessary. At that point, your slight quality degradation from losing an iteration of your image will be the least of your worries. If this sentence didn’t make much sense to you, that’s okay. It’s just pointing out the fact that a copy of a copy is never as nice as the original. If you’ve ever tried to photocopy a crappy photocopy, you know what I mean. It doesn’t get better, that’s for sure!

I’m not going to analyze or advise on WHO/WHERE to get photo prints made, but I can tell you that the quality and service you’ll get from a local photo retailer (real store run by photo experts) will always outperform any online option or discount department store. You can Google side-by-side comparisons of quality (paper and color and clarity) for about any mainstream service on the market. You do want the colors to be true and sharp. And if the paper isn’t archival-quality, it won’t last as long as it should, defeating the point of having it as a backup to your backups. But if you aren’t prepared to handle the prints when they come into your home, you’ll soon be looking for blogs on how to organize prints. What’s that you say? You already have that problem too? No worries. I’ll be covering that soon but this is my primary concern — and should be yours too!

But the primary point for printing your photos is to ENJOY them, share them and show them off. Put them in frames around your home and office. Don’t let them be held hostage on your hard drive! Or be an unknown entity on a shiny circular DVD. Let them come to life in your own life!

I’ll talk more about ideas for printing beyond the basic 4×6 photo print but if you do nothing else, printing your starred favorites and putting them out to be seen and shared will still be considered a victory!

Groovebook is a great phone app to quickly (& cheaply) print the pictures off your mobile phone! Each month, you can get 100 pics printed (& shipped to your door) for $2.99. Try them out for a free Groovebook with my KRUSE58 code! I’ve been doing this a full year now, and many months I end up ordering a couple to get all mine printed.

GET IN THE GROOVEBOOK
I’ve become a fan of the Groovebook app, which was recently bought out by Shutterfly after appearing on the TV show Shark Tank. For $2.99/month, it prints 100 photos from my mobile phone and ships them to my door. It’s super simple to select the ones you want to upload, and then the app automatically processes the print order on your monthly deadline day and ships you this fun booklet of your prints.

Each print has a perforated edge so you can choose to keep them in the book as a whole, like a mini photo album of sorts. Or, tear out the ones you want to share with loved ones, frame or scrapbook. Photo quality is not the highest but it’s an almost hands-off, relatively instant way to get pictures printed off my iPhone at least. I’ll talk about this more in a later post about playing & publishing your pictures. Use CODE (KRUSE58) to get a free Groovebook sample of your own!

PHYSICAL LIMITS
Obviously, any physical backup system is at risk for natural disasters, including fire, flood, tornado/hurricane, theft, and unsupervised toddlers. So even if you have your photos on your main computer hard drive, an external hard drive, a set of DVDs, flash drives and prints organized into albums…you’ll lose them all in an instant with Mother Nature’s wrath or a homeowner incident if they are all kept in the same general location (your home or office).

Drive Savers is a trusted name in data recovery so if you have something happen, call them right away! Here they explain the 3 main types of catastrophic circumstances — physical, logical (if you can call accidentally deleting your photos “logical”) & what I call, Mother Nature’s wrath. They also have a fun part of their site called the “Museum of Bizarre Disk-asters” highlighting catastrophic circumstances & their rescues! Learn all about them by clicking this image.

Redundancy (multiple copies) is a key strategy in archiving but if all those copies are in the same physical geographic location, you’re risking it all. “Colocation” is a technical term that can refer to off-site data storage but it applies to your own photo backup too. Move at least one copy of your backups to a second location that’s outside your primary computer’s location. Even better is to make sure your backup-to-the-backup is in an off-site location that’s outside your same region. In other words, a tornado/hurricane/earthquake can wipe out a stretch of a town that could include BOTH your home and your mom’s house if you’re only a few blocks away. Think further out like a different town, or state! Sure, you may have to ship it there or deliver it when you go to visit but you can rest easy knowing that the same natural disaster is not likely to affect both copies!

Click to buy the perfect cases for all your CDs & DVDs! Slim to fit more on a shelf & colorful for coordinating your files! Image links to this best-selling product on Amazon, currently just $10.48 & Prime eligible!

JUST IN CASE
The easiest way to keep your optical media safe is to store them in cases. If you buy the economical disc spindle, you’ll want to buy coordinating cases. There are now slim versions that don’t take up as much space on a shelf.

You can also store them inside vinyl sleeve pocket sheets that go into 3-ring binders. Some are made to look extra nice like high-end photo albums you wouldn’t mind looking at on your bookshelf or desk.

Other disc storage devices depend on how many you’ll need to hold. Always buy more space than you currently have discs so there’s room to grow/add as you continue your archiving efforts. Tomorrow I’ll cover the digital side of archiving by backing up to the CLOUD! Don’t worry, I’ll walk you through it until you understand.

Want a fancy but durable, dust-free case for 80 discs? Here’s one economical ($14.89) version on Amazon Prime.

Upgrade to gorgeous shelf storage for your DVDs/CDs with these leather-look albums on Amazon. The pages inside are sleeves for discs so each album holds many discs.

DAY 10: 2/7/15: 15 MINUTES. LET’S GET PHYSICAL WITH OUR BACKUPS!

Set your phone’s timer or stopwatch for 15 minutes and determine your backup strategy by deciding how you’ll backup your photos — to CD/DVDs, flash/thumb drives, external hard drives. Decide which photos to print and how you plan to print.

Now open Picasa and click on at least one album or folder. Under the TOOLS menu, choose “Back Up Pictures…” to then see all your available photos to select for backup. After you check all the boxes for the ones you want (or just “select all”), Picasa will total up how many GBs you’ll need, even how many DVDs or CDs that would take. Of course, if you backup to a large-enough external hard drive or flash drive, you’ll only need to do the backup “BURN/COPY” process once.

Be sure to create a backup “set” to identify which pictures, where to back them up, whether to include all files, all pictures (no videos), or just JPEGs with camera information. I recommend ALL to be safe, but you can test how big the backup would be with the various options. Maybe you’ll just want to backup videos elsewhere or whatever may be. After you create this “set,” you can choose it next time to do an “incremental backup,” meaning just the ones that have been added or modified since the initial backup. Yes, you’ll be revisiting this step in the future so get familiar with it!

In summary, your DAY 10 DUTIES:

1. DETERMINE YOUR ARCHIVAL STRATEGY BY CHOOSING THE MEDIA TYPES YOU WILL USE FOR BACKUPS.
2. ORDER ANY PERIPHERAL PRODUCTS YOU NEED FOR ARCHIVING (CD/DVD/BLU-RAY DISCS & RECORDING DRIVES, EXTERNAL/PORTABLE HARD DRIVES, USB FLASH DRIVES, CASES & STORAGE SOLUTIONS.
3. OPEN PICASA AND LOOK UNDER THE TOOLS MENU FOR “BACK UP PICTURES.”
4. CREATE A BACKUP SET TO CHOOSE THE MEDIA & FILE TYPES, THEN SELECT ALL THE ALBUMS & FOLDERS TO BURN/COPY YOUR BACKUP TO THE SOURCE YOU CHOOSE.
5. AFTER CREATING/BURNING MULTIPLE COPIES OF YOUR ARCHIVE, PUT THEM IN APPROPRIATE LOCATIONS USING PROPER SAFE STORAGE SOLUTIONS. 
6. MARK YOUR CALENDAR (SCHEDULE A REMINDER IN YOUR PHONE) TO SYNC UPDATED PHOTOS TO YOUR BACKUP SOURCES & SWAP OUT THE DEVICES AS NEEDED.

WHOA WARNING
Be sure to backup your ALBUMS as well as your folders! Because, if you remember, the FOLDERS are where your photos actually reside. Your ALBUMS need to be saved too so Picasa can retain all your organization as well. Otherwise if you load these onto another computer later, all that effort will be lost. You’ll still have your JPGs of course, and the tags that you identified them with, but not all that helpful organization and details from your ALBUMS. You can also backup your PEOPLE albums, or FACE/NAME tags. Re-read my post on that to make sure your faces get saved correctly WITH the photo file so you don’t lose all that priceless “people” info!

TALKING TIME LIMITS
This step might take some time as burning optical media discs depends on the speed of the drive. It may be something you let run overnight or while you go somewhere until it finishes. It may also take a little time messing around with printing your files/folders to go with the discs and drives. Unless you’ve already used this feature, your first few will take longer but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to archive as fast as can be.

Remember, this is your initial backup so it will take the longest. After this, your backups will only be incremental, meaning much less waiting while your files copy! Unless, of course, you wait far too long (like 6 months to a year) before doing another backup…then you’ll have to wait a while too!

© Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

DAY 9: ORGANIZE YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOS IN JUST 15 MINUTES IN 15 DAYS IN 2015 (#15in15in2015)

Who wants to be a photo organizing rock star and record your first album? That’s what we’re doing today in our 15-minute “recording” session. These will be your “Best of” or “Greatest Hits” collection that’s sure to go platinum! To be number one on the charts, you have to choose your best photos and sort them into albums to best save and share them.

BE A PHOTO ORGANIZING ROCK STAR — MAKE ALBUMS
Back in my day, music “albums” were also known as records, or vinyl. Today, youngsters with their divine digital birthright can’t comprehend this prehistoric music concept as they hardly understand CDs, let alone LPs!

Although the term continues to linger in the industry much like the fact that iPhones use a “camera ROLL” to hold your photos, the word album still generally refers to a collection of music worth sharing. Another way to think about albums is like a playlist in iTunes. It’s just a set grouping of favorites you chose and organized in a certain way.

Well it’s the same concept for photos! An ALBUM we make in Picasa is a collection of your photos — not all of them, preferably just the STARS! No, we’re not talking about those 1980s edition photo albums with the sticky page you peel back to stick your prints inside.

(Side note: If you think you’re all set with your photographs from the past because you have your prints stored “safely” in photo albums like the ones mentioned, I hate to burst your bubble but these have been proven UNSAFE for photos, and are actually eating your pictures up as time goes on! Please pull out all your prints from these old photo albums immediately to avoid any additional damage! Now back to our regularly scheduled post about digital…)

ALBUMS AREN’T FOLDERS
The big thing to remember is that Picasa doesn’t treat ALBUMS the same as FOLDERS. Your photos only exist in their folders! Making an album in Picasa does NOT duplicate them on your hard drive. An ALBUM simply points to the photos that reside in their usual location. They’re basically a “virtual view” of your photos.

So to delete a photo for real, do it from your FOLDERS section and the image will be gone for good. Delete it from an album and it just removes the reference to it in that instance. It doesn’t do anything to the real JPG.

By the way, Picasa only shows folders that have at least one photo in them. So if you have some empty folders, they won’t show here until there’s at least one JPG in it.

Take extra caution if you want to delete an entire folder because it will also delete any subfolders inside it. That’s why using the “tree view” helps avoid mistakes like this because you can see the parent folder and any related “children” folders inside/under it. Only delete from the lowest-level subfolder so you don’t accidentally delete a folder, or nested folders, by accident.

Flat folder view arranges them by date or name (view options) but the tree view shows them exactly as they are on your hard drive. Under “view options,” you can sort by name or date, and reverse sort to get the opposite effect.

 

In Picasa’s Collections List along the left side, you’ll see ALBUMS, PEOPLE, PROJECTS and FOLDERS. (You may see a few other categories but these are the main ones). TIP: In the FOLDERS section, if you select the “tree view” instead of the default “flat folder view,” you can see them in the same hierarchical structure as you have them on your hard drive — the same thing we did on the first few days. The tree view helps you see the event sub-folders in relation to your sorted date folders. We covered PEOPLE and name tags yesterday. We’ll talk about PROJECTS another day. So today is ALBUMS!

NEW ALBUMS ROCK
Say you went on an incredible vacation and took 1000 (or whatever exorbitant number) of photos of your trip. No one, I repeat…NO ONE, is going to want to look at ALL of your pics no matter how amazing you say they are. Unless you are a National Geographic photographer, then maybe. You’ll need to cull the collection down to a more-reasonable summary or highlight reel that people will enjoy (rather than endure) viewing.
If you’ve already done your STAR process to find your favorites (& you should’ve since that was Day 5!), this step is uber-easy. Click on a folder with quite a few pictures in it. (Make sure this folder has marked stars in it.) Click the “SELECT STARRED PHOTOS” yellow star icon at the top left near the folder name. It will highlight any star photos in that folder and show them as tiny thumbnails in the Photo Tray (lower left corner). Just click “Add selected items to an Album” with the “blue book” button just to the right of this.

A drop-down menu asks you to create a “New Album” (or put them in an existing album if you have one or more). New Album pops up a Properties window (shown below) so you can add details beyond just the name and date. Yes, you should fill in the “optional” details of Place taken & Description (caption/story)! If you plan to view this album in a slideshow or movie (& you probably will), you can check the box to use music and find that file on your computer too.

For this example, I selected some STAR shots from my New Year’s Eve fireworks photos. Now I can create an ALBUM of Strip Fireworks Photos. I can add past year’s fireworks to this same album. And even ones from July 4th if I want! So all my best Vegas Strip fireworks shots will be in one place for easier viewing and sharing!

 

 

You can add more photos to this ALBUM at any time from any other folder. If you went on vacation to several of Utah’s National Parks, you could make albums for “Best of Bryce” and “Best of Zion” but you could also group those together into a “Best of Utah” album. Again, these are NOT copying the photos — just pointing to them where they already safely reside in their sorted & labeled folders on your hard drive.

Another excellent use of ALBUMS would be for grouping your favorite photos of a certain person, maybe your children. Of course, you can always use the PEOPLE feature for this but sometimes you want to see just your all-time faves, not ALL their pics. To make this album, look in the PEOPLE collection under that person. Click to “select starred photos” and create an album for the “Best of FILL-IN-THE-BLANK NAME.”

Now after you are done uploading new photos and doing your star/caption/tag efforts, you can quickly drop the ones you love most into these special “highlight reel” albums. That said, this is ideal for any high school seniors who want those graduation slide shows! Make your own by clustering them into an ALBUM right in Picasa. Now click the green arrow “PLAY FULLSCREEN SLIDESHOW” for your new “blue-book” album and modify the effects as you wish. You can also create a COLLAGE or a full-fledged MOVIE PRESENTATION complete with title slides, clips, captions and more.

Another fun option in Picasa is to look under the CREATE menu for “Create a Gift CD.” This lets you put specific photos together onto a CD, and even lets you opt to include a copy of Picasa so the recipient can view them easily, along with an optional slideshow as well.

 

DAY 9: 2/6/15: 15 MINUTES. ROCK THE STAR ALBUMS!

Set your phone’s timer or stopwatch for 15 minutes and open Picasa. Figure out what photos you’d like to pull into an ALBUM from your starred favorites. Open that FOLDER, click the “select starred photos” star icon and put the selected items into their own album with the “blue book” icon to the right of the photo tray. Create a new album (fill in properties pop-up window) and then fill from other folders as you wish. You can also right-click on any photo to “add to album” or create new album with it.

By pulling out your best photos and arranging them into sorted photo ALBUMS that make sense, you’ve made your entire photo collection more meaningful! As a reward when done making your rock “star albums,” enjoy playing your full-screen slideshows (with or without captions on)!

In summary, your DAY 9 DUTIES:

1. OPEN PICASA & VIEW A FOLDER WITH STARRED PHOTOS IN IT THAT YOU WANT TO PUT INTO AN ALBUM.
2. CLICK THE YELLOW STAR ICON TO “SELECT STARRED PHOTOS” SO THEY GO INTO THE PHOTO TRAY.
3. CLICK THE “BLUE BOOK” ICON TO THE RIGHT OF THE TRAY TO CREATE A NEW ALBUM.
4. FILL OUT THE NEW ALBUM PROPERTIES FOR BETTER SEARCHING & REFERENCE LATER.
5. PULL IN ANY OTHER PHOTOS TO THIS ALBUM & MAKE OTHERS AS NEEDED TO SORT OUT YOUR BEST “STAR” PHOTOS FOR EASY SHARING & SAVING. 
6. VIEW FULL-SCREEN SLIDESHOW, MAKE A PHOTO COLLAGE OR MOVIE PRESENTATION, OR CREATE A GIFT CD WITH YOUR “BLUE BOOK” ALBUMS.

 

WHOA WARNING
Remember, ALBUMS are just virtual playlists that reference your photos from their location in FOLDERS. If you make albums and delete all your folders, you will have a mess because the albums won’t be able to find the actual photo! Same goes for moving your folders around. If you change the location, the album will get “lost” trying to find those photos again. You can usually correct this but that’s why I didn’t tell you about this until AFTER we’ve done all our organization, sorting and folder naming. Hopefully you don’t have to modify them much so your albums stay together.

An easy way to remind yourself is that folders are always shown as blue manilla folders and albums are always shown as blue books. 

TALKING TIME LIMITS
This shouldn’t take too long and it should be a fun process. It depends entirely on how many albums you choose to create. Don’t skip this step as it’s a valuable one because it physically shows you the best of the best — your favorite photos you cherish the most! These are the ones you’d be heartbroken if they were lost…whether that be to theft of your laptop, hard drive crash, accidental deletion or failed backup. Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post about just that — backups!

© Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

DAY 8: ORGANIZE YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOS IN JUST 15 MINUTES IN 15 DAYS IN 2015 (#15IN15IN2015)

Wow, we’ve done a lot of work so far! It’s only been a week of daily 15-minute tasks, but you’ve put all your digital photos in one place, sorted them into organized, labeled folders, deleted the duds, picked our “star” favorites, added captions, tagged with keywords, and added geographic location reference to photos. Sheesh! Nice work! To reward your hard work to date, today’s post will be a little more fun! We’re going to play with PEOPLE! Mess with faces!

Some photo organizers insist you should delete MOST of the photos in your collection that do NOT have people in them. I’m not that crazy as I love my scenery pics too but I realize that the ones I want to be sure I save are the ones with my family in them. If I lost some images of an ocean sunset or cloudy skies, I wouldn’t be as upset as if I lost the ones of my kids with their great-grandparents, for example. Keeping things in perspective is important with photo organization!

FACE THE MUSIC
Think about it. What are a few of your all-time favorite photos you truly cherish? Are they scenic landscapes or ones with people’s faces in them? Typically, our loved ones are what make the photos more meaningful. That’s why Picasa’s PEOPLE library with facial recognition technology is so incredible!

One of my fave photos is a candid I snapped at my sister’s wedding of my grandma, my kids & my dad — all looking fancy & happy!

When you first start with Picasa and it goes to find all your images in your PICTURES folder, it can scan for faces and will ask you to identify them. Under a zoomed-in “found face” pic, click the “Add a name” white caption box underneath. Type in a name. If it’s new, it will pop up a PEOPLE box asking you a few more details. Click NEW PERSON & fill in the other details as you wish. Now Picasa will magically scan your photo collection to find that face and associate it with that person’s name! All by itself!

Granted, sometimes it needs some assistance. You’ll have an “Unnamed” folder at the top of the PEOPLE section, waiting for you to identify them. However, once you’ve taught it the person’s name, it will often pop up in a drop-down list when you go to “Add a name.” Simply select the right one or start to type the name and it can auto-fill fast too!

TIP: Be sure the first few photos you identify with a name are clear, focused, front-view photos. This will assist Picasa in accurately locating the others that best match. If you identify a blurry or dark photo with a name tag, you may end up with more mistakes in the suggestions as Picasa is trying to use this somewhat faulty photo as its reference point. 

Picasa sorts all your faces into “albums” it lists on the left under the PEOPLE library. These are NOT duplicates of your photos — they are simply pointing TO the existing file on your hard drive, in whatever folder you have it.

IGNORE PEOPLE
Here’s one place where it’s perfectly acceptable to IGNORE PEOPLE! Picasa knows you’ll have some group photos where it will find faces that you don’t need to identify. Simply select those and choose “ignore selected” to have it learn those people don’t matter. Well, maybe that’s a bit harsh but it knows that you don’t care to see them called out in the FACES feature. If you choose to change your mind, you can “show ignored faces” and go back to give them a legit label or name tag as needed.

This is often where other people you occasionally photograph will go. Unless you will need to search and find a photo of them specifically in the future, they don’t really need a PEOPLE tag. Save these for your primary faces of immediate and extended family. Maybe leave the kids’ friends un-named for now. It’s up to you and may depend on how many photos you’ve taken of this person — and how many pictures you may take of them in the future.

MUG SHOTS
Find your favorite shot of each person in their album. Right-click on it and select “set as people album thumbnail.” Or use the top people menu with the icon on the far right. Change this pic as often as you wish!

CONFIRM FACES
As Picasa begins to learn that person’s face, it will find some matches it calls “suggestions” and ask you to confirm if these truly are this person or not. In the PEOPLE panel on the left, if you see an orange question mark after their name, it means Picasa has something to ask you about. Click on it to open their “folder” of faces. Near the end of their faces will be the suggestions. Or you can click the “show only suggestions” toggle at the top.

You can either click them one at a time with the green checkmark or red x, but if they are all that person, click the CONFIRM ALL button at the top! Done!

However, don’t get depressed if Picasa instantly plops another batch of suggestions in that spot! It used the details it learned from the ones you confirmed to find a few more that are similar and wants to make sure it’s correct.

Sometimes, it drops in a face of someone else by mistake. Simply click the red X to remove it from this person’s folder. It doesn’t delete the pic — just puts it in another person’s suggestions file instead.

ZOOMED IN OR OUT
You may be wondering how you had all these close-ups of people’s faces when you don’t remember shooting them. They aren’t close-ups at all! Picasa is just zooming in to show you the specific face, so it’s easier for you to identify. The two tiny icons in the upper right corner of the middle section give you the option to see them “zoomed in to the faces” (shown on left below) or “zoomed out to the full picture” (shown on right below).

 

This comes in handy when you are looking for a specific picture of a certain person! After you think you found it by their face, you can click to zoom out to see the whole picture. Although you can always double-click any zoomed-in face to open the full photo in the editor window. In the dark gray bar underneath, you can see the exact filename path location for this photo, along with other details, and your caption, of course.

AMAZINGLY ACCURATE
I have been stunned at Picasa’s ability to figure out faces, even ones from infant to adult. It can tell that person even with varying hair styles and when the person doesn’t normally wear glasses. It often recognizes them even when wearing a costume or crazy hair or hat. And it finds them even in a very dark under-exposed or poor-quality blurry photo.

I’ve even seen it pick out the face of a person who was simply in a framed photo on a shelf somewhere in the main photo!?! Because of this, you may see a few strangers in your photo collection. Do not be alarmed. Often these are from group settings at a public event, or even a face from packaging on a Christmas gift! Of course, I haven’t tested this out on identical twins yet. I’m sure that could be a challenge for it!

ALSO PICTURED
Once you’ve helped Picasa figure out all the faces in all your photos, you’ll be able to see at a glance who is in each photo, and find the perfect photo of someone without remembering when it was taken! How handy is that?! Hover your mouse over a face in a photo and it will tell you who it is. Or when you are viewing a photo, the right column People Panel will identify them.

FUNNY FACES: Once in a while, Picasa finds a face in a photo that isn’t really intended to be a face. Well, not of a person anyway!

PEOPLE FINDER
An almost-hidden (yet magic) way to find several faces in one photo…say you want to find a picture of you with your dad AND your grandma. First, click on the PEOPLE LIBRARY and choose your own folder. Now click on the “people” icon in the lower right corner to open the PEOPLE panel that will show who else is in those photos. Click on the tag of your dad. This will instantly sort your photos to show only the ones with BOTH you and your dad in them.

To add the third level of sorting for finding the photos with you, your dad and your grandma…CTRL (PC) or CMD (MAC)-click on your grandma’s name tag. It will locate the photo(s) of the three of you. Just. Like. That! Sure beats scanning faces or guessing dates or even typing in tags and captions for searching. See how fun this is? To revert to regular view, just click the green “back to view all” button to try a new double-duty search.

PEOPLE MANAGER
No Master’s Degree needed! You too can manage people. Under Picasa’s TOOLS menu, choose PEOPLE MANAGER. A window pops up to let you see who you have photographed, and interestingly, how many pics you have of them! Since Picasa is integrated with Google, you have other options for managing contacts and syncing too.

TURN OFF FACE FINDING
Some people don’t like that Picasa keeps working in the background to search and sync faces from the photos in your folders. Although you can determine in the TOOLS/FOLDER MANAGER menu exactly which folders should be searched, synced and watched. If you’d rather just turn it off entirely, scroll up to your main folder in the folder list on the lefthand side of the Folder Manager and deselect “Face Detection on” and click OK.

DAY 8: 2/6/15: 15 MINUTES. FUN WITH FACES! 

Set your phone’s timer or stopwatch for 15 minutes and open Picasa. Go to the UNNAMED folder under PEOPLE on the left column and start assigning name tags and confirming suggestions. Once you’ve identified (or ignored) all the faces in your photo collection, you can have the ultimate fun of this feature — creating a Face Movie!

This creates a highlight reel of your photos focused on a single face, which is held in one position while the rest of the image changes. The result is impressive as your child grows up before your eyes in a matter of minutes. It randomly selects photos in chronological order and layers them so it creates a unique “morphing” effect of the face over time. You can edit the photos chosen, the order they’re in, add in slides, modify transitions, include a music track and much more. Then save it and even upload it to YouTube if you’d like. Way. Cool.

In summary, your DAY 8 DUTIES:

1. OPEN PICASA & VIEW YOUR “UNNAMED” PEOPLE FOLDER. 
2. IDENTIFY OR IGNORE ALL PEOPLE SHOWN, CREATING NEW NAME TAGS AS YOU WISH.
3. CONFIRM SUGGESTIONS FOR PEOPLE AS THEY POP UP.
4. TRY OUT SEARCHING FOR 2-3 NAMES IN A SINGLE PHOTO.
5. PLAY AROUND & CREATE A FACE MOVIE JUST FOR FUN!

The suggestion & cluster threshold sliders are Picasa’s level of effort in facial recognition accuracy. By default, these are both set at 80 but changing them to 85 limits the false positives.

WHOA WARNING
As much as I find the PEOPLE facial recognition part of Picasa fascinating and helpful, I did learn thatthe “name tags” it generates are saved only within Picasa by default. However, you can — and should — opt to have them added to the XMP metadata section of your images. You first have to open PREFERENCES under the far NAME TAGS tab to check ON enable face detection, enable suggestions and store name tags in photo.

However, I found out that this does not go back to record all the ones you’ve already done; it will only affect the ones you will do from now on! So it is critical that you finish this step by going under the TOOLS menu, EXPERIMENTAL, then choose the last one “Write faces to XMP.” It opens a new window asking you to write all or write faces or write selected. Depending on your selection, this may take a while so it may be best to leave your computer to do this while you go to sleep or leave for a while.

TALKING TIME LIMITS
Unlike some of our earlier tasks, this is a relatively low-brainpower one that can be done while watching TV. It may take a while if you have many photos in your collection and this is your first time assigning name tags. But once you’ve caught up, it will be an easy, nearly effortless process. Then you’ll only need to stay on top of the new uploads and suggestions to always have instant access to finding the faces you love in the photos you have!

© Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Day 7: ORGANIZE YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOS IN JUST 15 MINUTES IN 15 DAYS IN 2015 (#15in15in2015)

To carry on our story-saving, memory-preserving caption-writing efforts of yesterday, we’re going to learn about keywords, also known as tags, which are helpful facts that will give your photos an added level of organization by making them easily searchable.

JUST GOOGLE IT
Think about how you simply go to Google and type in whatever words are in your brain to describe the topic you seek. Those word choices are “search terms” that are essentially metadata. Imagine if you could Google “Paul’s 4^th birthday” and it would magically find all those photos in an instant and show them to you. That would be pretty awesome, right? Well, guess what? We’re going to do that process for your pictures so you can type in some basic terms/keywords/tags and let Picasa be your Google to pull the pics with those matching words. Woohoo!

Now just to clarify for you security-scaredy-cat folks, your photo metadata CANNOT really be read by Google or any other search engines. I’m merely pointing out that it works in a similar fashion to a search engine, but this searching is all done on your own computer to find your own photo files!

Maybe I should’ve used the example of a stock photo website instead. It allows you to search for specific terms to find the perfect image from its vast gallery. Without those search terms (keywords) tagged to the images, they won’t be easily found.

If you’ve looked at a stock photo site, click on an image and check out the keyword list. I’m sure you’ll find a few that don’t seem like words you’d use to describe that photo, but that’s why the success of keywording partially depends on thinking like the person who will be searching. Great news if it’s going to be you most of the time! You know you best!

METADATA MANIA
What in the world is metadata and why must I learn another tech term? Metadata is hidden information attached to every image file that provides additional details for your reference. Why on earth do I care, you ask?

In addition to the image data of your JPG, each image also contains technical information from the camera that captured it. Facts about the camera model, date/time, lens, aperture, ISO, flash, and location (if geo-tag enabled) are recorded to an EXIF file that always stays with the image. You can usually view this info by clicking the “get info” or “properties” menu for any photo, although it’s not often editable.

Commonly called “keywords” or “tags,” metadata is “hidden” data that is tied to your JPG, adding helpful information that can be used to find a specific photo when searching. Obviously, the camera does its job and auto-generates the “capture” specifications and the “when” with the date/time (if your camera is set properly!). But you’ll need to fill in the other blanks about who, what, where and why.

The computer allows us to add these fields of keywords to any image. In addition to the camera’s EXIF, two other types you can add with a computer are called IPTC from the 1970s and the newer style XMP developed by Adobe in 2001. These include geographic location, copyright notice, creator, contact info, and of course, captions, among other details.

People tend to prefer the word “tags” because it makes you think of price tags or gift tags that are attached to items and give you helpful information such as “This is THAT much?” or “That’s for me?”

In today’s social media-savvy world, we could also think of them a bit like #hashtags, which are primarily found on Instagram and Twitter. If you don’t understand those, don’t stress as this isn’t about that but it may help some of you get a grip on what tags are and why we do it.

Web designers use keywords when creating sites to improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Maybe we should call what we’re doing Photo Recall Optimization (PRO)? I know I’d like to be a PRO at it! And with Picasa’s tags and captions, I can be!

TAG, YOU’RE IT
Picasa makes it super easy to add tags to any photo. Just click on the small yellow “tag” icon in the lower right corner of a photo in the editor mode. The right panel now becomes a tag editor window. Type in your words and hit “enter” to have them saved. If you need to delete a tag, click on it to highlight it, then click the small x at the far right.

You can also set up to 10 “quick tags” that you use the most by clicking the tiny orange “gear” logo in that section. These stay at the bottom so you can simply click once to include them without typing anything again. To save you time, the top two spots are reserved for your most-recent tags, unless you opt otherwise.

To be honest, this is one area of Picasa that I think is lacking. The irony of that fact is that Picasa is from Google, THE search engine king! I’d love to see better use of Picasa’s Tags panel by showing more of my tags so I can just click them to apply, or maybe have an alphabetical auto-fill so as I start to type, my choices are filled in fast. And I’d also prefer to have a way to sort them into a hierarchy with categories or grouped by sub-topics such as People, Places, and so on.

Adobe Lightroom offers more advanced tagging features like this. Because I can’t get this level of sorting from my tags in Picasa, I have to be smart about which ones I choose and make sure my captions are complete so they can serve as useful search terms too.

WHAT2TAG
But what, you ask, am I supposed to put down for tags? Good question. There isn’t a right or wrong answer, per se. It’s more of a matter of thinking about how you think. Or more importantly, how you’ll think in the future. Or how you think your loved ones might think.

Before you start typing in text willy-nilly, think for a few minutes about the words you would use to jog your memory when you want to find a photo. Scroll through your photo collection in Picasa for visual cues to start making a list in your head. If you want, you can jot a few notes down on paper but the idea is to get your brain in the right frame of mind.

Remember how we used the 4Ws of Who, What, Where and When when writing captions? These still apply for tags too! Except you don’t have to write full sentences or use punctuation. (If you didn’t, don’t freak out as there is no technical rule regarding this.)

WHODUNNIT
Looking at the WHO category, or PEOPLE for tagging…there are a few key groups such as family, friends, and don’t forget your pets! Family should be specified by first name, although I also suggest using their “title” as well, especially if you have more than one person sharing that name, i.e. grandma, grandpa, aunt, uncle, son, daughter.

FACE OFF
One fun feature of Picasa (& some other photo managers) is its facial recognition capability that learns and automatically labels faces for who they are! This can reduce the need to have name tags. We will cover this in our next post!

WHATCHA DOIN
This may be one of the biggest, broadest categories of all because it includes the EVENTS like holidays, birthdays, vacations, weddings, and reunions, as well as ACTIVITIES such as camping, swimming, cooking, horseback-riding, bike-riding, etc. As you can see, if you participate in two similar-sounding but vastly different activities, you’ll want to separate them into specific tags. Instead of just using “riding” by itself, you should clarify the type of riding — “horseback-riding” or “bike-riding” or “motorcycle-riding.” Of course, you could still just use “riding” by itself if you also added the other word by itself too — horseback, bike and motorcycle could be search terms. It should work to combine searches such as “bike + riding,” which should give you any pics that match both bike AND riding. Imagine all the verbs you can “do.”

I love this shot of my son bawling from August 2010! You may think that’s odd to say, but if you’re like me, 100% of your photos are of smiling/happy people. Capturing a different emotion (sadness, anger, tantrums, etc. that are typical at the age of 5) gives a unique perspective of reality. And this is all because I wouldn’t let him bring the toad (that’s barely seen inside his hands) home with us to become a pet. Mean Mom! [Click for larger view]

SMILING OR CRYING
For most candid camera shots, the people in the photo are likely smiling as we’ve all learned to “say cheese” and “smile for the camera” since childhood. I know there are digital cameras on the market that can detect when everyone in a group is smiling so it snaps the pic real quick. As much as we adore beautiful smiles, chances are that 90% of your photos are of smiling people. Maybe more!

What we don’t usually photograph though is our kids having meltdown moments, tantrums, bawlfests and crybaby sessions. Yet that may be the one shot we’d like to find someday. If you put “smiling” in as a tag, you have a zillion more to tag, and it’s hard to find that special shot someday later. But if you put “crying” or “frowning” as the tag on those few photos, you’d be all set for quickly finding them for the ultimate embarrassment when the perfect time comes.

That said, a pro photographer told a story that he DOES tag his senior portraits as “smiling” because most Moms want a pic of their child smiling and this photog didn’t want to look through the photo shoot to find the few with good smiles. So maybe it’s not such a crazy idea, but for my own use, I’m going to stick to the NON-smiling tags.

DAWN OF A NEW AGE
That’s right. This is the dawn of a new age — the age of organized digital photos! Don’t stacks of older print feel rather prehistoric right now after all this tech talk for a week? Age is an important factor for many of us as Moms trying to sort out our kids’ childhoods.

One helpful idea is to have digital photos tagged as baby, toddler, preschool, elementary, middle-school, high-school, and college. Suppose you wanted to add another level of detail like first-grade, hs-sophomore, college-senior, etc. Just make sure you don’t overlap “senior” to mean the one in high school, college or the old folks! Be more detailed for early childhood with 0-3months, 3-6months, 6-9months, 9-12months, and 1year.

Other than the age of the person in the photo, you could also “age” your time period to a certain decade: 40s, 60s, 80s. But the photo folder date will already be able to give you that information so I don’t think this would be a very helpful tag choice.

TIME WILL TELL
You may wish to add a tag to describe the relative time of day the photo was taken too. Although I think this could become overkill in a hurry if you listed day/night or am/pm or morning/evening/noon. I can see the point for sunrise and sunset though as sometimes you want to find a specific shot for that. But these aren’t as critical as the other tags so only do this if you can justify that it matters to you and your future searching ability. I won’t ask for proof but you’ll know best.

WHERERU
The 4th W of Where would be the PLACE tag. Of course, you can label the locations of your photos in Picasa’s tag editor. There are so many places you may want to include in your list though — home, school, work, church, park, backyard and restaurant usually apply to all of us. Then there’s the zoo, park, daycare, farm, starbucks, ocean, beach, cruise, disney, vegas, etc. You will have to determine how many of these you intend to include and it really only matters if you would ever possibly want to search for the photo by that term or sort these matching photos into a new group.

For example, say you go to a certain spot several times on different occasions. Yet you’d like to maybe see ALL your photos from that place in one group. If that’s the case, you’d better make it a tag.

GEOTAG = METADATA MAP
On that same topic, there’s another field of metadata for location information that can be as specific as latitude and longitude coordinates, or just search for it on a Google map to have it tied to your photos that were taken there.

If you travel, it can be fascinating to see your photos on a map. If you don’t leave the state much, you can probably skip this step! But seriously folks, get outta Dodge once! There’s a whole wide world out there waiting to be explored — and photographed!

Adding a geotag is also easy in Picasa. With one or more photos selected, click on the small red thumbtack “place” icon to load the Places Panel. From there you can search for an address or simply click on the map to place the dot. It will ask you if you’d like to place the photo(s) there. You can click yes to confirm, no to cancel or move the pinpoint as needed. The fastest way is to select multiples, of course.

GENERIC SEARCH TERMS
Depending on what types of photos exist in your collection and what you intend to do with them, you may find it helpful to include other generic search terms such as: landscape, scenery, nature, landscape (just make sure it refers to photos of the terrain; not all horizontal photos!), and portrait (close-up photo of a person not all vertical photos!). If you tend to take a lot of food & drink photos for Instagram, maybe you should have separate “food” and “drink” tags, although I’m guessing you could group these together as “food & drink” too.

SPECIFIC SEARCH TERMS
Now you’ll need to think about your life and photos specifically. What words are common in your family that might be useful for searching/sorting later? If your child likes to make Lego creations like mine did, you may have quite a few photos of various structures and playtime. In that case, adding the tag “Lego” might prove wise if you’d like to just search to pull up all Lego photos someday.

What about weather? Depending on where you live, you may want to add a term or two. For example, living in Vegas, where it rarely rains or snows, I would be able to tag select photos with “rain” or “snow.” But it would be ridiculous to tag all the rest “sunny” since there are so many of those! Although maybe folks in Seattle would say the opposite — they’ll tag “sunny” because it’s more rare and leave “rainy” as a regular term.

If you take quite a few pics of fireworks, the moon, clouds or whatever you “obsession” seems to be, definitely make a tag for it and use it consistently in the future too.

INHERENT INFO
In Picasa, the far right column can become a panel of information for PEOPLE/FACES (mug shot icon), PLACES/MAPS (red thumbtack icon), TAGS/KEYWORDS (yellow tag icon), and PROPERTIES/INFO (i in blue circle). Just click through these to see various dates and details that are part of your photos metadata. The last panel for Properties will give you a long list of info you probably didn’t know even existed on every image, even ones shot by your smartphone camera!

DAY 7: 2/5/15: 15 MINUTES. METATAG MARVEL.

Set your phone’s timer or stopwatch for 15 minutes and open Picasa. Navigate to your most-recent photo month/event folder. While viewing the thumbnails in the Library view, select multiple photos* that will have the same batch of basic keywords. Usually you can apply most of the tags to the whole group of pics, and then specify further details from there. This makes it quite easy to add the keywords to all those photos without doing it individually for each one!

*How to select multiple files at once: MAC: Click & hold down the SHIFT key, then click on the first item in the list so it’s highlighted. Now go to the last item of the group (all in a row), you’d like to pick & click that one. Every image in between the two you clicked on is now highlighted.

A good example would be a grouping of vacation pictures. They can all be tagged “vacation” and maybe “travel” and possibly “springbreak” or “summer,” depending when you went. Add in a location tag of whatever state you visited at least; city too if it’s major enough you might sort by that term someday. You’ll then want to mark them with whatever other terms you might want to find later: mountain, tree, sunset, red (colors), purple dress (fashion), sailing (activity), etc.

TAGGING TIPS: 

• Use only singular words whenever possible. (mountain, tree, birthday — not mountains, trees, birthdays)
• Remember (or write down) a list of the words you choose for consistency
• Only use lowercase unless it’s a proper city/state or name
• Save specific locations for geotag (Places) 
• Use facial recognition for People & turn on Name Tags feature for your photos with faces

In summary, your DAY 7 DUTIES:

1. OPEN PICASA & VIEW YOUR MOST-RECENT PHOTO FOLDER (2015-01) IN THE LIBRARY. 
2. SELECT THE LARGEST BATCH OF MULTIPLE PHOTOS THAT YOU CAN APPLY MANY OF THE SAME TAGS.
3. CLICK THE SMALL YELLOW TAG ICON TO OPEN THE TAG PANEL.
4. WRITE YOUR TAGS & SAVE THEM TO YOUR PHOTOS.
5. SAVE SOME “QUICK TAGS” TO SPEED UP YOUR TAGGIN.
6. GO BACK THROUGH ALL PHOTOS (START WITH STARS). TRY TO KEEP TAGGING ALL 2015 PHOTOS AS YOU IMPORT OR DURING THE EDITING PHASE WHEN YOU CAPTION.

WHOA WARNING
Places (Geotags) & People (Faces) can be handled separately in Picasa if you prefer. Decide whether you’ll use the distinct metadata features for this information or whether you want it all to be in the same tags/keywords field. Personally, I’d use the options that the software allows wherever possible. These are far more visually appealing and offer additional search capability than the standard text-only tags.

TALKING TIME LIMITS
Not gonna lie. This can take a while. If you get carried away tagging, this may suck you in. Don’t let it. Remember, this step is NOT the most important. If you’ve sorted your photos into the well-named folders and captioned your photos with searchable words, you already miles ahead when it comes to finding the photos you want faster in the future. Do a few tags for what you think might be helpful and let it go. You can always come back to tagging at a later date if you feel the urge. If you do, just remember to sync or update your backups so those images have the tags you added.

© Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com, 2015. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Brenda Kruse and PhotoOrganizingPro.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.