Comments on: $10 on the 10th Giveaway

By: Winner of February’s $10 Giveaway | Simple Scrapper

Winner of February’s $10 Giveaway | Simple Scrapper — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 21:29:44 +0000

[...] responses to this month’s question are a goldmine of great info! I plan to compile them into a reference post sometime very soon. I [...]

By: Erin

Erin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:20:37 +0000

As everything comes off the camera, take the time to date and label every picture. My best recommendation is to use a program like ReNamer by den4b to QUICKLY rename the files from something useless like IMG_1234 to something like 20100214_Valentines (I always start with the year, then the month, then the day).

By: mskinsey

mskinsey — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:15:59 +0000

I’m a real sloth about downloading photos. They pile up on the 8GB chip in my camera until I feel really guilty about them. Then I hunt for the cord, which takes half a day maybe, and begin the onerous job of figuring out Kodak Easy Share … NOT! I don’t much care for going through Picasa either. Why, oh why won’t these programs simply let me download straight from my camera to the file that says “2009″ or “2010″ or whatever year it happens to be?! LOL!

Now, being a librarian, I am big on organization. I usually keep a journal about what I photographed and when and where. Thus, I find it easy to create categories in monthly folders or sometimes just categories within a given year. I leave the photos with their original numbers since I can tell what’s what from the thumbnail when I open a folder. I recently downloaded a trial version of ACDSee, and if I like tagging with it, I will purchase this for sure. I’ve got an incredible memory, but I am getting older than the hills, so I may not be able to rely upon it forever. Just like my cast-iron stomach wore out, so will my iron-clad brain.

As for saving the edited or cropped versions of photos, why on earth would I do that? With Photoshop, it’s so easy to do these functions, and I never do the same thing twice with any photo. In fact, I have so many photos yet to scrap, I haven’t used the same one twice for anything. I do purge really blurry ones, but I sometimes keep strange ones, like shots of pavement or sky or water with nothing else in them because I use them to make type to match a layout.

Before going digital, I used a Nikon 35-mm SLR or a 35-mm point-and-shoot; sometimes I’d get some really loony shots with those. So far, I’ve made at least two hilarious layouts with those. Go to DigiDesignResort and look them up under “mskinsey”: one is called “My Bum and Air Force One” and the other is called “That Dog Won’t Fly” … Poking fun at myself was lots of fun in both cases. So keep those weird photos. You never know when they will come in handy for a challenge or crazy card!

By: Jeni

Jeni — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:55:18 +0000

Not sure if I made the deadline or not but here is my 2 cents anyway.

My suggestion to managing your digital photos is to make sure you sort them as soon as you upload them to your computer. I have 6 kids and I take a lot of pictures so this makes things so much more easier. I sort them according to month and year and then if there is a special occasion then they go into even more specific folders.

For example:
2009 (main folder)>December (sub folder)>Johns Birthday (sub folder)
OR
2010>February>Superbowl Party

Hope that makes sense. I get behind in my scrapping because I do take so many pictures so this makes it so much easier when I go back to remember the who, what, whens.

Thanks.

Take care,
Jeni

By: Julie P

Julie P — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:46:12 +0000

Thank you for extending the deadline! I was two hours past the original deadline today by the time I got to read my email.
This is a great question…I’m always rethinking my digital storage methods trying to come up with the perfect one! I want to go back through all these comments and read everyone’s ideas!
I also try to download often, go through the pics on the computer, delete the obvious non-keepers and organize by month. As the years go by, though, it’s getting harder to remember what happened when, so I’ve been trying to get up-to-date with my tagging in Picasa so that I can just search for the event, object or person I’m looking for.
My biggest tip to give is that every time I edit a photo, whether for exposure, effect or cropping, I save my edits with the same filename plus an “R” – for revised. If I have cropped it, I’ll add “crop” and the size (“8×10″) after the R. Or if I have changed it to black and white, I’ll add “b&w.” Doing that keeps all my edits with the original but indicates what I’ve done to it.
Happy Organizing!!!

By: Tricia

Tricia — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:36:25 +0000

I have a My Photos folder in my Documents, and I start out with them sorted by month. Within that I may be able to separate a specific event and create a new folder with those images, such as Thanksgiving, or a birthday party, something like that. I have a folder for my son, and all his sub-folder events inside that; a vacation location folder like Paris and different Paris locations inside that, makes it super easy to find anything and everything I’m looking for. I also look right away and delete all the blurry or duplicate photos I can’t use.

By: Emma

Emma — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 03:22:59 +0000

I download from my camera regularly & delete any unusable photo’s.
I organise into Year/Month folders and label with dates names and occaision if relevant. Labeling like this makes it super easy to find all photos with a certain person, which I find really easy for scrap projects. (eg. 201001 Jan21 James bday\cake)
I back up to an external harddrive, and send another copy to my MIL house, just incase!
When I edit photos I save as filename but with the letter e ( for edited)on the end.

By: Beth

Beth — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:44:41 +0000

I use CM’s Memory Manager. I download my pictures into the program and delete those I don’t want to keep, then drag the others into folders. It will sort them by date for me automatically and I can batch save groups of pictures, rename them as a batch and drag into my folders. When I edit a picture it will save it as a new version or replace it depending on what I choose.

By: Amy

Amy — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:35:30 +0000

I’m also a ACDSee Photo manager devotee! I set a reminder in my calendar to go in every weekend and tag all of the photos from that week. That helps me to get them done regularly and keeps my photos tagged correctly and in a timely fashion!

By: jessa

jessa — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:31:41 +0000

I’m a fan of acdsee photo manager too – great to search by tags. My biggest tip is to remove the photos from your card at the end of an event such as a holiday, birthday etc or at the end of each week. Dont wait until the card is full. You’re then much more likely to organise them straight away.