Today’s question is from Amy:
I always love seeing all the freebies and discounts for photo gifts and books. My problem is I never have enough to time get them done because my pictures are not organized online. How do other people manage this? -Amy
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It depends what I’m using my photos for…
For family photos and albums I use Shutterfly.
For blog photos and sharing I use PhotoBucket or ImageShack.
I save my photos on a passport drive, in My Pictures, by year and month. I create photo albums using Picaboo.com. They are fairly expensive, but I’ve gotten a few great Groupon and Eversave deals, and every once in a while, they come out with a $100 gift card that you can purchase for $30. Talk about a steal! I had my first child in 2002, so I started my books at that point, and I’m trying to catch up. I’ve gotten 2002, 2003, 2006, 2008, and 2010 finished and printed. I had 2004, 2005 & 2009 put together in a different version, and they just recently came out with a conversion to convert it in the new version, which has more options, so I am working on converting those and then I’ll be checking to see if they need to be modified, and I have 2 more gift cards, but I’ll need to start grabbing more of those gift cards as they come available so I can have those finished. And then I have to finish 2007 and 2011. And going forward, my plan is to just make sure I get my pictures in the book about once a month, or once I transfer pictures, depending on the event. I love having these in photo books instead of in individual pictures, because they don’t get messed up. My kids LOVE looking through the books when they come in, and then whenever they feel like browsing them. It’s so fun to have them see what they were like when they were tiny, or really young. They get a kick out of it, and we get to talk about them, and they ask lots and lots of questions, which is just so much fun. I can’t say enough good things about them.
First, I organize them in files with subcategories. i.e. Child’s name, age, subfile such as Winter Choir Concert. Then I don’t have to worry about where they are. They are there where I need them to photoshop and then send off to make online albums.
Thank you for this post. This has been on my mind lately as my youngest is about to head off to college and, even though I back up my photos to an external hard drive, I can’t help thinking, God forbid, if we should have a fire how many memories would be lost. There’s a little bit of peace with them backed up on the web.
Thanks again for all the ideas!
I have used Creative Memories’ Memory Manager since the product was released and back up to an external hard drive automatically & periodically make backup copies on CDs. This is not cloud storage but you can e-mail photos anywhere with one click. So it’s easy to take advantage of sales at any on-line photo processing compay. You can also upload pictures to the Creative Memories website & make digital products there as well as with the new Storybook 4.0 software (a product installed on your computer)-the new features are amazing.
MM is great because your photos are automatically stored in date order & the editing features are great. You can also tag pictures by person and event and even with two clicks pull up all pictures of for example, my husband and son to do a father-son album. I also like to put my pictures in folders by event to make finding pictures even easier so I don’t have to remember specific dates of events. With one click, I can put all the pictures from my son’s football game or school festival in a folder.
In full disclosure, I am a Creative Memories Consultant.
Digital scrapbooking is something else entirely right? I mean, is it different than uploading your photos to a photo site and having a book printed? Does anyone know anything about it, and how you get started?
I don’t store/organize mine online. Like a few others on here, I use Picassa and store my photos on our hard drive (and back up to a second hard drive).
Sometimes I miss the days when you just dropped your film off at the grocery and picked them up the next week. When I did that, I immediately came home and put them into albums.
Since digital cameras have been around, it seems like I’ve only printed a handful of the thousand of photos I’ve taken. Of course, that could have something to do with having two children during that time.
My New Year’s resolution was to get my photo situation under control.
I can’t reiterate how much I LOVE Shutterfly. I upload my pictures typically by event….”Soccer 2011″, or “Christmas 2011”, or “Natalie’s Second Birthday”, etc. If I have seasonal pictures, like summer zoo trips, etc., those get put in a “Summer 2011” if they’re random pics. They are always ready to be put into a book. I also, to save time, edit my pictures via iPhoto BEFORE uploading to Shutterfly. That way, I don’t have to mess with editing them on Shutterfly, and they’re ready to go for a card or picture book.
I recently discovered PhotoBucket. It is everything a digital scrapbook-er could want.
I use Winkflash.com to print most of my pictures, which I think is better than the other printing choices because they print the name of the file on the back. Because my file name is the date, this makes them MUCH easier to organize and use the photos for me.
I name my photos with the date like this: 2012_0201 (This gives the year, month, and date) and then follow it with a number (002). This would be the second photo of the day.
Winkflash has great deals on photos pretty often. You really can’t beat 5 or 6 cents a picture.
I make files with each month on my computer and then put them into a 2012 folder. After I print them, I move that folder to an “already printed” folder so I don’t pay for more prints than I need.
I also use Picasa and it stores all the pictures on my computer for me and I can use it easily to crop, lighten, and fix red eyes (and it does a good job of fixing red eyes!)
I burn a DVD of pictures at least once a year as a backup and my husband takes it to work and we put one in our safe. I also have a blog, so I know I won’t lose all my pictures ever.
Shutterfly has the option of printing the file name on the back and you can add additional information. There is a character limit, but I’ve never reached it. So much easier than the old days!
On my PC I have a folder for each year with sub-folders within. In my 2012 folder I will have a folder for each event and each season for the misc photos. This makes it very easy to locate photos.
When they are all in the folders on my PC I go through to delete and edit the photos. Once that is finished I upload them to share sights on Shutterfly. I have one for our personal photos that family is invited to look at and one for each side of the family that we all add to. Easy access to each other’s photos is my favorite thing about the share sights.
When my sister got married several years ago I set up a wedding share sight and all the family members put their photos on the site, along with the professional photos (they were lucky enough to be related to a pro photographer who gave them a cd without any rights attached to it). It makes sharing photos so simple!
I use snapfish, too. I think they have high quality photo books! And I organize by season, mostly. I will have special folders for holidays, birthdays, if needed, and vacations. But always with the date! I label them Spring 2012, or Cape Trip 2012. It works for me!
I use Creative Memories’ Memory Manager. It automatically sorts the pictures by date, so you don’t have to do that! Then you can make family, trip or event folders if you want. It also has fabulous editing ability.
Memory Manager is my favorite, too! I love how you can put a single photo into various categories as you wish.
With CM’s Memory Manager, are your photos stored on a “cloud” somewhere? If my computer died, would the photos be stored safely somewhere else?
MM seems so confusing to me. I have an old version somewhere and I watched online videos, but I think I need a real person to help me get started:O)
You can go to http://www.creativememories.com, enter your zip code & find a consultant near you. CM also has a lot of training on line as well.
Thank you. I was a consultant and my sister still is after 15 years. But we don’t live near each other. Do you know if the photos would be saved on a “cloud” or something online at CM if my computer died?
Where are the photos stored with Memory Manager?
photos in Memory maanger are stored on your hard drive so you do want to have an external back up. You can also store at the CM digital center: http://www.digital.creativememories.com Memory Manager has two back up options: automatic (when your external hard drive is connected) or on cd/dvd. Memory manager will prompt you to back up and track which photos have been backed up. They have a good customer help line-phone (866) 440-2420 (8 to 8, M-F)
I use it too! I love that any changes to your photos automatically makes a shadow copy on your external back-up drive!
I keep a folder on my computer called print.
As soon as I upload pictures from my camera, I sort them into folders. Then I have a folder for each child, and one for events (with a folder inside for each separate event- Christmas 2012, Beach 2011 etc)
And when there are great ones I know I want to print I copy those and put them in the print folder, so when a freebie comes around, I can just upload however many from that folder.
I’ve used Shutterfly for years and loved it. I upload all my new pictures to the site every-other-month or so.
I just use my windows file program….I make a file for each year, and I make a file for each month, and I copy pictures from the camera accordingly…I’ve used this system for years:) I back the pictures up every couple of months on a sans disk. 🙂 in case of a major computer crash! hope that helps!
My pictures are organized on the hard drive of my computer but I would really like to start using Shutterfly. A friend of mine uses Kodak online and she really likes it.
I use snapfish.com and organize by month and year (I go back quite a few years)! If there is a really special set of photos (like our recent Disney vacation photos) then I make a special folder for those with the name, month & year (just makes finding them easier). And I always make grandparent calendars (I have my sisters-in-laws upload to snapfish too) and I make my husband a calendar. Past two years they have had a buy 1 calendar get two free & they don’t have to be the same calendar you can make different ones, which I love. Plus you can put photos in the calendar dates too. For my husband’s calendar especially I always have the month of the year matching up. For example, Feb 2012 has photos of Feb 2011. It is a great way to see how the kids have changed in a year!
Plus always check retailmenot.com & ebates.com to get the best coupon codes!!
Have fun!!
I organize them on my computer and try to make a separate folder of things I want to have printed. I have two external hard-drives for back-up, plus I upload my favorite pictures to Flickr as another back-up. I typically only use Shutterfly and pass on most of the other deals, so every couple of months, I upload a big batch of photos to Shutterfly and then wait for a deal to come along.
I have a Mac so it gets uploaded to the iPhoto. I have compared that to Picasa and although Picasa is good if you don’t have a Mac, I find that iPhoto is superior to Picasa. With that being said, I still haven’t found the *best* photo software. It really is a hassle sometimes organizing photos.
Funny you should ask. My goal for the last year has been to get all of our family photos organized, searchable and up on the web… back to my great-grandparents in the early 20th century. I’m probably 50% done.
I use Picasa, set to automatically upload to the internet and back up to an external hard drive. So all of my photos are in three places. I pay $5/year to Google for extra storage on the cloud.
I’m 53 with 5 grown kids. So I have thousands of photos – both print and digital. I started scanning old print photos myself. I organized photos by kid, place and event. So, some photos are in several folders. Last year, I bought a Groupon for a scanning service and sent in almost 900 photos. I’ve started tagging everyone in those photos. 300 down. 600 to go!
I just finished scanning a box of my 92-yr-old mother’s snapshots. I’m talking back to my parents’ courting days in the early 1940s. I made a folder for each family member and copied any photo they were in into their folder (I am one of 6 offspring). I’ll tag everyone in the main file, too. Mom has all the wedding albums ready for me and a stack of photos from the early 20th century ready for the next time I visit.
My next task is to organize the random folders of digital photos from when I started using a digital camera 8 years ago. I am a hobby photographer so I have tons of photos.
To actually answer the question, re: finding photos for photo books… I do a digital newsletter every holiday. I take photos with the newsletter in mind throughout the year. As I get a really good shot, I copy it to a “Favorites” folder. Come December, I’m ready.
And this year, I’ve gotten disciplined with all of my new photos. I weed out the bad ones right away. delete. delete. delete. I copy any relevant photos to their appropriate folder right away. And/or create new folders appropriate to the event or subject.
Lest you think I do nothing but organize photos, I did break my leg last year and had lots of time on couch. Since then, I pick away at it when I’m watching TV in the evenings.
Wow!! Great tips here. I have thousands upon thousands of photos, been digital since 2000, and they are all organized how I want them on 2 computers, 2 backups, and some are in the cloud with the rest joining soon – thanks for the google tip, that’s a steal! The real challenge for me is the old film photos. I have a file box filled with film photos that are not organized at all and I am not even certain I will be able to organize in any meaningful way. For my digi photos, I’ve made year folders and then within the year, folders by event or person. I may just have to skip the year/chrono part of it with the film photos and that is what is blocking my perfectionist self from starting this organizing and scanning of the film photos pre 2000. Another complicating factor is that a lot of the digi photos I got printed were put into the box of film photos so have to sort those and not scan them. Fun!!
Love, love, love these tips. I have just come back from my mom’s with two huge boxes stuffed with old photos going back to my grandparents’ courting days and a some of some great-grandparents and geneology information that I need to do something with. I shipped them home because no one else wanted to take it to the next level to preserve these pics. I was afraid they would all end up in the dumpster.
I’m interested in what scanning service you used and how satisfied you were.
I’ve stopped printing pictures all together and upgraded to digital scrapbooking (although I’m still behind on that too!) I love the mobility and final products. No mess to clean up (or leave out all the time). I currently am loving Mixbook.com. I went on a trip with some girlfriends last summer. We were all able to each load pictures and work on one memory book from our own various states and England. Loved that we all look through the same book!
For cloud storage, I use Dropbox, but for all of my photo needs I use and love Shutterfly. I group the pictures by season (fall 2010, spring 2011, etc) and even use their share pages which are really handy for sharing pictures with friends and family without having them “exposed” to all on facebook. Plus, they have so many sales and offers that I sometimes have to pass on the freebies!
My photos are not very organized but when I want to make a photo book or collage I create a folder on my desktop. Then I copy and paste all the pictures I want to use into that folder. Then I can just upload that folder to the website and it’s much faster and easier.
I use shutterfly and make an album for every month, labeled with month and year–even if I am uploading 4 months of photos in a day, I still just do one month album at a time. Then when it’s time to make a photobook, I can just look at where I left off with the last one.
I just use Facebook. Any pics I feel I don’t want on FB don’t get published to the web and I have them sorted in folders on my computer and back them up on an external hard drive every couple months. I’ve noticed that most sites have links to upload photos from FB when placing orders so I just find this the easiest plus I can easily share them, or block them.
Isn’t there a place to store them on the cloud where I can grab them and put them easily into whatever place has the sale? If I upload everything to snapfish and shutterfly has the sale, then I have to do it all over again. I do sort them on the harddrive, but then it takes forever to upload them. Also, it would be insurance for a computer crash. Does anyone know something like that?
All of my photos are on the computer and automatically copy to two different external drives for back-up.
Store them on your computer’s hard drive into easy to remember folders (such as by date, event, or person), then when the sales and codes go up, you can just upload them to shutterfly, snapfish, etc. from your hard drive. I use Picasa which allows me to quickly find the folder I need, select the photos I want to upload to the sites, and then a couple mouse clicks and they are uploaded to the site with the sale. I also suggest an external hard drive or offsite storage site like mozy.com as a backup.
I also use Snapfish and find it the easiest to just organize the photos even if I don’t order any right away. I also use Walgreens and look for special coupon codes for them since I can usually pick those up in store the same day.
My photos are a mess, some I’m reading your responses with interest! Just this month, I created a photo for pictures taken in January 2012. I’m hoping that helps some.
Question: When you organize your photos, do you rename them? That seems so tedious, but DCM001 tells me nothing about what the photo is. I have six month old twins, so it’s a lot of photos to go through to rename, but I’d like to know what photo is of which baby!
Yes! Take the time to organize as you go or you’ll be like me and can’t remember exactly who and when the picture was taken. Of course, when I started, there was no digital … but still, you think you will NEVER forget that precious moment but 18 years later you can’t remember if they were 18 months old or 2 1/2 or where it was….
I use iPhoto to organize my photos and it takes every photo with the date it was created and puts them into an event for me. I just have to name the event. I can change around the events if I want, so very easy to organize them. iPhoto also has a feature where you can train it to look for certain faces, so if I am looking for a photo of someone in particular, the program will go looking for the person for me.
I use iphoto too! Love it!
I have a Mac with iPhotos…but can’t find out how to transport my pics to Winkflash…HELP from anyone how to do it. I already have them in a folder that I want to transport..but now I’m stuck…Please reply. by email.. Thanks
I name my photos with the date like this: 2012_0201 (This gives the year, month, and date) and then follow it with a number (002). This would be the second photo of the day.
I don’t rename them until I delete the bad ones. I think with twins, maybe I’d add their first initial to the name so I would know later which one it was.
I would not rename your photos. Most camera software today,reads the data that is encoded into the file name when the picture is taken. The file name may not seem significant at first but often it already has the date and time stored within the code. When you scroll over pictures often a little box comes up telling the size of the image, the date, time and sometimes the aperture settings. I would always suggest keeping the originals in tact and then use a copy for whatever project and renaming at that time.
I have a MAC so I use my iphoto. I put my pictures in event folders and then transfer the folders onto a thumb drive. When I want a specific group of pictures I am able to go right to my folder and upload to any site!!!
I have used York, Snapfish, and Shutterfly. Comparing the quality of those prints against the prices and sales/discounts offered, Snapfish has become my photo site of choice.
I upload all photos there and wait for sales on prints, shipping, and/or photo books and other gift items. If I really need a photo back on my hard drive, I am able to lift and save it from Snapfish so that’s a plus too.
I upload as often as I can and title my albums based on the date range they cover (ie. “Sep’11-Dec’11”) I just keep editing the title with the end date as I add more photos. Then, when a sale comes around, I print from that album and edit the title to add, “PRT” so I know that album was previously printed.
I only have mine organized on my computer harddrive not online anyplace. However, I organize them chronologically by a date code i.e. for the month of February the folders will be called “2012_02 Feb” Each child gets their own folder each month and then all vacations have the same format within their folder called vacations, etc. This way at a quick glance I can see the year and then if a vacation or birthday was in July, I just look for that folder. Hope this helps.
I hope you have a backup, like an external hard drive, DVDs, CDs? Hard drives crash too often. Viruses happen. Having your photos in only one location is risky. There are online backup sites like mozy ($10 a month) or you can spend $100 on an external hard drive and a media safe to store it in (fire safety). I have all my photos on my desktop, laptop, plus 2 external hard drives (1 was about to fail so I got a 2nd), and now I’m considering mozy because all these devices are in the same location (fire or water damage) and mozy is offsite.
I do have backups, etc. I just did not feel the need to go into all of that as that is not what the topic was about.
I must have misunderstood when you said you “only” had your photos in one place. I was “only” trying to help. The topic is photo organization as was my comment.
Every few weeks, I get photos off my camera and on to the computer. At this time, I go through the photos and get rid of poor quality ones, ones very similar to others, etc. This is when I do my weeding out and figure out which are the good ones that I am very likely to order.
Then, every few months I upload the photos to Snapfish. There, I have a folder for early 2011, late 2011, early 2012, etc. Each of these 6-month folders has about 120-130 pictures.
Sometime, I’m thinking that I want to go ahead and create folders with pictures relevant to books I’m interested in making. Then, I’d be more ready when the deals came along.
We use Google’s Picassa. It’s very easy to use, and very easy to send to other programs (Snapfish, etc) when we want to order free prints/books/etc. There are several neat features on it, plus the ability to share with others online (much like photobucket), and tons more features we haven’t even looked into yet. I have several thousand pictures on it, and it’s so easy to add more when I take them.
Good luck!
I have made a folder for the photos I want to be printed. Then, when there is a code for free prints. They are ready to go. I haven’t created a photo book, but if I were going to do something like that, I would make a folder with the pictures in those. I have just got around to organizing my pictures in my computer. Now I need to back them up. I’m ready for the next code to print out my grandbaby’s pictures. I hope that helps.
I use Picasa to organize my photos on my computer. It’s a free download and has some pretty good photo editing software built in. I love that this program sorts by date and gives a chronological view of my photos (by folder) regardless of where they are stored on the hard drive. It also lets me tag photos so I can search for specific people, events, etc. When these deals come along, I upload what I want to print at that time. Keeping them organized on the computer is especially helpful since these deals are for a variety of sites. The other reason I like to keep my photos on a hard drive is that they are often condensed when uploaded and while you can download photos from these various sites, you get it back at the condensed size and lose your original photo quality. I have yet to find a free or reasonably priced online storage that will not condense (I’m a heavy photo user, so we are talking several hundred G of data) so I back-up to an external drive.
Jennifer–you should check out smugmug.com. Its very reasonably priced (I think the lowest-tier membership is $40/year) but they give you unlimited photos and they don’t compress the files (this is a big thing for me). I also love their security features–you can set up passwords/logins for specific albums, or all of them, as well as control whether photos can be downloaded.
I know what you mean about not getting back your original size photo! I use http://www.digital.creativememories.com. It is a free site to store but to get back an image in the original size it’s .15 per image. This is fine for me since all my photos are backed up at home. You need a consultant id to set up an account (55650224). I use Memory Manager software to organize photos on my computer. It is $39.95 available at http://www.mycmsite.com/loralie. The reason I like it over some other free programs is that it has robust journaling, search and editing features, and keeps track of when I print or back up photos. I can even cross reference, i.e. view only photos that have both kids in them. If you print at digital.creativememories.com and have uploaded from Memory Manager your prints come back with the date taken, name you’ve given the image (or image #) and date ordered all printed on the back. They are only as low as .12 per print, but the quality is amazing and I want that info on the back!
At the end of each month, set a reminder on your computer to upload any pictures from that month. Make a folder on your online account for that month and add pictures throughout the year as you go. You can even add photos to a photo book this way and have a complete photo book by the end of the season!
I really like this idea, so many of the suggestions are to use Shutterfly and what not, but then I assume it would be difficult to transfer them somewhere else to print if you get a great code for another company. I like having the idea of one set day to dump everything into one folder and then I would take it a step further with a specific “print” folder for the best pics that I can just go to when I find a great deal. Once I have those pics printed I can dump that folder since they’re already backed up in other folders. Thanks for getting my mind going! 🙂
this is my problem too (transferring). i like to take advantage of “freebie” offers from various sites, but it’s really a pain to download to one site and then have to download back to the hard drive only to reload to the site offering the deal.
I use Shutterfly. I upload pictures as I take them. I make a folder for each month. Then, when I go back or start to make photobooks, I can work in order by month. The only exceptions were Christmas and my son’s 1st birthday. I made separate December 2011-birthday and christmas folders because there were way too many! I have gotten tons of promo codes for free prints, books, cards, address labels, etc. The only catch with Shutterfly is I most often pay shipping, but $3-4 for a free photo book isn’t a bad price!
I use Picasa but find it difficult to use the photos once they are in the program… I do love how it captures every photo and adds it to the program files.
I use Picasa also. I can help. Try this: Start looking at some photos in Picasa. When you find some you want to do something with, “hold” them in the “tray” (bottom left) by clicking the little green thumbtack icon when you are viewing the photo you want. Thumbtack a few photos (you can add as many as you want to the tray). Remember, whatever is in the tray is what you’ll be working with. Now see the icons all along the bottom of your screen starting with the green arrow, “upload”? This is where the action is.
Upload takes the photos in your tray and uploads them to the web, your cloud with Picasa. Once they are there on the web album, you can then send your friends the URL/link and they can view those photos on the web.
“Email” does exactly that. The photos residing in the tray will be attached or embedded into an email depending on your email program. Not sure if you’ll have to set this up or not. I’ve used it so long I can’t remember if there was anything to set up or not.
“Print” does exactly that. All the photos in the tray will be printed so make sure your print settings are correct (photo paper, size, etc.) and your printer has photo paper and ink at the ready.
There are lots of functions, but those and “Shop” are the main ones I use. The Shop icon will let you upload to Shutterfly, Kodak, etc. all the photos in your tray.
The key is to remember if you want to work with a group of photos, hold them in the tray. Whatever photos are in the tray will be emailed, uploaded, printed, whatever you choose to do. Have fun!
I use snapfish.com. super easy to upload and they have great deals on prints and gifts. they run penny prints sales when you can get 500 prints for just $5. I have also gotten buy 1 get 2 free calendar deals that I got and usd for christmas gifts. always check retailmenot.com for other coupon codes.