I don’t know about you, but my phone is filled with thousands of photos, without even considering my computer holding my camera‘s photos.
Your photo library gets bigger by the day, making it harder to find specific photos or screenshots you’re looking for.
Organizing your devices’ photos doesn’t have to be a massively daunting task, and I have some tips on how you sort through your digital photos to organize them better, and declutter the pics you’re not going to need.
Start With A Quick Backup So You Can Edit Fearlessly
Before you start deleting anything or moving into folders, backup your photos. Backups will give you the freedom to clear up your photo library without having worry about losing important photos or making mistakes.
Don’t just backup to the Cloud either. You need a hard copy of your photos, using an external hard drive which you can keep in a safe place. Then, you can do a Cloud photo backup for off-site safety, which will protect you if the hard drive fails or a device gets lost.
Once you’ve done the backup, check a few of the images to make sure they all open, before you start sorting through everything.
Many photo management software tools can help you with that step, like adding dates or basic tags.
I keep three copies of my digital library. I have everything on a 1TB hard drive, on a 256GB SD card and also on the Cloud, so I know everything is triple-safe.
Delete The Easy Stuff First Like Blurry Duplicates And Screenshots
Start off with the photos that add no real value, like blurry photos, clear duplicates and sold screenshots, as they all take up space and make sorting harder. Removing these first will give you quick results, so you can focus on the photos that matter.
Most phones and photos apps can spot duplicates and similar images within the library. Tools in Adobe Lightroom and Lightroom classic can group similar photos, so you can keep the best one and delete the rest. Zoom in before you decide, and remove images that lack focus or cut-off any faces.
Screenshots pile up quickly, and often taken to save a quick note, receipt or map, so delete any if you no longer need to keep the information.
Sort By Year And Month To Create Instant Structure
Sorting your photos by year and month will help you to work quickly with little effort. You’ll be able to see when the photos came from, and it works well for large and messy libraries.
Start off by creating some top-level folders for each year. Inside each year folder, add folders for each month using numbers like 01, 02 and 03, so you keep everything in date order, incase your folders get sorted alphabetically.
Most phones and camera save the date automatically in each photo file. You can use that data to sort your photos automatically in many apps and systems.
After you’ve sorted through the photos by date, you can always rename the folders or add notes for trips, birthdays, vacations or occasions.
This process works well for personal photo collections, work files and shared folders, and it’ll make it easier to find specific photos or occasions you’re looking for.
Make Simple Albums That Match How You Actually Search
You can organize your photos faster when your new photo albums reflect how you look for them. Most people will search by people, events, places or time, so stick to sorting your folders around these categories instead of complicated folder trees.
Keep your album names clear and short, using terms you would type into search, and not creative labels.
You can make folders for people, events, places and even time-based like seasons or years.
Use smart features if they’re going to save you time. Google Photos and Apple Photos can group your images by face, date and location, so you can turn those groups into albums, and then rename them so you know what’s inside each album.
Review your new photo albums once or twice a year, and merge any duplicates, delete empty ones, and rename anything unclear, so your albums stay easy to browse.