Organize your digital pictures
The best thing about digital cameras is that it's easy to take thousands of pictures. That's also the worst thing about digital cameras. After you've owned your camera for a few months, you won't be able to find that great picture you took a couple of months ago if your pictures aren't well organized or named logically.
The tips in this article will show you how to keep your pictures organized without taking up too much time. If you follow these tips, you'll have an ordered set of folders, and you'll always be able to find a picture when you need it. Even if you can't remember which folder you put a picture in, you'll be able to search for the name of any of the people in the picture and quickly find it.
Create a logical folder structure
Folders are the best way to organize groups of pictures, and the My Pictures folder is a great place to start. In your My Pictures folder, create a subfolder for each year: 2004, 2005, 2006, and so on. This might seem silly the first year you own your camera, but after five years, you'll be glad you did this because you can go back to your 2005 folder and easily find a picture from a vacation you took that year. Arranging pictures by year is also helpful if you're scanning older photos stored in shoe boxes or albums that you took before owning a digital camera. This is also a good way to start organizing the pictures that you currently have on your computer.
Each time you download pictures from your digital camera, store them in a unique subfolder of the current year (more on this in the next tip). For example, if you've been taking pictures at your Uncle Jim's birthday party, create a new folder named "Uncle Jim's Birthday Party." Five years from now, you'll be able to find pictures from Uncle Jim's 2004, 2005, or 2006 birthday party with just a few clicks.
It's a good idea to create multiple subfolders any time you take more than 30 pictures. For example, if you spent a few days driving up the coast and took dozens of pictures in each state, you could create a folder named "East Coast Drive" in the current year's folder. Next, create subfolders for each state you visited along the drive. Now you've created a logical place for each picture to be stored, making the task of finding them at a later date much easier.
Organize pictures when you download them
When you download pictures from your camera, use the Windows XP Scanner and Camera Wizard to add your pictures to a logical folder and automatically name them. To use the Scanner and Camera Wizard:
1. | Connect your camera or memory card to your computer. |
2. | When prompted, click Copy pictures to a folder on my computer using Microsoft Scanner and Camera Wizard. Then, click OK.  |
3. | On the Welcome to the Scanner and Camera Wizard page, click Next. |
4. | On the Choose Pictures to Copy page, click Next. |
5. | On the Picture Name and Destination page, type a name that describes all or most of the pictures you have recently taken. Then, click the Browse button to select a folder. |
6. | In the Browse For Folder dialog box, click the current year's folder within My Pictures. Then, click the Make New Folder button. Type a name for the new folder, and then press ENTER on your keyboard. Click OK.  |
7. | When the Scanner and Camera Wizard appears, click Next. |
8. | On the Other Options page, you can choose to publish your pictures to a Web site or order prints. If you have finished working with your pictures, click Nothing, and then click Next. |
9. | On the final page of the wizard, click Finish. |
The Scanner and Camera Wizard downloads your pictures to your new folder. Your pictures will have the name you typed at step 5 with a unique number, such as, "Uncle Jims Birthday Party 001," "Uncle Jims Birthday Party 002," and "Uncle Jims Birthday Party 003."
Name pictures logically
When naming pictures, especially those with a lot of people in them, it is helpful to include the first name of everyone in the picture. That way, you can easily search for pictures you've taken of a particular person. For example, if you take a picture with your friends Erica, Steve, Kevin, and Liz, you could name the picture "Erica Steve Kevin Liz." Then, if you search for any of their names, you will find the picture.
Tip: If you have a folder of pictures with the camera's default names, such as "DSCN3089," you can easily rename these photos all at once. Batch renaming of photos is a simple task that can be done quickly and will keep your pictures organized.
Searching for pictures
Now that you have named your pictures to identify the people in each one, you can easily find pictures with a particular person in them. To search for a picture by file name:
1. | Open your My Pictures folder. |
2. | Click the View menu, point to Explorer Bar, and then click Search.  |
3. | In the All or part of the file name box, type the name of the person you're looking for, and then click the Search button. After a few moments, Windows XP displays pictures with that person's name in the file name.  |
Digital photo-organization software
Another great way to store and find your pictures is to use digital photo-organization software, such as Microsoft Digital Image Library (included with Microsoft Digital Image Suite). Digital Image Library has a batch rename tool that can automatically include the date and time the picture was taken in the file's name.
Digital Image Library also makes it easier to find pictures you haven't named by showing you thumbnails from all your folders simultaneously. For example, if you click your 2005 folder, Digital Image Library will show thumbnails of all the pictures you've added to any subfolder within 2005. It can show larger thumbnails than Windows Explorer, too, which makes them easier to see. You can also give star ratings to pictures to designate the best ones that you may want to share with someone at a later date.
Organizing and naming your pictures logically is a good practice that pays off later when you really need to find that special shot. Follow these best practices, and you'll have a computer full of easy-to-find pictures.
 | Tony Northrup is a writer, Internet engineer, and digital photography enthusiast. Tony has a decade of experience making networks and servers connected to the Internet run smoothly. He has authored and co-authored eight books about using Windows and has written dozens of articles about Internet technologies. When he's not on his deck writing, he toys with home-automation technologies and takes pictures for display in a Web photo album. He lives in the Boston area with his wife Erica and cat Sammy. You can learn more about Tony by visiting his Web site at http://www.northrup.org.
|
