Overwhelmed with photos

[shootingstar]

We have tons of cycling-related and trip digital photos. Guess that could be the curse of easy digital photography. But haven't bothered to use any piece of software to make them more searchable. It would be quite time-consuming..

How are all your numerous digital photos organized? Throw them into file folders on Windows with an identifiable place/event name/date?

Do you actually rename all your photos into something more recognizable for future plucking? Or you just rename only select photos?

And who has managed to execute searches across their digital photo collection?

[Cataboo]

download picasa at picasa.google.com - install it & it'll scan your harddrive & find all the pictures and sort them by date taken according to folder. You can do a reasonable amount of modification with it as well - redeye reduction, adjusting saturation, etc.


I find it great for organizing photos.

Basically I've told my camera to store pictures in a different directory for each day... so when I'm copying the pictures of the camera, I rename each directory with the date and something about the pictures - the occasion or the location.

"2009_12_25 Christmas 2009"

Then I search in picasa for christmas and it'll pop up all directories with christmas in the file name.

I don't rename the individual files, that takes too long.

I keep pictures in folders by year...

so

my pictures has a folder with 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006 in it and then all the pictures from that year in a folder underneath it.

[Cataboo]

picasa does let you star certain photos, and it lets you write captions - you can directly email, upload to picasaweb, or to various websites to print them out from it as well.

My photo directory is over 500 gb...

[Zen]

My photo directory is over 500 gb...

Oh dear.
I wonder what mine is.

The beauty of Picasa is that if your computer blows up your photo files are still safe.But the same can be said for Filckr or other sites.

[Cataboo]

Oh dear.
I wonder what mine is.

The beauty of Picasa is that if your computer blows up your photo files are still safe.But the same can be said for Filckr or other sites.

You're probably okay. A year or two ago I scanned in a lot of old family photos at 2600 dpi or something - old black & whites. All of those take up massive amounts of space.

Then my camera is something like 16 megapixel and I shoot in raw. And I'm lazy about deleting my bad photos.

I have my photos on a RAID - basically, I have 2 1.5 terrabyte harddrives that the computer writes to in parallel... so whatever I put on that "drive" is copied to both drives. If one harddrive fails, I still have all my data/photos on the 2nd.

of course... the backup is right next to each other, it doesn't help if the house burns down.

Picasa also doesn't change the original file when you start modifying photos - so you can always get back to the original. Even if you tell it to save your changes, 'cause it'll keep a backup of the original.

[wnyrider]

Are the photographs on Picasa private? I notice in photo bucket you are able to view other peoples photos, and I think in Flikr too. There are so many photos on my hard drive, and many of those I wouldn't want people to see!

[Cataboo]

Are the photographs on Picasa private? I notice in photo bucket you are able to view other peoples photos, and I think in Flikr too. There are so many photos on my hard drive, and many of those I wouldn't want people to see!

If you're using picasa - the pictures are only uploaded if you tell it to.

And when you're uploading pictures, it asks if you want to have your photos private or public. You can also set your picasaweb account to be searchable or not... (in case someone's searching for pictures of a bike... whether or not yours would pop up in the 8 million results)

[OakLeaf]

I don't think anything hosted by Google is private. That's how they make their money, is scanning your stuff so they can target ads at you.

It's not accessible by other Internet users unless you permit it, if that's what you meant. I don't know how good Google's security is, but I'd expect it's at least adequate.

[Biciclista]

I don't think anything hosted by Google is private. That's how they make their money, is scanning your stuff so they can target ads at you..

not true you can set your photos as public or private.

[IvonaDestroi]

One of my hobbies is photography, and I have literally thousands of digital photos! Once you've got a giant messy unorganized mass it can be quite the hassle to get them all organized. But once it's done, it's done, and as soon as you get a new batch of pictures you just put them into their place and they're easy to find.

I just use folders and sub folders. I have a pictures folder on my desktop. In there I have different categories, friends, family, shows, protests, vacations, etc...

in each folder I add sub folders, so inside vacations for example you'd find europe07, hawaii08, etc...

I don't bother to rename. As long as their in they're own folder they're super easy to find.

Maybe if you're feeling nostalgic on a rainy day you can go through a few of 'em and start to organize.

If you want to buy a program, ACDSee is great for photo editing/organizing. They have a photo manager for $50. I use ACDSee Pro to edit, which includes that, and it looks pretty easy to use.

[OakLeaf]

not true you can set your photos as public or private.

From Google's TOS (emphasis supplied):

11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this licence shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licence.

[shootingstar]

Thx for posting this Oakleaf.

As for my original question, I just wondered if I was oblivious to some great software products out there. But seems no matter how great software tools maybe, it takes a human being to identify the content/context of a photo to make it searchable later.

Onward with over 10,000+ photos..I think so far.

[Zen]

Flickr costs $25/year for a pro account

[OakLeaf]

DH says you probably want Adobe Lightroom. It's a pro tool, so it's not cheap, but he doesn't think ACDSee will handle an archive as large as yours...

He says there are already betas out of image recognition software, where you'll be able to tag an image of someone (or some object) and have the software put the same tag on all your other images of that person or thing.