How to organise your photos
Photos—whether they are random selfies, a fancy brunch with friends, or hundreds of snapshots of the kids—have become a staple in our lives thanks to our smartphones. It’s fantastic to capture every precious moment, but let’s be honest, how many times have you frustratedly scrolled through an endless gallery trying to find that one photo? . Fortunately, sorting out your photos doesn’t have to be complicated or time-consuming. Here are some straightforward tips to help you organise your photos so you can enjoy them more:
Create Folders
One of the simplest ways to organise your photos is by creating folders. Start with folders for each month of the year, such as “January 2024,” and add extra ones for special occasions like “Spain Aug 2023” or “Ella’s 8th Birthday.” This way, you can quickly locate a specific photo with a lot less to scroll through.
Have a Monthly “Clean Up”
Set a monthly reminder to spend about half an hour sorting through the photos you’ve taken. Delete any blurry, duplicate, or unnecessary ones. Sometimes, you need to be a bit ruthless—five photos of the same group pose just aren’t necessary. Pick the best one and delete the rest.
Use Photo Management Apps
There’s an app for everything, including managing and organising your photos. Applications like Google Photos, Apple Photos, Slidebox, and Memoria Photo Gallery allow you to tag, sort, and organise your images quickly and easily. They have both free and paid versions. The Free ones are pretty good but offer low storage so it might be worth upgrading so you can keep all your photos in one place.
Back Up Your Photos
After organising and tagging your photos, don’t forget to back them up. We all know that feeling when we think (or have) lost our phones which can mean the loss of irreplaceable memories. Cloud storage options like Google Cloud or iCloud are excellent for this purpose. I personally use Dropbox, which, although not photo-specific, allows for automatic photo uploads and easy sharing with my desktop. The free version offers 2GB of storage, but the paid version can store up to 1TB which I also use in my business so clients can easily share their photos with me.
Create a “Favourites” Folder
While organising your photos, set aside your absolute favourite images in a separate folder so you can go back to them more easily. Again, be quite selective here; you don’t want this to become almost as congested as the main gallery just because you’re not decisive enough.
What to do with your organised photos
After all that effort, don’t just leave your photos sitting hidden on your phone or computer. Leaving them festering away on your phone on in the cloud is not the best way to nurture all those captured moments. The reason you took the photos in the first place is to remember! Print media is timeless compared to its digital counterpart; a framed photo on the wall is always there to remind you and make you smile when you walk past! But you can only frame and display a limited amount of images so in addition, creating a photo book is a wonderful way to showcase all your visual memories.
Why make a photo book?
Tangible Memories: There’s something undoubtedly special about holding and feeling a beautifully crafted photo book. Not to mention that inside, a well designed layout creates a visual story of all those individual moments bringing your precious moments to life in a way that viewing them on a screen just can’t.
Great for Sharing: Photo books make perfect gifts for grandparents, friends, or as a treat for yourself.
Accessibility: I literally walked in on my youngest son the other day and he was sat looking through a photo book from a few years ago. It was fantastic that he could just pick up the book and look through all those moments. So whether you display it on a coffee table or store it on a bookshelf, a photo book is always at hand for a dose of nostalgia or feel-good memories.
How to make a photo book?
Many companies offer services where you can upload photos and create a photo book. BUT, it can be quite a daunting , not to mention, time-consuming task, especially if you lack creative flair. Which is why I can do all the hard work for you. My Moments in Time collection features bespoke, high-quality photo books perfect for any occasion and I handle all the layout design. Simply send me your (newly organised!) photos, and I’ll craft them into a beautiful visual story. I offer different ranges for different subjects…
The Special Moments range is ideal for all occasions or celebration. Whether that’s an anniversary, special birthday, baby’s first year or a holiday, there’s a photo book to suit.
The Year of Moments range is where you can combine all your favourite photos and memories across a whole year so you can build up a photo annual every 12 months.
The Lifetime of Moments range is a celebration of a whole lifetime from birth to present day and it’s the perfect gift for a special birthday or anniversary.
Explore the collection here and If you’re interested in creating a photo book, get in touch with me. I’d love to help you turn your memories into a beautiful keepsake!
Gill x