021 June 25, 2010 -- Why Keeping 10,000 Photos on your Computer Can Be A BAD THING!
Does anyone remember the days of film cameras? You happily clicked away taking pictures, knowing these were going to be absolutely the best photos yet! When the film roll was exposed, you re-wound it into the canister and took it to your favorite developing place. In three or four days, the developed photos came back. You picked them up and anxiously looked at your great photos for the first time. Now admit it – some photos were good and some of them weren’t really great - but they were yours! Most of us probably tossed them on the kitchen counter and they eventually migrated to a big box of loose photos and were slid under a bed someplace and forgotten. Maybe years later, you happen across the box. The good photos were still there – so were the photos that weren’t so good; it was still fun going through the photos and remembering those moments.
You viewed the photos in the box visually: low-tech and easily found and viewed. If you were looking for a certain photo, you thumbed through the stack until you found it. When you finished, you tossed the photos back into the box and slid them back under the bed. Safe until the next time.
Now comes the digital age; you don’t even need to blow the dust bunnies from your digital pictures before you look at them. There are other differences as well. You’ve uploaded your photos to the computer; it would not be at all unusual to have more than 10,000 photos on your computer. Just imagine your photo box with 10,000 photos in it; keep your imagination going for a moment longer and imagine every one of those 10,000 photos is in its own envelope; you have to open each envelope to view the photo inside. Let’s make it easier to locate the special photo you’re searching for; each envelope has been numbered: img001, img002, img003, img004, etcetera! That’s essentially how the photos are organized inside your computer.
Let’s keep the imagination going a little longer. Imagine a lightning strike close enough to your house that the surge fries your computer. Or your hard drive just quits working. At this point, you probably can’t recover any of your digital photos that were stored on your computer --- even the good ones; they are gone forever!
The latter lesson is easiest to plan for, but still gets ignored too often. The solution: BACK UP YOUR FILES. This can be done online through a number of services, by burning files to DVD, or even using your own auxiliary hard drive for back up. Use a surge protector to protect against spikes in voltage that can damage your computer and your auxiliary hard drive. One thing’s certain: if you haven’t had a hard drive crash yet, you will. Computer experts tell us the maximum expected life of a hard drive is about five years. How close are you?
Organizing your photos takes a little more planning, but it’s worth it for ease of viewing your photos later. Start with a folder to hold your photos files (I’ll call it <MyPicts>); you may already have a picture folder in the <documents> folder. Periodically, copy the files from your camera to <MyPicts>; but first, do a little more organizing. Here’s what I suggest: If I shot a bunch of photos at Bemus Point today, I would create a folder inside <MyPicts> and label the folder <100621BemPt> (translation: 2010, June 21, Bemus Point); all my photos from today would be copied to that folder. I would then rename all the files in that folder reflecting the folder name: for example --- 100621BemPt_0001,
100621BemPt_0002, etc. Yes, it’s a longer name, but each file on my computer would have a distinctive name to identify the date, place and file number. If I’m looking for a photo, I can glance at the folder names and have an idea of date and subject of all the photos in that folder. After copying files to your computer, take a couple of minutes to review them; files that are beyond any possible repair can be discarded. Finally, I’ll burn the folder to CD or DVD and identify it with the same label as the file name.
Viewing photos easily, and maybe editing them, is another matter, but not difficult. Most computers have a basic photo viewer built in (for example, Explorer on Windows machines). To find other programs for organizing your photo collection, a quick web search for “organize photos” should turn up dozens of possibilities. (With most programs, you should be able to download a trial version before you purchase.) My favorites programs for organizing this task are Adobe PhotoShop, Adobe Elements or Adobe LightRoom. All three programs allow you to quickly access and edit your photos, even with thousands of photos on your computer; you can select pictures for collections and slide shows, rename files, resize photos for different applications, even create web sites to display your photos. Adobe Elements is sometimes thought of as a watered down version of Photoshop, but it uses a lot of Photoshop tools without the price of PhotoShop; Elements allows extensive photo editing, assembling collages, and adding text.
Your computer can be a great tool to help you organize and enjoy your photos. Unfortunately, without planning and precautions, it can also help you lose your photos forever.
Tip #1: Back Up Your Files.
Tip #2: Select a meaningful name for folders; using a date format insures file names aren’t repeated.
Tip #3: Think out your system to organize and name files and then use that system consistenly.
Tip #4: Back up your files.
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