Guest Author - Jill and Dan Florio

If you're like most people with a digital camera, you store your images in a photo file, on your computer. Have you really looked through this file, lately?

Chances are good there's a lot of pictures in there, all clumped together without rhyme or reason. After all, that's how most of us kept our paper photos, before we got digital-happy; in boxes or envelopes at the the top of some closet.

This isn't very useful or even handy, if you want to show anyone your pictures, or find a certain one to print out. Take some time to better organize these files - set aside a rainy day to rediscover your photos. Or take these tips in stages if that seems overwhelming.

Organizing Your Digital Photos

• Scan your photo area. Are there certain themes? You can organize that way, or by timeline. So for example, you can store your digital images under subheadings like "Grand Canyon Pictures", or by "2004 Trips", or even "Thanksgiving 2004." Think like "Photo Album" instead of "Junk Room".
  
  
  
• If you need some help and want to make a more professional or classy presentation out of your treasured images, there are kits you can buy to help you create a nice digital photo album.
  
  
  
• Rename your photo files from those numeric titles to something meaningful, like who the picture is of, or where it was taken.
  
  
  
• Are there any pictures duplicated for some reason? You'll have more storage space if you don't have needless copies. Make sure you don't delete copies that you might have edited, however. You might want both the original and the edited version for something later.
  
  
  
• Speaking of duplication, you WILL want a backup of your photos. Just store it elsewhere. Make a copy on someone else's computer, print out copies of each photo, make several CDs of your photo files...better safe than sorry! All computers will crash eventually.
  
  
  
• Are there pictures that you think are terrible? Accidental pictures of the floor, underexposed interior shots, whatever? Delete them. No reason keeping them around. It's just clutter - and probably bad feng shui too.
  
  
  
• Consider making a Photo Gallery website of your own, for anyone to view, using Shutterfly, Yahoo or Ofoto.

Reuse Idea
How can you use some of these images? Think about sending some of these pictures out as Christmas Cards. Print them out and tape to a folded card form, or send them online as digital postcards. You can mess around in your photo editor and add words like "Happy Holidays From Us"...be creative!