Sunday 19 April 2020

How do you all sort save and categorise your photos and videos ?

One of the ‘problems’ of this current virus lockdown is the weather.  Tongue in cheek observation as its been blooming lovely meant I’ve been outside doing jobs around the cottage and I’ve got a load more still to do. However yesterday was the first wet inside day for what must be three weeks plus ?

So I busied myself sorting paperwork out in our home office as well as starting the mammoth task of sorting my computer(s) out specifically trying to rationalise my photos and videos. Problem being over time I’ve had many computers and when I’ve got rid I’ve copied the hard drives or saved the old hard drives with all the associated data on them. So this means loads of unnecessary files ( work stuff I’ve kept tons of emails and memos !) plus massive amounts of duplicated photos and videos.


So I brought a Mac file duplication sniffer and spend much of yesterday shredding old paper and deleting old duplicate files. I’m now at the stage of having removed all duplicates the software had found a massive amount of ‘similar’ photos, the ones you takes there or four of to get the best one. Deleting this is harder as you have to look at each one to save the right image.

When it’s done the challenge is to then bring all the images to the one location to make a central photo and video repository.

It’ll be worth it in the end and a good use of time.... problem is it seems we have another week of great weather so this project will be shelved for the time being !

One question. - How do you save sort and organise your photos... do you use any recommended software ? Over to you........

7 comments:

Jennie said...

That is a big question Nev! My 'filing' is probably very old fashioned, but it works for me. I have done it as I go since taking our first digital photos around 2003. I store them on an external hard drive. I use a desktop when at home and a laptop on the boat. The hard drive means I can access all our documents and photos on both machines. There is also a lot less to do when upgrading computers. I do have a duplicate copy of the hard drive as a back up. I was an 'admin' person during my working days, so my filing system is pretty good and I am able to find most things. I guess nothing is infallible, so I am sure there are some that have gone missing over the years.

My challenge for 'lock down' is to scan in all our photos and create a couple of digital albums for our children and grandchildren to keep. A big job, which will get done one day. At present I am transforming old pillow cases into laundry bags for NHS workers to enable them to wash their uniforms and scrubs at home without putting the family at risk. Back to the sewing machine! Good luck with the photo organising.

Carol said...

I have the same problem Nev. Originally I put all my photos into files relating to the blogs with a start-end date and a fairly meaningful title, the only problem is storage space on the computer(s). We've tried transferring them onto cd's but they don't stay in the files and they also lose their history - date/time taken/location and only record the date loaded onto the disk. I don't want them in the clouds, I want to physically have them like on a hard drive that I can plug into my MacBook and add to at any time. My current computer has over 30,000 photos on it at the moment! Any other ideas would be welcome - especially if it keeps the original data.

Jim said...

Carol,
I've found USB Memory sticks better than CD's. Easier to transfer and greater capacity.The photos stay in the files and they record the date of transfer as well as the original date they were taken. But my laptop runs on Windows 10 not Mac.so it may not work for you.

Carol said...

Thanks for that Jim, we'll give it a try.

Pip and Mick said...

We store the pictures on our laptop in the One Drive Pictures folder. The folders are organised in Years, then sub folders of Months then subfolders of the Date they were taken. There is most likely a better way of organising this but the Year Month Day system seems failry logical. Pip might be along later to say that she hates this system!
The hard drive in the laptop is a 1TB capacity and we pay Microsoft about £80 per year for Office 365. This gives us the full MS Office suite on upto 5 pcs and 1TB of storage on One Drive. The Pictures folder on the laptop is automatically updated to One Drive so any new photos are automatically copied to the one drive cloud. So far, since moving aboard Lillyanne in 2014 and now on Oleanna we've used 525 Gbytes of our OneDrive 1TB allowance so we are about halfway full. Every now and again I also backup the pictures folder to a 1TB external hard drive but because the cloud is always up to date I don't do this often enough!

Mick
NB Oleanna

Andy Tidy said...

I am grappling with the same problem Nev. I am tackling it in a couple of ways - I am starting to share my collection of B&W images on the "lost" BCN via a new tab on my blog linked to a host of individual posts covering segments in sequence. It must look a bit odd from the outside, but in the end it will provide a publicy accessibly library.
Then there are the host of other photos. I did store them by date but then I cant remember when I took them. Laptop is approaching capacity so I am storing them in a set of folders on an external 2 Terrabite HD. Some folders are by activity (New Zealand 2019) and others are collections (Llangollen Canal, Non BCN abandoned canal etc) but these rely on details being applied to individual photos where necessary.
Its probably a bit clumsy, but in my own way I seem to be able to find more than I could.
Like you, I keep being seduced by the sunny garden.
Keep well. Andy

Nev Wells said...

Many thanks for all the enlightening comment. It certainly seems to be a hot topic with variable options. But basically locally stored on removable hard drives ( not me) or cloud based storage (me) I've canned the duplicate finding software and got my money back as it was painstaking and irregular. As I have time I'm going through my iCloud library and watching some Youtube videos on using Photos on the mac for better organisation..... watch this space.