I’m not sure about you, but I think I’m going to need a vacation after all of this.

A huge shout-out to all of you helping the kids at home, taking care of our senior citizens and working on the frontlines. And although it sounds like life won’t go back to normal right away, it will be a blessing to experience any progress.

So, while we are still staying in place, if you have any inclination to organize your digital photos, I’ve put together a few tips. As I always say, digital files are the least archival option for family photos. They corrupt quite easily and we don’t know what will become of them or how to access them in a decade and beyond. I want you to have memories to pass on for generations, and that’s why my packages include heirloom prints, albums and wall art. So, after you organize them, please consider getting them printed by a professional lab. 4×6 prints are great as an archive and can easily be thrown in a memory box. We can always make a digital photo from a print but we cannot print from a corrupted digital photo. My favorite online lab for prints is Mpix.com

How to Organize Your Digital Photos Like a Boss

Taking the time to develop a system that will help you better organize your photos will end up saving you hours in the future. Here are some helpful tips to get you started:

• Check your camera’s settings. By making sure that your camera has the correct date and time setup, organizing your photos will be a lot easier now and in the future. With the correct dates and times in place, the right groups of photos will show up alongside each other, making it easier to save into specific folders.
• Do a clean-up. If you’re generally a happy snapper, it might be time to set a few hours aside and carefully go through your photos and get rid of the images that are out of focus or aren’t of anything significant. This exercise will help you get organized and free up some space on your devices.
• Start with the year. In order to really get organized, you’re going to need to start creating some folders on your computer. Start with a folder for a specific year and create folders for each of the 12 months within it. You can now create folders within each month folder that speak to different events, vacations or impromptu pet photoshoots that took place during those months. For example, if you went on a skiing trip in January 2019, your folder structure would be: 2019 > January > Family Ski Trip. This folder structure will make it much easier to find your favorite memories.

It’s also important to download and create backups of your photos on a regular basis. You always want a second copy of your most precious memories as those photos are something that you’ll never be able to get back should your computer or hard drive crash. I use Dropbox and Google Drive.