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Heidi Dillon
Organizing Digital Photos - Part Four: Sorting Tagging
Welcome back! Last week I gave you ideas for the kinds of tags you might want to create for your photo collection. This week I'll give you some ideas for what kinds of photos to keep and which to delete.
YES!
I said DELETE.
You will be deleting photos.
I know, I know. I felt the same way myself, once. "Delete my photos? Never! Why, they're priceless records of my time on this planet! This blurry image of... something reddish... with spots? Or maybe stripes? Maybe it's that one thing. You know? That thing?"
And then I got over it and started deleting. Not all, and not a bunch. In fact, I know I keep way more than I should. But I am determined not to let a bunch of lousy, good-for-nothing photos keep my hard drive full. No, ma'am!
Here's why....
Step Four/Section A: Deleting Guidelines
A long time ago, in a photo shop far, far away, film used to be expensive to buy. It was expensive to process. It was expensive to print and even more expensive to get enlargements and reprints of any prints you liked. Therefore, film was cherished. Hoarded. Used only when absolutely necessary to capture those few, perfect moments of birthday balloons, summer vacation, first days of school, a Halloween costume, the Thanksgiving family, and special holiday gift. But that's all! No wasting the film!
With digital cameras, all that changed. People started taking photos just because they could! It didn't matter how many were taken, because there was no film to buy, process, or print. Instead of 24 photos per year, people thought up crazy things like taking a photo a day, or even hundreds of photos a month, of things as random as everyday dinners, kids playing with toys, the family car, themselves in the mirror, or still life images of books, chairs, and office setups around the house.
One of the downsides to taking so many photos, at least for the purposes of this series, is that it can be tough to sort through that many pictures. Make it easy on yourself and only keep the good ones. Let go of the rest.
How do you know which ones to keep and which to toss? Here are some guidelines.
Delete the photo if:
- It's blurry. There's no use in keeping a photo where you can't even see what's going on. Possible exceptions: Intentional blur - like when you're trying new stuff with your camera or capturing motion, and if it's the only photo you've got of a person or event, it's probably best to keep it, even if it's less than perfect.
- You have many almost-identical photos in a series. In this case, choose a photo or two to keep from the series and get rid of the rest. Possible exceptions: The series was taken purposely to show progression. If this is the case, keep enough to show the progression, but make sure the photos are "spaced" far enough apart so that they don't get boring from being too similar.
- Can't remember the "who, what, why, when, or where" of the picture? Yeah, I know, but really, just delete it. If you don't know even general "these are my ancestors" kind of information, where it was taken, or anything, then there's no point in keeping it.
- If it's too much trouble to tag, it's too much trouble to keep. I tell myself this all the time as I'm tagging items. If I feel annoyed by a photo because I don't want to tag it or I can't decide what tags it should have, then I stop, take a breath, and ask myself if the photo is really worth keeping after all if I'm so annoyed with it now. Most of the time the answer is no. Sometimes I go have some peanut butter cups, take out my mood by listening to some alt rock, and then come back to the photo, just to make sure it's the photo that needs to go, not my attitude. If I'm still annoyed, then the photo goes.
Ignore all of the above and KEEP the photo if:
Now remember, these are just guidelines. Feel free to add and subtract and adjust as necessary. But we won't need to do any deleting just yet. We will do our deleting at the same time we do our tagging. That way, we only have to go through the photos once. Plus, if you're looking at a photo carefully enough to want to tag it, you'll be looking carefully enough to see if you would like to delete it.
I'd like to challenge all of you to get ready for this next section that's coming up. We will be talking about tagging and deleting next week. I'd like to challenge you all to get ready to delete at least ten photos from your hard drive next week! You can do it! So until next week... ready, set, break!
- Heidi
Scrap Girls, Etc. is a weekly column pulling bits and pieces from all over Scrap Girls. Stay tuned each week as Scrap Girls' Jane-of-All-Trades Heidi Dillon brings you tutorials, musings, recipes, interviews, design/software tips and tricks, layout walk-throughs, and who knows what else!
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