Get your digital photos organized, printed and in albums!!!!

As an Ahni & Zoe Consultant, my "job" is to help my customers and potential customers see the importance of sharing your photos.  Sometimes it is hard for me to explain to people the "why" and the "how" of photo preservation.  I decided that I would gather my thoughts and put it all in one easy to find post.

First, I need to stress why it is important to get all of those photos off your phones, digital cameras, hard drives and social media photo albums and get them into albums.  We live in a digital age.  I know that - and I have gotten stuck in that rut too.  But here's the thing - by keeping all those great moments locked up in your phone or on your hard drive - you are being selfish.  You are being selfish because you are not allowing others the opportunity to share and "live" those moments with you.

Think back to before we had smart phones, Facebook, Instagram and all of the digital "toys" we have today.  How did you share birthdays, graduations, weddings, family vacations and all of those other moments in your life with your friends and family? I know it's hard to think about it, but we took photos on a 35mm film camera.  We had to take 24 pictures at a time then take that little film roll to the local photo processing center (or put it in an envelope, seal it and drop it in the mail) and wait a few days - sometimes even a few weeks to get those photos back - printed on special paper.  You could choose matte finish or glossy, but the problem with glossy was that you could see finger prints after you flipped through the photos.  If you went to the right place, they would mount your photos in little paper "albums" which made it super easy to carry them with you and share.

Do you remember?


How about this?



Sometimes I wish we still had these wonderful things.  Film cameras - boy our kids wouldn't know what to do!!!!  And I often think - if we still had to take photos on film, mail them to York Developing in order to print the photos onto Kodak paper and wait for them to be mailed back to us, people would have a great appreciation for storytelling, scrapbooking and album making.  That's why tonight's post is about how YOU need to get your digital photos organized, printed and in albums and how SUPER EASY it still can be.

First, you need to get all those pictures organized.  There is a great software program offered by Panstoria that is great for those "computer savvy" people who want something to help them organize their photos, keep notes about them, edit them and order prints all from the same place.  It's kind of your "one stop shop" for the more serious amateur photographers, yet it's simple enough for the novice user as well.  Most people may recognize the software as "Memory Manager" which was marketed and sold exclusively by Creative Memories Consultants.  However, Creative Memories as you may remember it is now out of business, having been replaced by Ahni & Zoe in November 2013.  The software is called Historian (click to learn more)  With Historian you can create "vaults" that help you organize your photos however you want.  It also features photo editing tools,  file backup tools, and the ability to order prints of your photos.

Now, if you don't want to spend the money for the program, that is fine, you don't have to.  Here's some tips that have worked for me to help me keep my photos neatly organized in digital form until I am ready to have them printed to put them in albums.

1. Decide on if you want to store your photos on the "cloud" or if you intend on keeping them backed up to an external hard drive.  I recommend purchasing a portable external hard drive like this one. Keep in mind that if you are looking to buy an external hard drive there are alot of choices out there and as far as the size (Giga Bytes or Tara Bytes) you will need it depends on how many photos you plan to keep.
2. Once you have decided how you are going to store your backed up photos - BACK THEM UP!!!  I cannot stress how important it is to have all of the photos you want to keep backed up in some way.  While I know none of us want to think of the possibility of Instagram, Pinterest or Facebook suddenly going away - it is ALWAYS a possibility.  When was the last time you logged into your MySpace account?  Did you remember to save all of your photos from that account before you stopped using it?
3. Now, you need to decide how you want to organize your photos.  Create folders on your computer based on your "system".  For example, I organize mine by year, then month or event.  What I mean by this is I have a folder for ALL of the pictures I took in 2013.  The folder is simply named "2013".  Inside the 2013 Folder I have sub-folders.  Each one is named.  All photos I took for New Year's are in a folder named "New Years", I have a folder named "January" for all of those miscellaneous pictures I snapped throughout the month of January, Karey's Birthday, Jeff's Birthday, Easter, etc.  By doing this, I have given myself a simple system for storing my photos on my computer.  Then, once I have organized the photos, I just copy the whole folder to my external HD so that I have a backup.
4. Back up your photos every couple of months (I am a little OCD and tend to back up my photos each time I upload new ones or reorganize)  It's completely up to you how often you want to backup your files - but make sure to do it regularly.  You NEVER know when you might have computer issues that cause you to lose files on your regular computer.
5. Purge your photos every once in a while - don't be afraid to delete some pictures.  If you are anything like me you take ALOT of photos.  I LOVE to take pictures - of just about everything.  I have found recently that I can't stop taking pictures of my pets.  Almost everyday - oh okay - everyday I snap a picture of the fur babies doing something.  But do I really need 5,000 pictures of the dog sleeping?  Probably not.  That means that sometimes I have to go through the pictures (which is fun in an of itself) and pick out my favorite pictures to keep and then delete all the rest.
6. Rename you picture file to something that will help you remember what it is.  Right now I am taking part in a photo a day challenge.  That means that I am taking at least 1 picture each day with the intent on printing them out and creating an album specifically for these photos.  But, in December, how am I going to remember the photos I took this month?  So on my computer, each photo has been named.  As an example, I took this photo of Sophie on January 5th - so the file is titled "Sophie-Sleeping-January 5 2014"

7. PRINT!!  Yes, print your photos.  I like to print my by folder.  It makes it more manageable for me and also keeps me from getting overwhelmed when trying to decide which photos I am going to put into an album.  

8. DISPLAY and PRESERVE!  Purchase a high-quality, acid-free, lignin-free, photo safe album.  Don't be cheap!  I don't want that to sound mean, but if you expect your photos to truly be protected and want them to remain the same way they are when you first put them in an album - be willing to spend a little bit more money.  I promise you, you will not regret spending money on higher quality albums - but you WILL regret it if you skimp and buy a cheap album from one of those big box discount stores.  Your photos will not last.  Think about photos you have seen that your grandparents saved -you know which ones I am talking about - those old black & whites that are now faded and discolored and in some cases they are literally falling apart.  You don't have to get super creative (unless you really want to).  Check out the albums that you can purchase from Ahni & Zoe.