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Organizing Your Digital Photos

Bringing order to the vast collection you’ve inherited and created.

Alpine Family Search Center May 2024

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What legacy of photos and stories will you leave to your family?

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What do you wish your deceased ancestors left for you?

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Family stories and pictures provide children with …

A sense of identity through time
An understanding of who they are in the world
A view of their family as strong
Higher sense of self-esteem
Reduced levels of anxiety or nervousness
Ability to deal with the effects of stress

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Take a deep breath & some time to plan

What are you saving?
Who are you preserving for?
What will be meaningful for those people?
What do your photos tell of the culture, values & joys of your family life?
What format will your project/s take?

Acknowledge that this is big task, BUT SO IMPORTANT. take time, think about your purpose. Saving What for Whom? How? May set goal for specific project or tackle “big picture” with smaller steps to accomplish. Both physical & digital important, both docs & photos important. FOCUS is on organizing DIG PHOTOS we can't ignore these other aspects of family history preservation. Hopefully you will find that strategies apply to everything
Your goal may be simply preparing a slide show for wedding, funeral, anniversary ,You may want to print a Shutterlfy book to share with grandchildren, get vintage photos add to FS . Recent patron came to center for first visit with the desire to scan his mothers scrapbook, copy it to flashdrives to give to his siblings.
Don't be overwhelmed. Pick a "bite of the elephant"

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If money is not an object, but your time is, consider outsourcing your project.

Let’s look at some ideas for DIY

.RT 2024 opening screen shows these RT exhibitors & presenters. I have circled those that specifically would love to help you with all the steps of your photo and story preservation. These companies offer a gamut of services from simply scanning to creating beautiful finished books & videos and on to providing protected online storage vaults. Learn from their RT presentations, websites. Explore options and see what meets your needs. Still need to do the planning and sorting before you turn it over to professional. KNOW HOW TO FIND RT CONTENT? great learning resource

Assume we are DIY….. TODAY focus on how to manage digital PHOTOS, but will also touch a bit on value of preserving our physical photos. Refer you to other experts in those best practices specific to preserving printed pictures.

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Scanning at the Alpine Family Search Center�AlpineFamilySearch.org home page

Label flash drive with your name & return address. Create a folder on the inside that says “If you find this memory drive, please return to…….”

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Apply a 4 step cycle

To get started and then

continue as your collection

grows

See: “Personal Digital Archiving”

BYU Family History Webinar

by Jeremy Myntii (available on Youtube)

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��1. IDENTIFY�WHERE ARE YOUR PHOTOS & STORIES STORED?�

Printed photos, negatives, slides in albums, boxes
Phone, laptop, tablet, camera, flash drive, CD’s
email, texts, Social Media, blogs
In the cloud? i.e. google photos, icloud
Do you still have a way to access older media formats?

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Step 2 DECIDE

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2. DECIDE

What content is important for long term storage?

Don’t waste time on unneeded stuff.

Choose universally supported programs and software for long term

Save your media in the common digital file formats that are used in these programs

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Look at your collection and determine what works best for you.

SCAN FIRST

Slides are easier to view after scanning.
Scan whole pages of albums & scrapbooks to preserve context.

ORGANIZE THE “BOX” first

Food service gloves for delicate materials (nonlatex, powder free)
Clean before scanning
Sort by types of materials, i.e. slides, negatives, prints, albums
Insert identifying card before each group with name, date, location, # of photos-(easier to add details after scanning)

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Consider the value of printed photos

Keep best family photos, film & negatives
Print some to enjoy now

Printed can always be digitized and restored and a printed photo format will never become obsolete.

Store safely in acid free materials, non-PVC plastic boxes

Archival tips from some experts:

Maureen Taylor, “The Photo Detective”

Denise May Levenick, “The Family Curator”

Author of How to Archive Family Keepsakes

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Step 3 ORGANIZE

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3. ORGANIZE

Design a logical hierarchy of folders that work for you and can be understood by others
START SMALL, SEE WHAT WORKS AND ADJUST

Descriptive enough to have meaning
By years, months, major event
Family surname
Flexible enough to grow with collection

Top photo shows a physical container, with sections for different types of media and label cards with some details. This plan was described as we talked about scanning or sorting physical photos first. These physical file folders can help determine a plan for a nested digital file & folder system as we see how much content a topic has. Bottom photo suggests that we are creating nested digital files, clearly named. Both systems should be flexible so it can expand as collection grows. This organization is essential tor locate your work after its been stored.

A wise friend created rough timelines to help date and organize her printed images. simplest a page per year, with 12 months where you can add detail-birthdays, events, moves, where you lived, pets, to help fix a date. either w/ paper & pencil or excel spread sheet.

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Two examples of nested file folders�

Personal History

John Smith History book

John Smith Childhood

0-2years

0-2_001SmithJohn1927birth
02_002SmithJohn1927blessing

2-6 years

2-6_001Robertborn.jpg
2-6_002Grandparents.jpg

With other folders for High School, College, Mission, Military, Marriage, Career

Family Photos for Terry Brown Family

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Digital file naming suggestions to ensure that files can be read by multiple devices & systems

Use upper & lower case letters, numbers, hyphens & underscore
Avoid spaces. Use dashes Brown-Nancy or CamelCase BrownNancy
Assume that upper and lower case will be read the same
Use standard date format YYYYMMDD or YYYY-MM-DD
Zero pad sequential numbers if more than 1 photo in a group

e.g. 001, 002, 003

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Good examples of file names

1978_MeganBrown_Scrapbook-004.tif

2004-05-17_TerryBrown-birthcertificate.pdf

001_OlsenOrange-1890-1945-10-06.obit.pdf
002_OlsenOrange-1890-1917-09-10.passport.pdf

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How to improve these file names?

Photo1.tif

Brown T & N wedding.pdf

2019-05-1708.02.20.jpg

March 1, 2020 scan.jpg

Final draft version 3.docx

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Metadata= writing on back of photos!

If it isn’t worth your time to add metadata, that photo may not be worth saving.

Let’s look at Family Search

And Ancestry

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STEP 4 MAINTAIN

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4. MAINTAIN

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Remember “LOCKSS” �(Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe)�

Use most current storage media
Keep it up to date (evaluate for obsolence every 5 years)
Keep backups in a safe place.
Store physical photos away from heat, moisture, & acidic containers

A reminder “You are the most photographed generation of all time but, there will be no pictures in the attic for your great grandchildren to discover.”

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Make Sure to Share

Share images with Family History Websites or social media FB group

Send photo w/ story to family on specific event or holiday

Share flashdrive with your files

Create an archive index book with your files printed as thumbnails & attached storage

a few ideas from the simplest to a more involved method. 1. FS in top photo is the go to for most of us, If you’ve taken time for some simple edits and added essential details, you’ve made a worthwhile contribution fo your living family and future generations.

2. Now that you have files organized and searchable, you can share photos of loved one to mark a certain day. Terry’s sister shares photo and memory on their mother’s bday. We all remember and respond.

3. Scan scrapbook and share on a flashdrive.

4. Remember the contact sheets, also called thumbnails, that we would get when film was developed. You can create an index to your files. Here is a professionally produced product, with thumbnail images and file names. Attached to the book is CD in aa pocket. Now you know at a glance what is on that drive. BUT now need a flashdrive in that pocket. Do it yourself version could be a binder with pages of your printed thumbnals or even a screenshot of your files on the flashdrive. The flashdrive is labeled and kept safe in a flapped pocket.

My tiny successes brought lots of family connection. Olsen Slides during pandemic,

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Popular photo editing & organizing programs to purchase or pay for cloud storage �

Adobe PhotoShop for yearly subscription of $268.00

with professional edits Lightroom

Adobe Organizer Elements 1 time purchase
Adobe Photoshop Express is a free photo app for iOS

mobile devices (iPad & iPhone) & Android devices.

Google Photos

Apple Photos

All evolve with new features. All have tutorials on Youtube.

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Photo sharing & editing with Family History Sites

Family Search

My Heritage … focus on enhancing photos & fun effects

�

Ancestry

offer similar features but with some differences in terminology and appearance.
offer “helps” ? with articles to answer questions and help you learn features
will change & add new features regularly

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“My Heritage” Website….� for fun!

Colorize, enhance, animate & create deep story AI time machine to travel though history. FUN.

Photo tagger uses facial recognition software

Good support with Youtube videos by “My Heritage”

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Consider Mylio, a FS Partner, with a free option for photo organization.

https://community.mylio.com/posts/mylio-photos-fundamentals-v24-overview