Finally! Organize All Those Photos and Videos Online
Between mobile devices, hard drives, the cloud and old scrapbooks, there are a lot of places to store photos and videos. But storing doesn’t mean they’re in any kind of order. And it can be almost impossible to find those just-right photos for a wedding, an anniversary, a reunion or a big birthday. Help is here. It just takes commitment. This is truly a worthy project.
Photo organizing
Yes, there’s photo organizing software to help, and that’s where you should start. Photo organizing software allows you to sort your photos by date, mark your favorite photos for quick and easy access and file your photos into folders for storage purposes.
One way to make retrieval easier is by using paid platforms like Magix Photo Manager Deluxe or a free management system like Google Photos. Whichever you choose, you’ll be able to tag and organize your photos, do some light editing and share your images to your social media platforms.
If you have physical photos in an album or scrapbook, you’ll want to digitize them (by scanning them with your phone or a scanner, or mailing them to an online digitization service), and assign dates and file names to them. After that, you’ll want to sort the photos into albums on your computer, which you can then upload to your photo storage system of choice.
If you use a service like Google Photos that’s connected to a smart hub like Google Nest, you can view your folders on your Nest device and enjoy your memories at any time. You can do the same with Amazon Photos and your Alexa-enabled smart home hub.
Photo storage
Once you’ve organized your photos, you need a good place to keep them. Storing your photos online in the cloud can help you save space on your devices. Here’s a list of good photo/video storage and organization sites to fit your needs.
Social photo sharing
From the early days of social media, Flickr has been a photo organization tool for photographers who are looking to connect with others. You can organize your photos with notes and tags and sort them into albums, plus give viewers the opportunity to comment on your photos. Flickr is home to millions of individuals and groups, a great place to share photos with the outside world or just show off your pictures and videos to family and friends.
If you want to print, sell or store your photos with ease, check out Flickr’s parent service, SmugMug. The storage app will keep your image data secure yet available to you at any time. SmugMug also works with many popular image editing apps like Lightroom and Pixsy.
Best for photographers
Edit your RAW images and export them into neat and tidy albums with AfterShot. Primarily image editing software, AfterShot has powerful photo management tools that can sort all of your photos from all of your devices without having to manually import photos from each one. You can also send your photos directly to Photoshop or another external editor for additional touchups.
Best for Apple users
You can edit photos and videos with your mobile devices and MacOS, and Apple Photos also has a powerful search tool, so you can find the photo you’re looking for with only the barest of hints. Using facial recognition technology along with location information, the Photos app can find your photos based on where you took them and who is in the picture.
For example, if you visited Augusta, Georgia, in April 2018, you could type “The Masters” into the search bar and your pictures from the famed golf tournament, held in April, would appear. You can also pair multiple search terms like “park” and “selfie” and see various pictures of yourself at the park. Apple Photos will also group photos together based on the subject matter and other photo metadata.
Apple also offers iCloud Photos as part of your Apple account, allowing you to see all the photos and videos across all of your iCloud-connected devices. This means you can organize media from your iPhone, iPad and MacBook, all in one place. You can also access the service via iCloud.com on a Windows PC.
Free image storage
Photobucket has long been a go-to service for image hosting online. The app is a powerful media organizer that can back up all of the photos you take on your iPhone or Android phone and make them accessible from any device where you have it installed. Photobucket offers up to 250 images in storage for free, but also has an affordable subscription plan to keep your images online and accessible as well as easy to share on social media accounts.
Full-service photo storage and organization
ImageShack is an all-in-one photo editor, media storage service, media organizer and social platform. You can choose to share a single image or an entire album from their app. You can also follow photographers you like, as well as friends and family, using the social features of the application. Your images are secure in the cloud, and you can use their SkyPath tool to access all of your images across your devices.
Make it work
The big thing to remember as you endeavor to organize your photos is that you’ll want to make the effort as soon as you upload new images. The task of organizing your photos will seem much harder the farther away you get from the memorable event. If you’re using something like Apple Photos, which uses AI to determine what is in your photos and organizes them for you, this advice isn’t as necessary. If you’re using other storage and organizational tools, you won’t want to put off entering keywords and making folders or albums in your app of choice.
Best advice? Don’t procrastinate! Get started on your journey to preserving great memories today. You’ll be so happy when you can quickly supply that picture of catching your first fish.
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