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Old 01-06-2018, 09:51 PM
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Default Organizing Photos from Multiple Sources

Just when I think I have something figured out, circumstances change for me. That's the way life goes, I know.

Anyway, for many years my photos all came from one source. I used one camera. (My DSLR) I carried it everywhere with me and didn't take photos with anything else.

These days things are so much more complicated. I still use the Nikon but I also use my iPad (admittedly, photo quality isn't great), a small point and shoot of my daughter's and my phone. My husband also takes photos on his phone, my kids on theirs and then there are all of the photos from other people. These didn't used to even be a thing for us... now there are pictures that people take and text to us, pictures that the school posts via facebook, Flickr, etc. Now I also have pictures that I snag from Facebook of my grandbaby and pictures her mama sends us through text, messenger, etc.

My photos were always organized by year and then by month and day. Nothing brilliant about it, but I could find what I need. Now I find myself with pictures that don't have a specific date because that date isn't transferring in the meta data when I download them or am sent them, etc. Plus some are old photos that people are taking pictures of to send or scanning, etc. It all gets so confusing!

How do you organize from multiple sources? I thought about maybe just doing things by school year for pictures of my kids at school and pictures of them with their friends. I don't know though, that means some of the pictures I take would either be moved into this folder or I'd have them in two places.
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Old 01-06-2018, 10:26 PM
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I use named folders...cause I have the same issue.

I have vacations pics from this summer so the folder is vacay. Then in there are seperate folder for the Corning Museum, the Zoo, Niagara Falls, Colorado, road trip only shots.

for everyday stuff I have a selfie folder, I have a folder with each kids name, I have IG shots, text message shots, screen shots, lol. Because everyone is sending me stuff and I would never find it otherwise.

I know it sounds like a lot but with me putting the photos in the different places, I know where to go to find what I need.
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Old 01-06-2018, 10:40 PM
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I just slot photos from other sources (and from my multiple cameras) into my existing system. For example, for each year I have sub-folders for each child for photos only about them, one for photos of just the two of them together, one for family (i.e. kids + us) - these are all then broken down into 3 month periods (i.e. calendar quarters), and then sometimes further sub-folders within those quarters if there are a lot of photos for a particular event/outing. I also have separate sub-folders for bigger special events like Christmas, Easter, a holiday, etc.

So if someone sends me a photo or I grab one from a school newsletter, etc or I have a picture on my phone and my camera of the same thing, I just shove them all in a folder for whichever child/event, etc it relates to. For me, once they're on my computer and filed away it kind of doesn't matter where they came from. I can still tell by looking at them + the filename what the source is if I really needed to know.
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Old 01-06-2018, 10:51 PM
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I have photos coming from my DSLR, a point-n-shoot camera, my phone and my husband's phone. Occassionally my daughters will upload their photos from their ipods. I have photos coming out my nose!!

I organize by year, then month and then date. That wasn't enough for me because I found myself having to go through folders and folders looking for a specific photo because I couldn't remember the date. So now when I write my date, I always write a short blurb like this:

April 26 - Baleigh's Birthday Cake
April 26 - Baleigh's Presents
April 26 - Decorating Baleigh's Cake
April 27 - Organizing Baleigh's Room

It helps with finding photos. The only thing is when I toss the photos in to the folder, they aren't in chronological order if I have photos from all those other sources.
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Old 01-06-2018, 10:56 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Neverland Scraps View Post
So now when I write my date, I always write a short blurb like this:

April 26 - Baleigh's Birthday Cake
April 26 - Baleigh's Presents
April 26 - Decorating Baleigh's Cake
April 27 - Organizing Baleigh's Room

It helps with finding photos. The only thing is when I toss the photos in to the folder, they aren't in chronological order if I have photos from all those other sources.
I used to do this but I got tired of how long it took to label them (and them not being chronological). Making more sub-folders helped overcome this problem.
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Old 01-06-2018, 11:25 PM
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I don't care the source so much as I find it hard to get everything organized when part of my pictures are all uploaded automatically (Eye-Fi) with the date as the file name and then I have random pictures coming from everywhere so unless I change the names to match my others my folders are a mess.

I long gave up trying to keep specific folders for events, etc. I have a decent memory and can usually narrow it down to a year and a month or two so I keep everything by year and then by month.

So, I just round a bunch of photos of my high school kid on Flickr from the school's page. I don't know when they were taken (well, some I do) so I don't know what folder to put them in. If I have everything by year and then some are random it bugs me. I need to think more about my organizing as this is the year to get these pictures under control!

Does anyone use any photo organizing software these days? My home computer is a PC and I don't use anything special. I used ACDSee back in the day but I don't even think I have it anymore. At work I use an iMac and I use iPhoto (I have dragged my feet about updating to Photos, I like the iPhoto format better). I really like that, but I don't keep any personal pictures at school. I just use iPhoto for organizing pictures I take of students/faculty.
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Old 01-07-2018, 03:21 AM
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I"m having the same problem! I use to only have my DSLR, but now I use that and hubby and I use our phones. I'd rather have a crappy pic of a moment than no pic at all.

My general way of doing it now, is by pooling all the photos by year and month and then sorting them further if needed, that way I get the general ball park date. I've had to learn to live with pages not having exact dates and being very slightly out of chronological order!

I honestly guess an ish date on photos or scans of old photos. I generally pair those with new photos and use the new photo's date though actually.

Hope you find your new groove soon!
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Old 01-07-2018, 08:11 AM
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I have multi use cameras like you but I WISH I had the problem of others taking pictures! You are so lucky! Not my guys. Getting a picture out of them is like pulling teeth, unless we are on vacation then my husband uses his own point and shoot.

Lucky girl!
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Old 01-07-2018, 09:07 AM
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I sort all my photos by date and event. If I have photos from multiple devices or people I put them in seperate folders withing the event folder with the name of the device or the name of the person who sent me the photos.

I find everything I need quickly. This system seems to be working for me.

Hope you'll be alble to find a way to make it work for you.
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Old 01-08-2018, 11:30 AM
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I spent a few hours uploading ALL of my photos to Google Photos and now I can scroll through to see the date of the photos regardless of whether I took them or someone else did.

Granted it's not fool-proof so out of my thousands of pictures I think there are 30-40 at the bottom of the page with the (same) wrong date that I will need to manually fix so they go into the right chronology but I'm okay with that.
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Old 01-08-2018, 03:24 PM
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I do year and month subfolders for my DSLR and P&S, but they go in the same folders.
My phone uploads to dropbox and when the month is over I then do a year folder with month subfolders.

For 2017 I have each month and then there is another folder called phone2017 and a subfolder for each month in there.

Some events have their own folder ie., when I did photos of my friends daughter at her ballet recital, my vacation etc.
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Old 01-08-2018, 03:56 PM
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I have similar issue. Pictures from my Canon camera are stored in the Pictures folder. Pictures from my phone sit in the Photos folder which is in the cloud. I use iMac. Is there a way to merge these 2 sources so when I look at photos in Lightroom, I only go to one folder? Would I have to download all photos from the iCloud? The only option I found is to open the the picture in Photos, then right click and select edit in Lightroom. Picture opens in Lightroom, then I import it. Do any adjustments if needed and export to the Lightroom folder in the Pictures folder.
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Old 01-11-2018, 01:59 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by LeeAndra View Post
I spent a few hours uploading ALL of my photos to Google Photos and now I can scroll through to see the date of the photos regardless of whether I took them or someone else did.

Granted it's not fool-proof so out of my thousands of pictures I think there are 30-40 at the bottom of the page with the (same) wrong date that I will need to manually fix so they go into the right chronology but I'm okay with that.
Yep, this. Can't say enough good things about Google Photos!
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Old 01-14-2018, 09:50 PM
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I may have to look into Google Photos.

I really want to get my photos organized this year. I am such a visual person. When I have photos attached to something I can remember it so much better. I don't even have to look at the photos to see them in my mind and to be able to pinpoint dates, places, etc. The problem is that when I go to scrap them I can see the exact pictures I want in my head, but I can't find them on my computer!
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