If the new year has you inspired to clean out some digital clutter, today’s post is for you! We’re going to break down digital photo organization.
If you just cringed and were stricken by guilty feelings over the thousands of photos lingering on your phone, you’re definitely not alone. Finding a way to keep up with alllllllll the photos we take is complicated, and choosing the best digital photo organization software and creating a photo organization system can be very (very very) overwhelming.
So today we’re going to simplify things. This photo organization post is not for photographers or people who consider photo organization their favorite hobby. Nope. This is for the rest of us, the ones who are dreading the photo organization process but also don’t want to lose all of our photos if disaster strikes.
In this post, here’s what we’ll cover:
- choosing an external hard drive and cloud backup service for photo storage
- what to do with the digital photos you have stored in multiple places
- backing up your digital photos to the cloud
- ways to organize digital photos after you’ve backed them up and whether it’s worth your time
- how to set up a photo backup system that you can actually maintain
Plus, I’ve got a checklist you can download so you can track your progress through each step. You can grab it here if you want to skip ahead.
Ready? Let’s dive in!
Step 1: Find your photo organization “why”
If you only kinda, sorta feel like you should organize your photos because everyone on the Internet says so, you won’t.
It’s a project. A kind of annoying one, to be honest. And unless you can name why you’re doing it the first place, you’re not going to follow through.
So what’s your why? Do you want to access your digital photos more easily? Figure out the easiest way to create a yearly photo book? Not lose precious memories in case your phone gets lost?
Decide why this whole thing matters to you. And keep reminding yourself of that when you get frustrated.
Step 2: Choose what external hard drive and cloud backup service to use.
You’re going to need two things for this project: an online cloud backup service and an external hard drive. (Don’t panic. We’ll walk through both of these.)
What is an online cloud backup?
First, let’s establish the difference between a backup and a sync.
For photo organization, you need a backup. A backup will keep the copies of your photos, even if they get deleted from your device. If you have a fire or flood or your device is destroyed or stolen, you’ll still have all of your photos.
A sync, which is what iCloud does automatically, just matches the files on your device to an online location. If your files disappear from your phone, they will also disappear from the online location.
(Now, confusingly, Apple calls its sync “iCloud Backup.” But it’s not!! According to an Apple support page, “When you delete a photo or video from the Photos app on your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, or Mac, it also deletes from your iCloud Photos and any other devices where you’re signed in to iCloud Photos.” That’s by definition a sync. So if a photo gets deleted, whether on purpose or by accident, you will not have a saved copy of it. If you’re looking for accident protection, PLEASE DO NOT RELY ON ICLOUD.)
Which online cloud backup service should I use?
After hearing Miss Freddy, a professional photo organizer, talk about Amazon Photos, I’ve since switched over to their service. It’s a great alternative to Google Photos, especially if you’re already a Prime member. With Prime, you get unlimited photo storage. Your photos are also automatically sorted into yearly and monthly folders, your file size and quality stays the same, and you can also invite family members to create their own accounts and share their photos with you (even if they don’t have their own Prime accounts). Plus, there are apps for both phone and desktop. I’ve used it for almost two years and have been super happy with it!
My only two caveats: if you’re not a Prime member, you will have to pay (though it might be worth it, honestly). Video storage is also limited unless you pay to upgrade, but I’ve found that worth the price, too.
Before landing on Amazon Photos, I tried both Google Photos and Dropbox with mixed success. Dropbox was great until they discontinued their photo-specific app. I don’t love viewing photos in the regular Dropbox format, plus I ran out of space and didn’t want to pay $10 per month. Then I switched to Google Photos. That was fine until I found out that they shrink your file size and have weirdo privacy-breaching practices. Add that to their pricing changes, and I was out.
Amazon Photos has solved all of those issues for me, but if you’re not a Prime member, those other two sites may meet your needs.
What is an external hard drive?
For the safest photo storage, you’re also going to want an external hard drive. Think of an external hard drive like a really, really big flash drive. And you should be backing your photos up onto one.
Why do you need an external hard drive? Well, even if you’ve got a reliable cloud storage system, the Internet is unpredictable. In case a server crashes (which has happened over the past year!), the cloud service you use gets hacked or goes out of business, or you need a photo when your Internet isn’t working, you should also have your photos backed up on a physical external hard drive.
Which external hard drive should I use?
Please take my advice with a grain of salt: I am not especially techy, and my experience is limited to Macs. That said, I have used MyPassport for Mac for my general computer backup and for photo storage. I’ve had zero issues with mine – it works well and the price is good enough that we just bought two more 2TB ones.
(Also, I JUST learned this – if you’re using an external hard drive for your computer backup, you can’t also use the same hard drive to sort your photos into separate folders. I tried. Didn’t work. Internet confirmed. You’ll need a separate external hard drive for that.)
If you’re a PC user, there’s a MyPassport for PC as well.
Step 3: Get all your photos onto an external hard drive
So here’s where we’re headed with this. You’re going to get all your photos on your external hard drive. Eventually you’ll get them all in the cloud, too.
But before you do that, you’re going to get every single photo in one location. That means you’re going to grab the photos you have in 3 different online locations, the photos from your phone, the photos from that old laptop, and the photos from your current computer. You’re going to download the contents of each of those devices straight into the external hard drive so they’re all in one place.
I like to create a folder for each source where I’m retrieving photos, just to make things cleaner.
How to Move Photos to an External Hard Drive
If this is the first time you’ve used an external hard drive, you can just treat it like another one of your regular computer folders. Just plug it in, download photos straight into it, and you won’t even need tons of free space on your computer.
If you’d like a little more tech support here, I’ve included step by step guides from people who are smarter than me below. Again, I can only vouch for the quality of the Mac directions because that’s all I know. If you’re a PC user and aren’t sure what to do, copy the search terms below and add “PC”.
- How to get your Photos library to your hard drive
- How to get photos from your phone to your hard drive (the Image Capture tip will change your life!)
- How to get photos from Google Drive to your hard drive (skip down to the steps for Google Takeout)
- How to get photos from Dropbox to your hard drive
Depending on the number of photos you’re downloading, this may take a while. Be patient.
VERY OPTIONAL Step 4: Organize Your digital Photos
Okay. This step is where people often fall apart. And I don’t want that to happen to you.
If spending hours organizing the photos in your backup is going to make you crazy, don’t do it. Move on to the next step.
I’m really and truly not kidding.
If you don’t believe me, go back to your why from Step 1. If your primary goal is to make sure you don’t lose any photos in some catastrophe, you can skip this step. You don’t need it. Equally valid, if the thought of organizing thousands of photos makes you want to cry and quit, you can skip this step.
Please trust me on this.
For complete transparency, I backed up all my photos 2 years ago and am just doing the organizing now. I still have undated photos at the bottom of my Amazon Photos account. It’s totally fine. It’s better to get everything backed up in a disorganized way than to quit because you’re overwhelmed.
However, if your goal is to be able to find photos easily, you’ll possibly want to invest the time in this at some point. Possibly. And it will be easier to do it now, before you upload anything to another location.
If you want to organize your digital photos, here’s how you might proceed:
- When you import photos to your hard drive, pop them in a folder. All files from your computer go in one folder, all Google Drive photos go in one folder, all phone folders go in one folder, etc.
- Then create a new folder where you’ll put your sorted and categorized photos. The goal is to mesh all the photos from those disparate sources into one cohesive system. How you organize this new organized folder is up to you. The following works for me.
- Create a year subfolder for each year you’re backing up
- Create a month subfolder within the year. Label with a number at the front (like 01 January) so the months go in order.
- You *can* create subfolders for events if you are absolutely compelled to. (If you’re reading something called “Photo Organization for the Rest of Us,” though, I assume that might be overkill. It feels like it for me – I have zero plans to do this.)
- Create a folder for photos that don’t have automatic year, month, or location data (like screenshots or photos downloaded from Instagram Stories). Sort these now or later, dealer’s choice.
If you really want a software program to do the sorting process for you, I’ve heard that the aforementioned Miss Freddy has a Backup Boot Camp will give you some great tricks. I haven’t personally tried it, but if you’ve got the resources for it, you might consider it!
But what about duplicates or outtakes?
As you organize, you can delete duplicates or bad photos if you really have to. Software also does exist to find duplicates if they’re driving you crazy. I haven’t tried any programs personally, but you can give it a Google if you really care. Otherwise, don’t let it slow you down. Those few extra duplicates don’t really matter in the grand scheme of photo organization. You have permission to not worry about it.
Step 5: Get everything onto the cloud
Now that you have all your photos in one place (and maybe organized), back up that entire hard drive folder to the cloud storage of your choice.
If you’re using Amazon Photos, here’s a step by step article. You will want to download the desktop app – it will be helpful to set up automatic backups later.
This is going to take a while. Make sure you’ve got a charging cord, and be prepared to let the program run overnight.
Step 6: Set up photo organization systems for the future
Woohoo! Your photos are safe! So now that you have all of these beautifully backed up photos, you want to keep it that way, right?
Here’s how I maintain my photo organization system and regularly back up my photos.
Set a reminder on your phone or a recurring calendar event.
This needs to become a regular part of your routine. Once a month is great.
Clean out your camera roll.
Your phone is likely the biggest culprit here. Remove those screenshots you don’t need, record the information that would be easier to access elsewhere, and delete the duplicates.
Get all your photos in one place.
Sound familiar? Every month, you’re going to want to gather your photos in one location. Think of this as your home base, where you can quickly and easily access your most recent photos at a moment’s notice.
Depending on your photo style, you’ve got options for this.
- Are you a phone-only person who never take photos on another camera? Maybe your home base is your phone’s photo roll.
- Do you have photos from both a phone and a camera? Maybe your home base is your computer’s Photos app (or PC equivalent).
Wherever that home base is, get all the photos you want from this month there. If you’re into editing, now’s a great time to do that.
Back up to both your external hard drive and the cloud.
If you’re using Amazon Photos, here’s my favorite trick for this. I have a folder on my desktop named Amazon Photos that I’ve set to automatically back up to Amazon Photos. After each month’s photo cleanup, I make a folder labeled with the month and year inside this Amazon Photos folder. I drop everything from my home base for the month into that folder. That way, that month’s photos will automatically get updated in the Amazon Photos, and it’s quick and easy to copy the monthly folder onto my external hard drive. The old months can get periodically deleted.
Photo organization FAQ
Where should I start with photo organization if I’m super overwhelmed?
First, don’t feel bad or guilty. Digital photo organization is challenging.
To make this as simple as possible, don’t worry about any organization at all. Start with getting all your photos backed up onto an external hard drive. If you don’t already have one, here’s a link for a Mac version. Doing this will take a bit of time. But it’s just downloading. You can download stuff. Just take it one device or account at a time.
Why can’t I stick with a photo organizing system?
Well, I can’t read your mind, and this is probably super personal to you! But there also definitely might be a fix. To find it, try asking yourself what the hardest part is or what’s causing you to avoid this task.
- Is it getting overwhelmed by allll the photos at the end of the month? Try a daily or weekly phone delete. Set a recurring reminder to keep you accountable.
- Is it just actually remembering or making time to do the thing? Set a reminder and add your why to the title. Mine literally says “Photo clean-up – preserve memories!” You can also try adding this habit with another habit you’ve already established monthly to make it stick.
- Is it getting off the comfy couch to go dig out the external hard drive from Lord knows where? Create a designated spot for your hard drive, your camera, and any other photo backup things you need so they’re all in one easily accessible place.
- Is it that you just don’t really care that much? Fair enough. Set your phone on auto-backup and go on your merry way.
What do I do if I keep starting and then quitting, and it’s making my photo organization problem worse?
Oof, yes. Part of what makes this process so tricky is that a) it takes a while, so b) it’s easy to forget what you’ve done!
To help you out, I’ve created a checklist in Google Docs you can borrow! Create a copy to keep in your Google Drive, copy the checklist into your Notes app, or use it in any other way that’s helpful. Just enter your info below, and I’ll send it to your inbox.
Can I pay someone to back up and organize my photos for me?
Yes! Search professional photo organizers and you’ll find people who make this their actual job. (I am not one of them, sorry.)
Are there free ways to back up photos if I don’t want to pay anything?
If you don’t take tons of photos, there may be free storage options like Dropbox and relatively inexpensive external hard drives that will work for you.
However, the vast majority of us will run out of storage space on the free options. And unless you want to have your photos scattered across various free platforms (I don’t!), you’ll likely have to pay for storage space.
But it doesn’t have to be bonkers expensive, especially when you break down the cost over the lifespan of the product. For example, I just spent $75 on an external hard drive that can hold 2TB, which is something like 620,000 photos. If we imagine that I’ll use that hard drive for 15 years of photo storage, that’s only 40 cents per month. That’s definitely worth it.
You also don’t have to pay for software to organize the photos themselves – I haven’t. Be prepared to spend some time additional time organizing, but no fancy programs are technically necessary.
Should you automatically back up your phone to Amazon Photos (or whatever cloud backup system you choose)?
That depends! Again, this goes back to your goal. If you just want the safety of having your photos safe in a disaster, auto-backup works great. It’s 100% better than nothing, and it’s probably the easiest way to back up your photos.
However, I don’t use it. Here’s why.
My phone accumulates way too much clutter (screenshots, blurry photos, etc) over the month. I would much rather not have that clutter getting automatically added to my backup.
Plus, automatic phone backup would my system more complicated. If I had phone photos that were getting automatically added to my cloud backup, but then a cleaned-up collection of some of those same phone photos was also getting downloaded to my computer and mixed up with camera photos, then possibly reuploaded to Amazon Photos, we’d just have a mess. I’d rather keep it streamlined and run the slight risk of having just a month’s worth of photos disappear.
What If I back up my entire computer or phone? Is that adequate digital photo organization?
Yay you! This definitely might be adequate digital photo organization, again, depending on your goals. I’ve relied on my entire computer backup for photo storage for years, but it’s incredibly annoying to get into my Photos library though the backup software I use. I can never remember the steps and where to go, and it’s not working for my goal of having an easily accessible, clearly organized library of photos at the ready. If you don’t care about that, your whole computer backup may be just fine.
Do you really not delete duplicate photos when you organize your photos?
As I see it, you have three options for all those duplicates. You can delete them the hard way, by going through each file by hand. You can pay for duplicate-deleting software, which will expedite the process. (I haven’t tried any, but this might point you in the right direction.) Or you can ignore them.
All are valid answers. I’ve chosen to mostly ignore them. If I notice them as I’m scrolling through a particular event, I’ll delete them. But they really aren’t a huge deal. Backed up is better than perfect.
(All that said, if we ever get my husband’s old photos integrated with my system – oh, the joys of marriage – I just might consider utilizing some of this software. I’ll update if and when that happens.)
Do I need to rename my photos? Create tags? Add a folder for each of my children?
I know other photo organization sites tell you to do this. And I guess you can. But quite honestly, nothing sounds more like a giant, overwhelming time suck to me. Even if renaming and tagging takes you 1 minute per photo, if you have 15,000 photos (which is not unlikely), you’ll spending 250 HOURS (!!!) on the task. Not to mention, adding this sort of work to a monthly photo backup would make me procrastinate hardcore. No thank you.
In my own experience, if folders are separated by year and date, I have just about always been able to find what I need.
how do I digitize and organize physical photos?
I’m definitely not an expert on this, as I’ve only had to do it for a few photos! Back in high school, I used a scanner to digitize some of my childhood photos for my senior slideshow. It was time-consuming, but it did work well. There are also services that will do this for you. This article provides a helpful comparison between methods and some suggestions.
Before you worry about your physical photos, though, I’d definitely get your digital systems in order. Doing this one step at a time will help reduce overwhelm! Plus, you’ll want a nicely backed up place for all those physical photo scans to live.
What do you do with your digital photos once you’ve organized them?
Sit and admire how nice all the folders look.
Jokes. (But also kind of not.) I print some of them to put up in frames we have throughout our house. I am also a big fan of the yearly photo book. I’ll have another post on that coming your way soon!
If you made it all the way down here, you are a trooper and I salute you. I hope all of your photos are safely backed up now – or at least you have aspirations towards that bright and beautiful future. (And hey! Don’t forget to download the photo organization checklist if you want all of this in a step by step plan.)