I had a mother who took a lot of baby pictures. I grew up an amateur photographer. I took thousands of pictures when I was dating and engaged to my husband. You can imagine how many wedding photos we had. I also had two old computers (PCs!) that had broken years ago that I transferred all the old info from the hard drives onto my new computer. Then of course there is social media--photos your friends took of you, videos, etc. All those had to be brought in. To top it off, I went paperless. I scanned in all my old cards, paper momentos, photos, tax stubs, receipts, and much more. Did I mention I'm a writer for a living? Even more paper. So yeah, it definitely got out of control. And therefore, since I am the MOST organized person I have ever met, it started to drive me crazy. I wanted to get it under control.
Part One: Finding The Right Fit
So, I tried to use Iphoto to get my mess under control. Multiple times. Multiple libraries. Attempt after attempt after attempt. What was the problem? Well, one, it kept crashing (grr). Two, I'd often import like 200,000 photos and a TON of them wouldn't import correctly. So I'm left wondering which of my 50,000 non imported photos out of the 200,000 it was that didn't go through. WHO HAS TIME FOR THAT? I know I didn't! Thirdly, I needed to organize the hard drive (everything was on an external) and I really didn't have time to work on sorting 500,000 photos...especially TWICE...and the hard drive would have to be by hand. No.
I tried everything. I searched, and searched, and searched. I tried Picassa for Mac. Better than Iphoto, but still not what I needed. Tried Photoshop Elements 11. Eh. Kept trying program after program after program. AND THEN I FOUND IT. *Insert dramatic drum roll here*
*LYN*
To give you the long story short, here is why I used it and all the features that made so much more sense to me than any other program.
1) It crashes a LOT less. And who doesn't love that? Also, unlike Picassa, when it does crash, it SAVES what you have done. No frustration of doing the same thing twice here. My mac (though beloved) is old and doesn't do well with big programs and it handles Lyn better than ANY of the aforementioned!
2) It is FREE for a 15 day trial. Which, by the way, was all I needed to get the work done once I finally got an AMAZING program to aide me! And, by the way, if you don't finish, it only cost $20, which is less than eating like one meal out, and it is TOTALLY worth every. single. penny. Oh, and the program takes about five seconds to download and doesn't take up much hard drive space. Even more of a win.
3) There is no uploading!!!! NONE. Unlike Iphoto, where I have to get everything to transfer over and it won't ever do it correctly (and it takes FOREVER!), I just plug in my hard drive, and boom, there it is. In Lyn. Ready to sort. All my photos. No waiting, nothing not transferring over correctly, just perfect and ready to sort.
4) It is super quick. When you move something, it pretty much shows it right then or within a few seconds. No major lags and it has a nice refresh button you can push if you need to, but I hardly ever did.
5) THIS IS THE BEST PART. It saves you from doing the work multiple times!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I have ALL of my stuff on hard drives and I just think that is smart with the way computers crash these days. I'd rather be protected than sorry and I never miss having it on my desktop, because my comp runs faster as is. So basically, say I move a photo from a "photos to sort" folder to a "childhood" folder in the Lyn program. Instantly, it moves the photo into that folder in Lyn and more importantly, on my harddrive. So instead of having to organize in Iphoto, THEN organize a hard drive all over again (how irritating!!) I just do the work once and viola, everything is perfectly organized.
Part Two: Proper Duplicate Removal
It's safe to say that MOST of my ridiculous amount of photos came from duplicates. From multiple iphoto libraries, to pics I had on my computer and facebook, etc, there were TONS AND TONS AND TONS of duplicates. I tried several duplicate removers. SEVERAL. Some were Iphoto Library Cleaner (hated), PhotoSweeper (eh), Chipmunk (liked it, but confusing layout!), Gemini ($10, good job, but slow and misses some), Photos Duplicate Cleaner (free on the mac store and awesome, but again, misses some), and finally, the glorious UNIK. Never heard of it, randomly discovered it on the app store for $1.99 and oh, how I wish I had found it and spent that $1.99 ages ago!!!! Would've saved me so much frustration. It is THOROUGH, finds EXACT duplicates, and does it quickly. It shows you side by side photo comparison so you see what you are deleting. Items go to your mac trash so you can always retrieve them if you change your mind. Also, you can set it to find duplicates in grayscale, flipped vertically or horizontally, or even what percentage you want the photos to be alike. Ex:100% gives you exact duplicates, 98% gives you almost exact duplicates. It is SO easy and user friendly and most importantly, effective!! As far as serious duplicate cleaners go, I am convinced Unik is the only way to go!
Part Three: Ultimate Photo Organization
I'm pretty sure I tried every kind of photo organization there is during this process, trying to find that perfect one. Where it would be super easy to find things. People say use dates. On one hand, that makes sense, but on the other, some things don't have a date. Like haircut example photos! So I created my own system, on my hard drive, using Lyn. And trust me, with a LARGE amount of photos, this is the ONLY way I have found to have them truly organized and yet super easily accessible when you need them. It may sound hard, but it is actually VERY simple.
1) Start with dated folders with parentheses describing the time period. My husband and I love to move and have adventures, so your folders might be way fewer than mine! Here are my MAIN categories in order of date:
Head Folder: Photo Organization
Main Folders:
1987-2005 (Childhood-Growing Up)
2006 (College)
2007 (Dating, KJ at Memphis)
2008 (Engagement, Wedding, Memphis Apartment)
2009-2010 (South Carolina)
2011 (Colorado)
2012 (Kentucky/TN)
2013 (Tennessee)
2014 (Tennessee)
Dateless (Various)
So basically I sorted by years in a way that made sense to me. The detailed descriptions were key for me, because sometimes when you are sorting a bunch you may think "oh, we took that in Denver", not "that was 2011" so it makes it simpler for the sorter. Plus, I just like to remember where I was during that time in my life. You can't put every little thing that happened here, but you can hit the high points. Originally, I was ONLY going to sort by major folder. But, I like to have a differentiation between my actual childhood/baby photos and the ones when I was in high school. So, I decided on subfolders (and LOVE them). Once you have things sorted into MAJOR folders, subfolders don't take long at all, especially if you have them dated correctly and use Lyn's nifty little "sort by date" option.
After main folders are completed, begin subfolders (main folders are by date, subfolders are alphabetized). Below are mine. Obviously yours will be different, because you have different life events and locations than I do. But for example, here they are.
1987-2005 (Childhood-Growing Up)
Em-Childhood
Em-Elementary-High School
KJ-Childhood-High School (He had a lot less pics than me, so only one folder here)
Mandy's Wedding
2006 (College)
Alisha's Wedding
FHU Campus (pictures I took ON my college campus)
Makin' Music
Off Campus (pictures I took anywhere BUT my college campus)
Student Ministry (pictures I took at home relating to church group)
2007 (Dating, Kj at Memphis)
Dating
KJ-MSOP
2008 (Engagement, Wedding, Memphis Apartment)
Engagement
Honeymoon
Memphis Apartment
Wedding
2009-2010 (South Carolina)
Angel Oak Tree
Anniversary Trip- 1st
Boone Hall Plantation
Cypress Gardens
Daddy's Celebration of Life
Exploring Charleston
Folly Beach
GC & WA Apartments
Holidays 2009 & 2010
Isle of Palms- Dear John
Living Life
Martin's Point Plantation
Nanny Job
North Charleston C of C
Notebook Filming Locations
West Virginia Visit
Windsor Club Apartment
2011 (Colorado)
Anniversary Trip- 2nd
Anniversary Trip- 3rd
BVBID
Columbine
Dinosaur Ridge
Galveston Trip
Holidays 2011
Living Life
Manitou Springs
Moving Trip
Ogden Trip
2012 (Kentucky/TN)
Anniversary Trip- 4th
Holidays 2012
Living Life
Michigan Mission Trip
New Concord House
2013 (Tennessee)
Anniversary Trip- 5th
Book Signing
Bruce (car nickname!)
Holidays 2013
Johnny (truck nickname!)
Living Life
Missouri Visit
Nanny Jobs
Organizational Overhaul (pics of my organizing this year, I did a LOT!)
2014 (Tennessee)
Anniversary Trip- 6th (yet to come)
Holidays 2014 (yet to come)
Living Life (barely started)
Nanny Files
Dateless (Various)
Backgrounds
Biblical
Flowers
Haircuts
Hilarity (funny stuff)
Icons
Momentos
Organization
Photography
Tax Stubs
Trucks
Used To Own (pics of stuff we have now sold)
Videos
Web Related (pics used on my website etc)
Writing Related (author pics, book covers, etc)
Part Four: Bask In The Glory
All this felt seriously tedious when I was working on it. BUT, now that I have completed it I feel so accomplished. I've deleted all my duplicates, organized my hard drive completely (including non photo items under General Organization (tip: my major categories are 1987-2012 Archived Files, 2013- Present Files, Imovie Library, Itunes Library), and have an organized Mac photo program to show for it. Anytime I need to find any pic or scanned document for any reason, I know where to go. It really is awesome. And pretty much necessary. Why take lots of amazing pics if you can't even find them to look at them when you want? I know lots of people use Facebook or an online system, and it's doubtful they would go down and lose all your photos... but what if they did? Not for me. I also have a folder on a separate hard drive that has all those pics, including duplicates (just in case one of those duplicate programs had deleted photos that weren't actually duplicates, it does happen). You should always have a huge backup, unedited, just in case. I'd rather have one messy folder on a hard drive I don't use than to lose all my pics I love. It's there just in case.
But I have the blissfully organized one for my everyday use.
Why write this ridiculously long blog? In hopes it will help you. I looked, and looked, and looked and read article after article and couldn't find one that told me what I needed. This is not for people with 5,000 pics (though it would work for that too). This is for the serious picture takers who want to organize with style and ease. Thanks for reading and feel free to share if it helped you. Enjoy!!
No comments:
Post a Comment