5 Tips For Sorting Out Your Videos And Photos
It’s always a joy to browse through old photos and remember the great times we’ve had. The only issue is that swiping through the photo app in our phone might involve also seeing a cluster of pics when we were choosing a bedside lamp, or a lot of other people’s WhatsApp photos, or even 22 photos of us trying to get the perfect shot in front of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. As time goes on, the job of sorting out our photos and videos only gets bigger and bigger.
The bad news is that the photo organisation isn’t going to happen by itself – not until AI can read our minds, anyway. The good news is that with a little time, dedication and strategy, old photos and videos can be sorted out, and in a way that makes it much easier to take and organise snaps in the future. Here’s how to do it in the most efficient way.
Prepare: decide your end goal
Before you get started, think carefully about what good looks like to you. You don’t want to sort through hundreds of photos before you realise the end result doesn’t serve its purpose and you have to go back and start again.
For example, do you eventually want it to end up on your phone (which offers easy access), cloud storage (which can usually hold more photos than your device, and is sharable) or on an external hard drive (which often holds even more photos, and also reduces your carbon footprint)? And most organisation is done by date, but would you prefer to theme your album by location or subject? Or perhaps a mix?
Carve out time
Giving time to the task might seem an obvious step, but if it’s not properly accounted for, it’s where the process will go wrong. So don’t start without coming up with a realistic time plan, knowing that you’re likely to veer down memory lane. Do you want to earmark a weekend for it and aim to get it done in one big blast? Or spend one evening a week chipping through it until it’s done? However you prefer to do it, note it in the diary so you’ve made a promise to yourself. Then try and make the time as enjoyable as possible, perhaps by putting on music or fixing your favourite drink.
Bring your photos altogether
If you’re going to organise your photos, it’s worth doing it properly. That means scanning physical photos, and downloading photos from your social media accounts (in your account settings, they usually offer the ability to download all your information including photos and videos). By combining media from every source, you’ll be able to feel completely organised and give yourself the full picture (quite literally).
Be ruthless – but only if you want
Marie Kondo-style thinking would tell you to keep the essentials only. There’s much to be said for that: summing up Malaga 2019 in 20 photos is an effective way to use photo albums. But especially if you’re keeping your photos on a hard drive, you can afford to be less curated. Not all pictures have to spark joy per se. If you liked both of the very similar sunset photos and can’t pick between them, keep them both. That way, photo organisation is more about deleting the completely unnecessary pics, like the blurry pics and the ones you only took to send on to someone. Some photo apps, like Google Photos, can help with decluttering. But you’ll still need to go through each photo or video to sort it into the right pile.
Once the backlog is clear, think about your new pics
Going through the process of sorting out your old photos is likely to make you reconsider how you take photos in the future. You might feel it’s better to clear up your photo album at the end of each week, or perhaps you want to make photo organisation an annual tradition. However it suits, you’ll naturally want to stay on top of things – so make space for it in your life.
Finally, these photos and videos could well be the most valuable thing you own, so ensure you don’t lose them. The best way is by storing them in a back-up hard drive. That way you’re not at the behest of digital outages, password issues or other worst-case scenarios – instead, you’re fully in control of your precious memories.
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