Welcome to another edition of Let’s Talk Photography! If you’ve been following this article for the past couple weeks, you’ve been introduced to a simple and tested strategy for getting your photos off your camera and onto your computer and giving them some organized structure to simplify the task of finding photos. I’ve pointed you in the direction of storing your photos based on date and time and I left you wondering how you can use that structure to find photos based on life events. The simple answer is: you can’t. That’s right, because we are keeping things simple and organized, we are unable to change the structure to accommodate the random and un-alphabetized events of our daily lives. This is where the software comes in to play.

I’ve said before that a great place to start with choosing software is with the apps or programs that your camera came with. This being said, some cameras have very complex and highly intelligent programs and some cameras come with the bare essentials that just get the photo from point A to point B and leave it up to you to figure out the rest. In organizing your photos, you want to be able to start on the right foot so you can expand and improve your software later without having to reorganize your photos every time. Today you have a hundred photos but five years from now you might find a better software package and you’ll then have a thousand photos. Are you going to go back and reorganize everything from scratch? Yeah, neither would I. That’s why we’re going to take a look at a couple features that I think you should have as “selling points” when trying to figure out what software to use.

Remember, you don’t have to wait to start moving photos to your computer if you still haven’t figured out the software package that best fits your needs. You can begin moving your photos and putting them into the folder structure you chose to use because no matter what software package you settle on, your photos are always going to be in the same physical location. This is important to remember so you don’t fall into the confusing trap of thinking that your photos are “in” one program and you want to “move” them to another program. Every program will be looking at the same photo files if you always keep them in the default “Pictures” folder on your computer. If you missed my explanation of that then you can find the past article on the PJ’s website and read about it to get caught up.

Okay, what are these make-or-break features that I’m talking about? Albums, Catalogs, Categories and Keywords. These four things are not always present all at the same time, but they are basic features that can be found in just about every photo organizing software package available today. Whether it’s a free program like Google’s Picasa or a hobby level powerhouse like Adobe’s Photoshop Elements or a

professional level package light Adobe’s Lightroom, you are going to be able to classify and categorize your photos with logical names like “Summer Vacation – 2016” or “Billy’s First Birthday” by using either Albums, Catalogs, Categories, or Keywords.

Now, before you put the paper down and jump on the Internet and start downloading a program to use, I should note one very important thing. Most of the programs out there will allow you to use these organizational tools but they will not store these labels in the files themselves which means if you spend the next three months creating albums in Picasa and then you make the decision to purchase Photoshop Elements, you’re not going to be able to see the albums in the new program. The one thing that WILL transfer over to the new program from Picasa is the keywords. Keywords get saved into the metadata of an image file. Metadata is all the information that is hardcoded into the file like date and time stamps, information about the camera that was used to take the photo, geolocation of the file, when the file was last edited, etc. Yep, a photo file has all that information and more stored inside it and you didn’t even know it.

If you begin your strategy using keywords then you’ll have a better chance of moving from one program to another with little work in the long run. Once you’ve found a program that you’re going to stick with then you can start creating albums, catalogs and categories.

So, how do you use these features? Easy, once you have your photos on your computer and you’ve opened your software and can view them, simply start labeling them with keywords that make sense to you. Every time a photo of little Sally is taken, give it the keyword “Sally.” The same goes for photos of Mom, Dad or Grandma. If it was taken during a birthday, create a second keyword and make it “Birthday” or “First Birthday,” “Second Birthday,” etc. Create new keywords for every life event that will make it easy for you to find later down the road. And remember, a single photo showing the whole family can have a separate keyword for every person’s name so you can search for Sally and she’ll show up in photos of just her, but also in group photos. Because keywords are searchable and follow the photos from one program to another they make the creation of albums and such that much easier later on.

Now, what do I do when I start running out of room on my computer? We’re going to explore that and planning for disaster in the next edition.

Until then, happy shooting!

Is there a topic that you’d like to learn more about? Send feedback, share your photos, or offer topic suggestions to talkphotos@ecklof.com. If you’re looking for a place to connect with local photographers in Chautauqua County, search for the group “Shoot ‘n Share Chautauqua” on Facebook.