How to Store and Organize Digital Photos From Your Travels

Are you having problems organizing your photos from traveling all-year-round?

Whenever you travel, you can take up to a hundred photographs every single day. We can’t blame you, storing keepsakes of amazing experience is something everyone does. Pictures allow us to hold on and tell stories about a certain part of your life.

Unless you organize your photos, however, you might find your photographs taking up too much space, or become a mess of random pictures.

Knowing how to organize digital photos on your computer is a skill that highlights your memories. But this skill takes time and the knowledge to really make use out of it.

Read on, we have the top 6 things you should do to organize and store your photos.

1. Delete Unflattering and Similar Photos

This should be a common practice before or after traveling. Deleting is a great way to de-clutter most of your digital photos to make room for more. Fewer photos mean that storing them is a lot easier this time around.
We may hold on to each photo in our travels for personal and/or sentimental reasons. It’s good in theory but not very practical in the long run. Keeping them takes up too much space and causes your computer, laptop, or smartphone to lag due to storage problems.

To best maintain your photos, delete the ones that are blurry and dark, unrelated, and unnecessary. There are also applications and software which detect similar or duplicate images like Files by Google, VisiPics, and Gallery Doctor.

Remember that you have to make room for new memories eventually, so start organizing.

2. Utilize Folders and Sub-Folders

After deleting some of the pictures, your gallery should be more manageable to organize. You can now transfer all your photos from your camera or smartphone to your computer.

But wait, do you use the desktop as your sole storage for media files?

If yes, that’s not a good way to store your images. If you want to find a specific photo from months or years ago, It will get buried under the thousands of files on your computer.

Create or find a system you can use to organize your images first.

For different trips and events, try to make their own respective folders and sub-folders. Don’t forget to give them an appropriate name so it is much easier for you to find when you need it.

This is to avoid mixing the pictures and other media files from other unrelated trips, especially if you travel often.

3. Add and Write the Metadata

Metadata provides you the information and data of a picture. It can give you the exact time and location when you took the shot, as well as other information. Learn the metadata to help you on how to organize your digital photos.

Don’t worry because most of the images have editable metadata. The only exception is when you download it from social media sites. You won’t be able to edit it because, in technical terms, you are not authorized to change the metadata.

There are several applications like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, and AnalogExif that can customize metadata.

For Windows 10, you can right-click the image and tap on the Properties. Select details to put the information you want to add in it.

You can embed keywords, tags, and captions on the photos. For example, you can write sea, summer, beach, names of the individuals in a group photo, or anything that lets you group photos easier.

A good tip is to try to pick both specific and general tags so it is easier to find them.

If you are into photography, it is a great way to know the exact exposure of a particular photo. You should be able to take your photos with the same settings if it appeals to you.

4. External Hard Drive

If you still have storage problems with your devices but don’t want to delete files, it might be a good idea for you to invest in some external hard drives.

High-quality photos range from 1 to 80 MB depending on the resolution and size. If you take multiple photos, space will run out quickly, especially if they are high-resolution.

With a USB OTG (On-The-Go), you can connect your smartphone to an external hard drive, copy-paste all the pictures, and immediately delete them afterward.

5. Cloud Storage Providers

If you want to upload and access your images online, then you can also use cloud storage servers.

Google Drive, Dropbox, AirDrop, and iCloud are some of the more famous cloud applications on the internet. They are free for the most part and only need an account to digitize all your images and other files. Though keep in mind that they do only offer limited storage.

To get more storage space and unlock some special features, you’ll have to pay for the service.

They are worth the money, however, especially if you have lots of photos to save. The only downside to Cloud servers is its process of reducing file quality. This makes uploading easier but downgrades the photo unless you use a ZIP file.

If you want to learn more, check out this guide on how to create and open a ZIP file on Mac.

6. 3-2-1 Data Backup

Did you know about the 3-2-1 Data Backup strategy? It means you need to create 3 copies of the photo, 2 types of storage for backup, and 1 off-site copy for safekeeping.

It might seem a bit too much but it’s a great way to recover any lost and deleted photos.

You don’t have to always follow this method but it is quite useful when a backup fails or got corrupted.

Discover Ways on How to Organize Digital Photos on Your Computer

Here are the top 6 ways to learn how to organize digital photos and store them the right way! You don’t have to worry about losing any of your precious photos ever again.

Found this guide helpful? If yes, please read more of our articles and give them a shot! We offer tons of content to help you enjoy your family vacations and to get the most out of your recreation time!