UPDATE – I installed Adobe Photoshop Elements on William Gunn’s recommendation and set it to import my almost 200,000-strong photo archive (a quarter of a century of photography!) on my desktop PC while I carried on with normal work on a laptop. 24 hours later and it’s 93% done…so another few hours and I can open the organiser and hopefully begin to sort my photo archive. Fundamentally, those 200,000 photos are sitting in virtual shoeboxes in the packs they came in, some are labelled, many are not. It’s a nightmare to search for anything as it stands…
TL:DR – Organizing a collection of tens of thousands of digital photos can be a daunting task, but there are some steps you can take to make it easier and more efficient. Here’s a workflow that might work for you.
A simple photo organiser
- Gather all your photos in one location: It is important to have all your photos in one place so that you can easily see what you have and begin organizing them. This might involve copying photos from various devices or external hard drives onto a single computer or cloud storage service.
- Remove duplicates and unwanted photos: Go through your collection and delete any duplicates, blurry or out-of-focus photos, or images that you don’t want to keep.
- Sort your photos by date: If you have photos with dates embedded in the metadata, you can sort them by date to create a chronological timeline of your images. This will help you easily find photos from a particular event or time period.
- Tag your photos with keywords: Assigning descriptive keywords to your photos will make it easier to search for specific images later on. Keywords could include names of people or places, events, or even colors.
- Create folders by topic: If you have photos that fit into specific categories or topics, create folders for each of them. For example, you might have folders for “family,” “travel,” “landscape,” “moths”, and so on. Be sure to move any photos that are currently in miscellaneous folders into their appropriate category folder.
- Rename your files: If your photo filenames are uninformative or consist only of a camera-assigned number, consider renaming them to include more information. This could include the date, location, or a brief description of the photo.
- Use software to assist with organizing: There are many software options available that can assist with organizing large photo collections. Some popular options include Adobe Lightroom, Google Photos, and Apple Photos. These programs allow you to tag photos, create albums, and search for images based on various criteria. That said, apparently the “organiser” component of Adobe Photoshop Elements is the way forward.
- Back up your photos: Once you have organized your collection, be sure to back up your photos to an external hard drive or cloud storage service (I do both!) to protect them in case of computer failure or loss or ransomware attack.
The above workflow suggested by ChatGPT would be viable for a small collection of photos. Unfortunately, some of us have tens of thousands of photos, so at least some of the process needs to be automated, I asked ChatGPT to give me an idea on how to do that:
- Removing duplicates and unwanted photos: There are many software options available that can help you identify and remove duplicate and unwanted photos automatically. For example, Duplicate Cleaner, VisiPics, and Awesome Duplicate Photo Finder are free software that can help you find and delete duplicate photos. I bought Duplicate Cleaner Pro to carry out this task.
- Sorting photos by date: Most photo management software can automatically sort your photos by date. These programs can also help you filter photos based on date ranges or other metadata.
- Tagging photos with keywords: Many photo management software programs can help you assign keywords to your photos automatically. For example, Google Photos can identify objects, people, and locations in your photos and suggest relevant tags as can Adobe Photosop Elements, I believe.
- Creating folders by topic: You can use software to create folders and subfolders for your photos based on different criteria such as date, location, or metadata. For example, Adobe Lightroom allows you to create folders and subfolders based on keywords or other metadata.
- Renaming your files: There are several batch file-renaming software options available that can help you rename your photo files in bulk. For example, Bulk Rename Utility is a free program that can rename files based on various criteria, including date and time, metadata, and sequential numbering.
- Using software to assist with organizing: As mentioned earlier, photo management software such as Adobe Lightroom, Apple Photos, and Google Photos can help you automate many aspects of photo organization, including tagging, filtering, and creating albums.
Previously, I had asked ChatGPT to give me some ideas on useful photo organisation tools. William Gunn suggested the best non-cloud option is Adobe Photoshop Elements.