10 Top Tips to Get Your Digital Photos Organized

When you think of clutter, what comes to mind? The pile of paper on your kitchen island? The boxes stacked up in your garage? Have you ever thought about the photos you have stored in your phone and other digital devices? Photos are rapidly becoming our greatest source of clutter, and most people have no idea how to get their collection under control. At a recent meeting of the CT Chapter of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (NAPO-CT), we were lucky enough to be instructed on this topic by Cathi Nelson – founder of The Photo Managers – on this very topic. Cathi’s years of experience have helped her gather her 10 top tips to get your digital photos organized.

If you wonder if your photo collection is “normal,” be assured it probably is. According to Matic Broz of Photutorial, humanity takes 5.3 billion photos every day, which translates into 61,400 photos each second. In 2024 alone, this added up to 1.94 trillion photos. That is a lot of digital photos!

In addition to representing a challenging quantity to be organized, photos often represent the “toughest” type of clutter: clutter with emotional or sentimental value. Many of the photos we have stored on our phones, tablets, computers, thumb drives, etc. are more than just images, they actually hold stories, connecting us to events, people, and feelings from the past.

Stories are what makes up the fabric of life, so we don’t just want to delete them. During the recent horrible wildfires in southern CA, I was reminded of this truth as I heard people speak of wanting to grab and save their photographs. Photographs are visual storytellers, and we want to keep not only the photo, but the stories they represent (check out my friend Hazel’s book on this very topic!). Additionally, we want to keep our photographs in a way that allows us to easily access and interact with them.

Of course, not all photos are of equal value. Because of the ease and affordability of digital photographs, we take them for a variety of purposes these days, such as to:

• Record information about a piece or part we need to replace.
• Remember where we parked.
• Capture an image of an item we are considering purchasing.
• Share an image of an item with someone else to get a reaction or opinion.
• Document a situation, such as the damage from a traffic accident.
• Provide information, such as from an insurance card, to a vendor.

Furthermore, snapping digital photos is so quick and easy that we often take multiples so that we can look back later and “share out” the best one.

The result of all this photography is often a daunting mass of photographs stored on our devices and in the cloud in a giant, disorganized jumble. The sheer quantity can also end up necessitating financial investment in incremental storage capacity to keep them.

Although we may wish to snap our fingers and have digital photographs instantly organized, few people love the idea of going through them all. Where do we even begin?

Before you truly begin the process, it helps to clarify your goals. In other words, what are you hoping to accomplish? Are you trying to prepare a slideshow for an event? Are you hoping to create a specific type of end result? Do you want to review all your photos or just a subset? Knowing your goals is helpful because it may add boundaries to your project.

Cathi shared ten tips for organizing your photo collection, both the ones you have taken in the past, as well as the ones you will take going forward into the future. Are you ready? Here we go.

Tip #1: Consolidate Your Photos

Cathi recommends that you begin organizing digital photos in the way you might for physical objects. Begin by gathering all your digital photos into one location. At this early stage, don’t worry if you have duplicates or whether you like the photos, the goal is simply to get them into one place. She suggests you copy them all onto one external hard drive. There are many hard drives on the market. Cathi recommends Western Digital and My Passport.

Don’t feel the pressure to immediately delete the photos from their original locations, you can worry about that later. Simply collect them from wherever they may be: Photos, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.

Be aware that photos that have been shared to social media have been compressed, meaning they won’t be good candidates for printing. The ideal is to gather all of your photos in their original, full resolution.

Tip#2: Create a Logical Folder Structure

Once you have your photos collected, the next step is to establish a clear and intuitive folder system that you will use to categorize your photos. Cathi acknowledged that the robust nature of search functions may make this unnecessary in the future, but she still feels this is a good approach.

For instance, you may create folders for years, events, vacations/trips, work photos, individuals, holidays, and the like.

Tip #3: Use Photo Management Software

This is where the magic comes in. Cathi talked about the power available via software tools today. These are worth the investment if you have a large collection to organize.

A few she mentioned are:

• Adobe Lightroom
• Apple Photos
• Mylio Photos

Software will be helpful in reviewing and sorting your photos. Many have a free version, or a free trial. Cathi also acknowledged that AI is likely to become increasingly powerful, making the reviewing and sorting of photos simpler in the years ahead. Even now AI can recognize faces, locations, setting, etc, and the capability is likely to become better and more accurate in the future.

One thing Cathi suggested you be aware of when selecting software is where your photos will reside. For instance, Apple photos holds the photos in their proprietary software, whereas Mylio allows you to keep the photos on your own devices as you sort and review them.

Tip# 4: Backup Your Photos

Before you begin sorting, establish a backup plan. In fact, Cathi suggests you have multiple backups, such as one in your home (e.g., on a hard drive), one in the cloud, and even one that you keep offsite. It is wise to have a system in place that is backing up photos automatically, such as TimeMachine or Backblaze.

Having a backup helps you feel more peaceful as you edit your collection.

Tip #5: Deduplicate

If you have gathered your photo collection to one place, it probably feels like a lot. The number can be overwhelming. The good news is that you probably have duplicates. Once again, software can really save the day on this one. Instead of having to cull through photographs one at a time to find duplicates, software can do this step for you.

A couple of product recommendations she shared were cisdem (PC) and PhotoSweeper (Mac).

Depending on your settings, these products can go through and get rid of both exact duplicates and even distinct photos that have duplicate contents (like when you took six shots of the same pose).

Reducing duplicates can save you a lot of work. Cathi shared that one client’s number of photographs dropped by more than 300 after this step!

Tip #6: Tag and Label Your Photos

Once you have backed up your photos and eliminated duplicates, you are ready to start reviewing photos individually. The goal is to be able to find the photos you want, and the quickest way to do this is by adding tags and using metadata.

Tags are words you add to a photo, such as “Grandpa” or “Joe’s birthday party.” Metadata is information that your camera automatically adds to your image, such as the date and time the photo was taken.

Below is a photo of the “info” from an Apple photo I recently took. You can see that I can add a title, as well as a caption, keywords, the names of people in the photo, and a location. [Note: I have “automatic location data” turned off since I frequently take client photos and never want their location to be recorded. If you have this feature turned to “on,” this where the photograph was taken can also be logged by your device.]

It is during this phase of photo organizing that software like Adobe Lightroom, Mylio, and Apple Photos (Advanced) can be helpful. The addition of information enables you to more easily search your photo collection.

This process of reviewing and organizing photos is probably going to take a while. It isn’t something you do at one seating. Just as with physical belongings, the photos have likely accumulated for years, so reviewing them will take time. Slow and steady is a good approach, where you set aside recurring intervals to work on this project.

As you review and add tags, you can then move the photo files into the folders you established up front.

Importantly, even if you do not plan to conduct a full review and organization of all your old photos, you can start adding tags to any of the photos you take from this moment forward.

Tip #7: Regularly Delete Unwanted Photos

Once your photos are organized, you are ready to establish “healthy habits” going forward. The best way to keep photos from becoming overwhelming is to establish a healthy “delete” habit.

As with physical objects, you need to circulate photos out (i.e., delete them) on a regular basis. You can do this manually, simply by using your down time, such as when you are waiting for an appointment, to pull your phone out and delete unwanted photos.

You can also use an app such as Daily Delete (Mac), which prompts you to review photos from your past and delete the ones you don’t want. Using a tool like this that requires you to take action can be very helpful as you form the habit of reviewing and deleting.

Tip #8: Edit Selectively

As you continue to grow, review, and edit your photo collection, remember to focus on quality over quantity. The goal is to ensure that you have the photos you want, not to mindlessly reduce. You can’t get photos back, so allow yourself sufficient time to be selective.

Likewise, you don’t need a million photos. Having too many photos, as with any other type of possession, hinders us from being able to enjoy them. You don’t need, nor will you probably enjoy, six photos of the same thing from different angles. Plus, digital images take up space, so if you don’t cull, you will probably end up spending more and more money to have them backed up and stored.

Some might feel it is “harmless” to keep photos, but it is worth noting that backups and cloud storage of digital files are housed on servers in data centers, which do use energy. So in a way, deleting digital photos is good for the environment!

When it comes to photographs, I generally suggest clients can feel at peace deleting:

• Photos that are blurry
• Duplicates – keep only the best one
• Landscapes or distant photos of buildings (unless you have a strong connection to them)
• Photos of a tiny person before a huge structure (again, unless it is particularly meaningful)
• Unflattering photos that make you cringe
• “Data” or “information” photos that you no longer need
• Photos that evoke a negative emotion, for any reason

Tip #9: Enjoy and Share Your Memories

Photos aren’t meant to simply be archived, as if in a warehouse, for future generations. We take photos because we want to remember people, places, events, and happy moments.

There are many ways to enjoy your photos.

You may want to print and display some of your favorite photos the old fashioned way. Alternatively, you may wish to upload them and have a photo book printed to memorialize an event or vacation. You can also send favorite photos to a digital photo frame like Nixplay where they scroll on a repeating reel.

In addition to enjoying them yourself, digital photos lend themselves particularly well to sharing. You can share on social media sites, create family albums, send photos to loved ones via an app like Skylight, email photos, and text photos.

A reminder caution is that any photo you upload to a site like Instagram will be compressed, and also live on that app, meaning you are not guaranteed of future access. Social media should not be considered the backup of your digital photo collection.

Tip #10: Maintain Your System

As with all organizing projects, the system you set up will require maintenance. You want photo organizing to become a habit, just like putting your keys on a hook near the door or filing paperwork once a week. The more routine it becomes, the easier it will be.

If you want to organize your digital photographs, but this whole project seems like too much to take on, I suggest you reach out to a professional photo organizer. Having an expert guide you through the process can really ease stress, save a lot of time, and make the process more enjoyable.

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Have you organized your digital photographs? If so, what tips would you share?