TRL Helpdesk - Photos

[Maximus Decimus]

I recently decided to do try and sort out all my digital photos. Previously, there were all over the place in different folders etc and whenever I'd backed them up from my phone to my PC I'd just done so en masse each time so ended up with a lot of duplicates.

I decided just to place them into folders based on their year and then used a duplicate file finder to cull a lot of the repeats. The problem I've got is that I've ended up with thousands of photos in each year, literally far too many to go through individually. The main problem appears to be Whatsapp but I have also got into a habit also of taking photos of documents or reminders etc

It would be easy to decide just to delete all of the Whatsapp photos, but probably 25% of them are good photos: most of the pictures I have of my relatives come from Whatsapp. I have placed them into a separate folder for each year but this has still just split 3/4000 into two.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of a good system for sorting them. For instance my phone will often pick out photos of documents and suggest that I archive them. Is there a program that could do this with the photos that I have and identify the documents/memes etc to allow me to delete them. Also generally, does anybody have any advice for how they've sorted their digital photos?

[M j M]

I've got about 260,000 digital photographs taken over the past 15 years, mostly from digital SLRs.

The Canon download programme I use automatically dumps them into different folders for the different days pictures are taken and in turn I save those folders in relevant years.

That makes it easy enough to find what I'm looking for - but the key is knowing what date you took an image. Most of my photos are of and on/in ships or ports and I also have a spreadsheet that lets me know where we were or what we were doing on a particular day which makes finding most stuff quite easy.

Family photos or other photos do tend to get lost amongst the mix so for those I've taken to tagging them with names or locations which is manageable for the volumes involved and means I can just search for a particular name or thing.

[M j M]

On duplicate photos, I've never had to use any but there seem to be a variety of apps or programs which do exactly this:

e.g.

I have to admit it I'd find it pretty terrifying pressing that 'delete' button to let a program delete some of my photos but I assume it works ok.

[ckn]

2 hours ago, Maximus Decimus said:

I recently decided to do try and sort out all my digital photos. Previously, there were all over the place in different folders etc and whenever I'd backed them up from my phone to my PC I'd just done so en masse each time so ended up with a lot of duplicates.

I decided just to place them into folders based on their year and then used a duplicate file finder to cull a lot of the repeats. The problem I've got is that I've ended up with thousands of photos in each year, literally far too many to go through individually. The main problem appears to be Whatsapp but I have also got into a habit also of taking photos of documents or reminders etc

It would be easy to decide just to delete all of the Whatsapp photos, but probably 25% of them are good photos: most of the pictures I have of my relatives come from Whatsapp. I have placed them into a separate folder for each year but this has still just split 3/4000 into two.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of a good system for sorting them. For instance my phone will often pick out photos of documents and suggest that I archive them. Is there a program that could do this with the photos that I have and identify the documents/memes etc to allow me to delete them. Also generally, does anybody have any advice for how they've sorted their digital photos?

I did much the same about two years ago. I did it in a fairly boring way. I simply stuck all the photos in one huge folder per year and then spent a couple of months just doing whatever I could be bothered each day while having breakfast, or a break. When I had enough each day I simply moved out all the ones I’d covered that day into a new folder. Takes ages but is complete and is still fairly fun going through all those old photos.

Oh, and make a complete copy on a separate drive somewhere of EVERYTHING before you start deleting anything and stick it somewhere safe. That way if you completely screw it up then you can go hunt for it with only mild swearing.

[Pigeon Lofter]

2 hours ago, M j M said:

I've got about 260,000 digital photographs taken over the past 15 years, mostly from digital SLRs.

A tangent here, but hoping you can assist.

I travel extensively and take huge amounts of street photos on a Canon DSLR. When I download from the memory card, the photos appear on my computer in a slightly different order from how they were shot...most are correctly sequenced, but others appear all over the file and not chronologically aligned. Any idea how I can get them downloaded in exactly the same order that they was taken? The camera is a 5dMk3 btw. Thanks.

[M j M]

1 hour ago, Pigeon Lofter said:

A tangent here, but hoping you can assist.

I travel extensively and take huge amounts of street photos on a Canon DSLR. When I download from the memory card, the photos appear on my computer in a slightly different order from how they were shot...most are correctly sequenced, but others appear all over the file and not chronologically aligned. Any idea how I can get them downloaded in exactly the same order that they was taken? The camera is a 5dMk3 btw. Thanks.

I sort by 'date taken' (not date modified) which should bring them up in precisely the right order. In Windows date taken is sometimes hidden away in a sorting submenu. If that doesn't work then I'm nonplussed as the date taken is set, as you'd expect, when you take the image (although I think you can tweak it manually) - even if the date/time in the camera is set incorrectly they should be in sequence relative to each other.

[JohnM]

Although obsolete and unsupported Picasa is still an excellent tool in my view. V3 is still downloadable.

[Maximus Decimus]

7 hours ago, ckn said:

I did much the same about two years ago. I did it in a fairly boring way. I simply stuck all the photos in one huge folder per year and then spent a couple of months just doing whatever I could be bothered each day while having breakfast, or a break. When I had enough each day I simply moved out all the ones I’d covered that day into a new folder. Takes ages but is complete and is still fairly fun going through all those old photos.

Oh, and make a complete copy on a separate drive somewhere of EVERYTHING before you start deleting anything and stick it somewhere safe. That way if you completely screw it up then you can go hunt for it with only mild swearing.

This is literally what I've been doing. 

I need to get into better habits really. Like many I'm sure, I might take 5/6 photos to get a nice shot of something but never bother to delete the rubbish ones. Part of my problem is my fear of losing photos (I once lost my honeymoon photos and videos because my computer ran an update and got stuck), so I back everything up. Because it takes so long and I don't know where I'm up to, I'll often just transfer them back and forth in bulk resulting in multiple duplicates, which I've now sorted.

[Maximus Decimus]

9 hours ago, M j M said:

On duplicate photos, I've never had to use any but there seem to be a variety of apps or programs which do exactly this:

e.g.

I have to admit it I'd find it pretty terrifying pressing that 'delete' button to let a program delete some of my photos but I assume it works ok.

Yeh I've done this with this program. Once you've gone through the first 100 or so and seen that it's accurate, then it's easier to press that button.

It was doing a hard reset of my laptop that prompted the desire to sort them out. I transferred all my photos/videos/music onto an external hard drive and then moved them back over. I won't be deleting the original mess of the external hard drive just in case!

[Maximus Decimus]

5 hours ago, M j M said:

I sort by 'date taken' (not date modified) which should bring them up in precisely the right order. In Windows date taken is sometimes hidden away in a sorting submenu. If that doesn't work then I'm nonplussed as the date taken is set, as you'd expect, when you take the image (although I think you can tweak it manually) - even if the date/time in the camera is set incorrectly they should be in sequence relative to each other.

Luckily for me, new photos are saved in a format which records the exact time and date that they were taken. Even the WhatsApp photos have a clear WA in the title which makes them easy to find and separate. 

Because of the chaotic nature of how I've transferred photos over the years, some of my older photos have lost the information including the date that they were taken. Luckily, there weren't that many of these and they were pretty easy to locate.

[Maximus Decimus]

1 hour ago, JohnM said:

Although obsolete and unsupported Picasa is still an excellent tool in my view. V3 is still downloadable.

This is the program I've used over the years and continue to use for actually looking through my photos rather than organising them.

I've decided to bulk upload them to my Google Photos account because that sorts them for you into a sliding scale of age and even does the facial recognition thing that Picasa does automatically. It also automatically puts them into easy to browse folders. 

I suppose the main thing I'm looking for is some sort of computer program that will identify obviously useless photos for you. The technology is there as my phone often prompts me to archive them, it wouldn't take much for one that could spot obvious memes too.

[JohnM]

36 minutes ago, Maximus Decimus said:

This is the program I've used over the years and continue to use for actually looking through my photos rather than organising them.

I've decided to bulk upload them to my Google Photos account because that sorts them for you into a sliding scale of age and even does the facial recognition thing that Picasa does automatically. It also automatically puts them into easy to browse folders. 

I suppose the main thing I'm looking for is some sort of computer program that will identify obviously useless photos for you. The technology is there as my phone often prompts me to archive them, it wouldn't take much for one that could spot obvious memes too.

some sort of computer program that will identify obviously useless photos for you.

that would leave me wih a big fat zero!

[gazza77]

I use lightroom. It's a monthly subscription, although you can I believe still buy old versions if you can manage without any upgrades. 

It pulls photos in by date into seperate folders. If you take copies or edit versions, you can save them together or move to a different folder. They key to then identifying individual shots is through data tagging in the meta data, adding key words to search on. That can be a pain, however it's easy to do at import and you can copy and paste metatdata across other shots if you add to one and then want expand that, e.g.tagging all shots from a holiday with the location, etc. 

[Padge]

Be wary when re-saving photos of saving for the web, some software when you do this removes the EXIF information from the file to reduce the file size. The EXIF info holds the details of time-date taken, camera and lens type, camera settings and copyright info (if set) amongst a whole host of other information.

 

[henage]

I have a small external hard drive from Argos that i place all my pictures/videos onto once or twice a year . Makes it easier to delete from computer . Easy to view , just plug into computer and your away .  

[M j M]

8 minutes ago, henage said:

I have a small external hard drive from Argos that i place all my pictures/videos onto once or twice a year . Makes it easier to delete from computer . Easy to view , just plug into computer and your away .  

This is essential. I've taken to saving a second copy and leaving the hard drive it in a drawer in my old bedroom at my Mums, so if, say, my house burns down at least I've not lost the photos! Even large hard drives are relatively cheap really and the peace of mind is definitely worth it.

[Maximus Decimus]

1 hour ago, Padge said:

Be wary when re-saving photos of saving for the web, some software when you do this removes the EXIF information from the file to reduce the file size. The EXIF info holds the details of time-date taken, camera and lens type, camera settings and copyright info (if set) amongst a whole host of other information.

 

That must be what's happened to some of my older photos. Luckily it's only a small percentage. 

[Maximus Decimus]

I've made a little progress. Turns out if you type in 'document' into Google images it will give you a list of any photo that is obviously a document. I tried it with meme but it only came up with about 10.

Just need to find an offline version now! Picasa doesn't do it and Microsoft Photos only gives a list of 10 . 

[Maximus Decimus]

5 minutes ago, Maximus Decimus said:

I've made a little progress. Turns out if you type in 'document' into Google images it will give you a list of any photo that is obviously a document. I tried it with meme but it only came up with about 10.

Just need to find an offline version now! Picasa doesn't do it and Microsoft Photos only gives a list of 10 . 

It really is quite remarkable. If you type in 'rugby' it will come up with a list of pictures with rugby in them, including some I have from 2001 that definitely weren't tagged with anything. 

[henage]

3 hours ago, M j M said:

This is essential. I've taken to saving a second copy and leaving the hard drive it in a drawer in my old bedroom at my Mums, so if, say, my house burns down at least I've not lost the photos! Even large hard drives are relatively cheap really and the peace of mind is definitely worth it.

Good policy . I've got another problem that i need to address at some point . Loads of discs with photos and videos that I can't get to play on my desktop computer . Had a quick look online but I don't want to alter my settings . 

[Bedfordshire Bronco]

23 hours ago, M j M said:

I've got about 260,000 digital photographs taken over the past 15 years, mostly from digital SLRs.

The Canon download programme I use automatically dumps them into different folders for the different days pictures are taken and in turn I save those folders in relevant years.

That makes it easy enough to find what I'm looking for - but the key is knowing what date you took an image. Most of my photos are of and on/in ships or ports and I also have a spreadsheet that lets me know where we were or what we were doing on a particular day which makes finding most stuff quite easy.

Family photos or other photos do tend to get lost amongst the mix so for those I've taken to tagging them with names or locations which is manageable for the volumes involved and means I can just search for a particular name or thing.

I use Google drive.... Do an edit of any rubbish each month to get it down to less than hundred photos.. Upload them to drive once a month.... Save the file name as the year then month (as a number) then a few words about what happened in month.. E. G s 2019 6 Devon/anniversary etc

It then automatically saves files in order... Works well for me