Organising and printing photos......

[Beach Mama]

What do you do? How do you do it?!

Since we have had our Mac I find it really hard to get my head around iphoto although I am getting htere and have sorted our 18 THOUSAND photos into folders. 18 THOUSAND. WTF - I don't know where to start. Obviously I haven't printed hardly any of them that are on there, I try and do a print every few months since having the kids but am finding that the albums I got are just crap and the kids like looking through them and they are just getting wrecked so am thinking I should make the transfer over to photo books and do one for each year of the kids lives.

Just wondering how other people keep up with the amount of photos and how you actually organise them. Since getting our DSLR things are outta control!

Also if you use photo books who do you recommend!
TIA

[Amaunet]

I've used snapfish for photo books and they have been great.

[Nelle]

A blog I read where the mum is/was a photographer (Under the Sycamore), the mum orders two of the same book, one for the kids to pore over, and the other copy gets stored a little further from kiddy fingers. Might be worth considering if your kids really enjoy flipping through pics.

Pretty sure we don't have 18,000 pics (far OUT Tan!) but I need/want to sort through ours too.

[peanutter]

I do a 20 page soft cover photobook every 2 months ($9.86 at big w online - free pick up in store or $3 postage) and then get some extra prints for the family albums (normally between 9c and 15c each, again through big w)

and then I do a hardback coffee table book (between $20 and $50 depending on how many pages I need) for special things - wedding, holiday, etc.

when I haven't been up to date for a while, I do a sort by date, and pull them into different sub folders, to make it easier to pick out the best snaps, and then I put the best snaps into a "to print" folder for easy and quick uploading.

works well for us

HTH

[Pandora]

ArtsCow do really inexpensive photobooks that look great

[willow5]

I sooooo need to start getting my photos in order!!
When I had DSs1&2 I was really good. That was before digital cameras and phone cameras, when you actually had to take the film in to get the photos printed (oh I feel old) But I did it regularly and put them into albums all in order.
Now all these years later when it should be easier with all the technology at your finger tips I can't get it together I've got photos floating around everywhere, on the computer in random files, in my phone and some on disc. I got really worried a few months ago that something would happen the computer so I actually put a few 100 onto disc.

Ok, thank you Tanstar, you have motivated me! As of tomorrow I am going to start getting organised. I've even got frames waiting to be filled and put up. I need to get to it they wont get printed and into books and frames on their own!

[Beach Mama]

Thanks everyone! I think I need to go down the path of photo books - I think I will try and catch up and do one for each of the kids for each year of their lives and then some special ones as well!!!

Nelle - It is RIDICULOUS! That is from when we first got a digital camera about 8 years ago or something like that!

[Miss.September]

I haven't printed a photo since Aug 09! So we have a few on the PC.

I keep them all in folders - the main folder is "Unprinted Photos" and the sub folders are the months that the pics were taken. From there, when I have time, I upload them to BigW photos (so I have an external backup). My plan is when specials hit, print out a month at a time.

But then I have to buy photo albums.....and find storage......

I do photo books for special stuff, like holidays.

[briggsy's girl]

i have been doing photo books (using creative memories program) saving the pages and uploading to snapfish to print leather bound books. they are less exxy than CM and momento, but still pretty good quality. i will do cheapy big w soft cover ones for DD to have a look at - or will print through artscow when they have freebies or good bargains (we also print these options for gifts)

i have, for the past couple of weeks, been working on DD's 2nd year photo book. i'm having a great time doing all the layouts and journalling. it comes out to about 80 pages (maybe more) - her first year book was 76 pages - plus some photos taken by Sam (raven) in another book, plus her cake smash, plus her actual birthday book... this year i have been a little quieter with the camera lol

the snap fish ones were really great value when they had either a buy one get one free offer or 40% off just before Christmas - i even got around to printing our photos from our wedding!!

[Beach Mama]

Thanks for all the ideas ladies! You got me motivated and last night I started working on and saving a photo book for Izzy's first year! I love that you can work on them and save them! Do you think I should do a separate one for each year of the kids lives? So Iz would have 4 of them and J would have 3? or combine them from when he was born and just do year to year?! I m not sure how to do go about it!

[briggsy's girl]

i would do them individually - when they are older, it is easier to give them their own books than to work out who gets what. you could have photos or pages that cross into both books because both kids are in them - and then if you are journalling, you can write the messages more about the child that the book is about (so, when DS was born, you could have the comments about him meeting his big sister - and in hers, about how she reacted, how she helped etc). it might come up a little more exxy to do it that way when it comes to printing, but i would do it so that there are no issues later. if you're doing "events" you could print two copies of the exact same book for them to have later.

[YoYo]

I do big w photobooks. (same as peanutter - I like their quality too)

I have taken a pic of ds (and now dd) on the 12th of each month for his whole life and have done max's first year (2nd, 3rd and 4th!!)

They make it so easy to see how he has changed year to year.

Plus I can continue to do it from the uk.... And keep all the pics/books in one place online.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk - I wonder what the kids are up to....Better go!

[peanutter]

we're planning on doing each child 1 book every 2 months for the 1st year, then one book each year - each.

but some photos are of course of them with others - grandparents, aunts & uncles, cousins, friends, etc.

so when there's multiple kidlets, there will be some of them with siblings in their books - but the vast majority of them alone, or with DH and/or me.

then we would have photos of them together etc in the general family photo albums.

[wysiwyg]

In terms of organisation of the electronic files on PC I find Picasa (free from Google) great. It does facial recognition too, so with a little bit of effort you can tag all the photos with who is in them - so then you can find say all photos with DD, DH and I. The initial caltaloguing like this took a couple of hours (for about 8000 pictures) but now is done is easy to do as you go along. I currently have 4500 photos of DD!!! so now to avoid DS complaining he is a neglected second child when he is older I need to have 4500 of him by the time he is 2 :-). You can also tag with other things (locations, anyword you choose, as a favorite etc) - which then makes it easy to then compile photobooks etc. E.g. as you go along you can tag ones you like with "photobook year 1" for example and then when you come to do the book can find all the pics easily. It is also easy to import into from camera, and has a facebook uploader too making uploading to facebook easy. I have used a few photo organisation programs and this one even though is a free one is my favourite.