It's official, I have decided that digital cameras may be the downfall of my favorite art. Until recently, I have been very good at printing my photos out in a timely fashion. With 8gb memory sticks and cards,and a busy two year old to chase around with my camera all day, even I have been falling down on the job of keeping up with myself. Which brings me to my next favorite excuse as to why I am falling further and further behind in my scrapping... "I have to get those pictures printed out."
See we have all become very good at downloading them, uploading them and some of us are even smart enough to back them up, but none of us have them printed anymore. Why? Storage and organization.
Several years ago, I decided I needed to be ready to crop at a moments notice because many of my friends would call me and say- "Hey- let's crop tonight", and my automated response was I don't have anything ready. So, as any good scrapbooker should, I started with the pictures. I sorted each and every photo I had printed into the black plastic photo files you can get at Hobby Lobby or from Creative Memories. The photos that were doubles, (from back in the day of real film when we were automatically given doubles) into each persons box by theme- ie Christmas,School, Firends, etc.... This way when one of my children came home from school with a "STAR student" packet that was due the next day I knew exactly where to find the photos with that person in them. (Also handy for memory boards for funerals)
I then went through the photos that I had not completed, sorted them into subjects or dates- like for instance a birthday party- I sort them into cake and eating, gifts, and party fun. Stick each theme into an ordinary envelope, mark the envelope with the date,and occasion and then in the corner I add which album the photos go into.(Like sometimes I have some shots for the family book and some for the child's book)
At that point I sort the envelopes chronologically. This makes it easy to find photos to grab and go to an instant crop! It was a few nights in front of the TV and I now have an easy to maintain system for organizing my photos and I never have an excuse to say to my friend, "I would love to crop but I don't have anything ready."
You can theoretically do the same thing for those uploaded photos in most Photo storage programs. Just separate the pictures as soon as you upload them into theoretical envelopes-or files, then you won't have as much to sort through when you do have to print photos for a crop. The key is to keep up on it once you start a system, stick with it. Personally, I still prefer to print my photos asap, so they are ready and waiting, but digital cameras have definitely made it less a priority, even for me.
See we have all become very good at downloading them, uploading them and some of us are even smart enough to back them up, but none of us have them printed anymore. Why? Storage and organization.
I then went through the photos that I had not completed, sorted them into subjects or dates- like for instance a birthday party- I sort them into cake and eating, gifts, and party fun. Stick each theme into an ordinary envelope, mark the envelope with the date,and occasion and then in the corner I add which album the photos go into.(Like sometimes I have some shots for the family book and some for the child's book)
You can theoretically do the same thing for those uploaded photos in most Photo storage programs. Just separate the pictures as soon as you upload them into theoretical envelopes-or files, then you won't have as much to sort through when you do have to print photos for a crop. The key is to keep up on it once you start a system, stick with it. Personally, I still prefer to print my photos asap, so they are ready and waiting, but digital cameras have definitely made it less a priority, even for me.
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