Steps to Better Family Photo Management

Step 1 – Phone Cameras

Now it may be too late to do this retrespectively, however, it is always best to check that your phone camera is set up to take the largest possible image.

If you go into settings-picture quality-High.

This will mean of course that your phone’s storage may get full faster, but this will get you to do Step 2 more often.

Step 2 – Collating

This bit can be done using different methods but the ones that I use are a combination of wetransfer.com and email.  

So on each device you’re using, go to www.wetransfer.com and use this to Select All the images on your phone …  at this stage, send all of them.  Remember that you’ll have photos that people have sent to you through WhatApp and Messenger etc that you may want to include, so take a little time to think about all the images you’re interested in.  

Add your home email address and follow the instructions to clicking ‘transfer’ to send.

Now get onto your PC and download all your images here.  The reason I recommend transferring everything onto your PC rather than sorting on your phone is 2 fold.  Firstly you’re creating a copy, which is good practice if you don’t want to loose precious images.  Secondly, it is far easier to sort and select images from a PC.. see Step 3

Save your downloads in the same folder on your hard drive.

Step 3 – Sorting

Now you should have all your images in one folder on your PC.  So get the file explorer up on your PC or MAC and open your mega folder.  The easiest way to see your images together is to click on ‘View-Extra Large Icon‘.  This gives you a full folder view with large enough images for you to see.  

Now click on ‘SortBy-Date-Ascending‘

Right, now you’re ready.  All your images are in date order and ready to cull

Step 4 – Culling

OK you have all your images in order, so the best way to start is by:

1.  Get rid of duplicates – there are bound to be more than one of your favourite images, you’re never sure if you’ve got the camera to work in the first place so you always take more than one, and some cameras take a few as a matter of course… this is an easy cull, so get started

2.  Quality Cull – Now if you still have 10 images of granny with baby, this is where you need to be brutal.   You don’t need 10!  I want you to get rid of images that fall into the following categories:

– Blurred

– Eyes Closed

– Horrible Facial Expression

3.  Importance Cull – Lastly you now need to think about how important that image is.  If it’s a photo of a nice car you saw once, then clearly this is not important to your family’s photographic record.  Get rid of it!  The same goes for pretty scenery.  If it’s important to remember a family holiday then by all means keep it, but as a general rule, you need to have more photos of people than places in your family albums!

4.  Size Cull – this one is important for printing as printers require a minimum size and dpi (dots per inch) in order to print properly.  Most online print stores will not actually accept low quality images for printing so that’s why I suggest in Step 1 that you make sure your camera is taking images big enough.  So now you need to order your image by size in file explorer.

– MB good, KB bad – as a general rule of thumb you’re looking for sizes of 1mb and above.  If you hover over your image long enough, you’ll get the details popping up and can see the size there.

– If you’ve got smaller images that you simply have to have, right click on the image and then properties.  Look at the detail tab.  If you have dpi of 300 then that is great.  This is the dots per inch needed to print successfully.  If you have 72 dpi you’re not going to be able to print, no printers will accept it.

Step 5 – Printing

Well done, you’ve got this far..  That is the hard work done.  Now you can have some fun.

So for family pics I usually do a single album every year, then print out my favourite images to pin up either in the downstairs loo gallery, or to frame up the stairs.  If you don’t have room, then I think it’s more important to update your images, keep the old ones but use the frames for the more recent ones.  Your 14 yr old will be mortified if you have a baby photo on the wall believe me.  I sometimes literally use the same frame but update the images, that way you have a few older images sitting in the frame hidden behind the most recent one.

Albums –

My preferred album type for yearly home pics is a Coffee Table Book Album.  There are many companies offering this kind of book, Blurb, PhotoBox , Mixbook .  They are usually great software that is essentially a drag and drop affair

Prints –

Now you have to be really brutal, pick maybe 5 images from your batch per year to print out and put on the walls.  Use a quality printing company, generally high street printers are not great as they have such high overheads that they need to keep costs down by giving your rubbish quality.  I would use Truprint or Jessops.

Frames –

These online print shops do usually do framed images as well so to save you time you could get them from online.  But there are loads of framing services that will want your business locally so do a search to find someone near you.

I can’t face it – HELP!

If you need a hand then give me a call.  I can either help you through the above steps or you can send me all your images and I will sort them out for you.

I offer 2 levels of Photo Management Service which essentially will sort you out.  I will:-

Level 1

–  do all the culling, sorting and editing required

–  save photos to a USB

–  create a Coffee Table Book Album

–  Print 10 images backed by PVC to pin to your gallery wall

–  Add ons available for extra albums/frames/prints

Level 2

–  do all the culling, sorting and editing required

–  save photos to a USB

–  create a Stunning leather bound Fine Art Album

–  Print out 10 of your favourite images

–  Add ons available for extra albums/frames/prints