Struggling
to Manage Your Ever-Growing Digital Photo Collection?
Part 2 of 2
by John Grand
Organization
This is the first issue that digital photo album
software must address, and address well. If the
tools to organize your photos are complicated
or awkward, then you're less likely to make the
effort to keep your collection in order.
Some of the things you should look for
include:
i) How does the software deal with the photos?
Does if leave all of your photos scattered on
your disk, or does it gather them up in one place?
A good analogy for this is your house. Let's say
that your house has become one big cluttered mess
(I don't want to name names, but the author has
that problem). Furthermore, you are fed up with
not being able to find any of your things, and
you want to get organized. What would you rather
do?
a) clean up the clutter by putting things in
their place, boxing up less important things,
and throwing away junk.
or
b) walk around the house with a notepad and jot
down the current location of each item of clutter.
As clutter gets moved around, either keep the
notepad up to date, or schedule a new walkthrough
to generate a new list each day or week.
Obviously, a notepad of item locations is better
than nothing, but what you really want is a solution
that truly organizes your clutter instead of inventorying
it.
ii) Can you easily organize groups of photos
into virtual photo albums? How easy is it to move
photos around to different albums as you refine
your organization? Or better yet, can a photo
appear in multiple albums without having to make
duplicates of the photo? For example, if you have
a photo of Aunt Martha taken during Christmas
2004, you might want it to appear in an album
containing all photos of Aunt Martha, and a Christmas
Memories album, as well as the album of all 2004
photos.
iii) Can you sort your photos in any order that
you want? Or is there a forced order depending
on which photos you added first, or file names,
or file dates, etc? How easy is it to change the
order? Can you just "drag" a photo to
its new position?
iv) Can you add extra information to your photos?
Without the digital photo album software, all
you have is a set of image files. The only information
that you can record is in the name of the file
(e.g. aunt_martha_xmas_2004.jpg). Most software
packages will allow you to add some notes, or
maybe a date to your photos. How easy is it to
add this information? If you just came back from
a trip to Mexico with 50 pictures, do you have
to add the title "Mexico" 50 times,
or can you add it to all of them at once?
Presentation
Even the most basic digital photo album software
will let you page through each photo in an album.
Look for a thumbnail list that can help you hop
to various photos in the album, rather than always
looking at them sequentially.
The software should also let you print your photos.
Check how easy it is to control the size and location
of your photo on a page. With a decent printer
and some photo paper, you can print amazing photos
yourself, rather than paying for a printing service.
Another fun and convenient way to show off your
photo albums is with slideshows. There are a tremendous
variety of slideshow designs that digital photo
album packages will generate for you. Look for
how much flexibility you have in displaying the
photos and notes, how easy it is to embellish
the background for your slideshow, and what software
is required to view the slideshow. If it can be
viewed on its own or with common software such
as web browsers, then you can send a slideshow
to friends and family on a CD or DVD.
Safety
While digital photos are more vulnerable than
developed photos, they are also much easier to
protect. Can you imagine making copies of all
your developed photos just for safekeeping? With
the right tools, making a copy of your digital
photos is trivial. In fact, you can make multiple
copies, or backups, and give some to friends and
family. Then even if your house does burn down,
your photos are not lost! Your digital photo album
software should provide an easy backup and recovery
mechanism.
Security
If you store photos on a shared computer, managing
security is a must. You don't want other people
to be able to modify, and perhaps even view, your
photos. On a family computer, you might choose
to let young children look at the photos, but
not allow them to delete or modify your photo
albums. Some digital photo album software packages
provide basic security settings, while others
ignore this area completely. Security requirements
differ widely based on your circumstances. Decide
ahead of time if you think that this is something
that you need to have.
Whichever digital photo album software you choose,
you will be miles ahead in terms of organization
then you would be without any software. I think
you'll find that digital photo album software
is like email. You may not feel a need for it
now, but once you've used it, you'll wonder how
you ever got along without it! Just remember that
the goal is to enjoy your photo collection, not
to get frustrated with yet another software program.
So snap all the digital photos that you want,
and get some easy to use digital photo album software
to help you manage them all.
About the Author:
John Grand is the creative force behind Photo
SafeStore, the revolutionary award-winning digital
photo album software. John has over twenty years
of experience in the software industry. Photo
SafeStore represents a technological breakthrough
in digital photo album software that merges the
complexity of image handling with databases. The
result is a product like no other: www.photosafestore.com
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