How to keep your digital pictures organized



Make a new folder in the Digital Pictures folder, or where ever you keep your digital pictures.

Name it with the Date then the subject and / or KEY words

2003-05-01 Vegas Vacation


Insert the card containing the pictures and view the folder. Do not use any of the windows wizards to copy them. Open to folders view, or go to my computer then the drive then double click the DCIM folder. There you should see another folder usually 100oly or something like that.
Right click on that folder and choose copy.
Go back into the folder you created earlier and choose paste. This will put the folder containing all the pictures into the named and dated folder. Then once the copy process has finished, Rename the folder titled something like 100oly, to Originals.

If your pictures are on several cards...
Copy each 100oly Folder to the computer, figure out which folder contains the first set of pictures. Use FileRenamer to rename the pictures starting at 0001 and jpg. Figure out what the last file name was, could be say number 0059.jpg. Find the next folder containing the pictures, use file renamer but start at one past the last number - 0060 and jpg now keep doing this until you have done all pictures. Once you have finished put them all in a folder called Originals.



Now that the pictures are on the computer go through them and rotate them accordingly. DO NOT EDIT, CROP, RENAME OR otherwise do anything else to change the pictures.

JUST ROTATE THEM


Now go back and DELETE only the pictures you know you don't want. Pictures that are way to dark, Blurry, or not usable. Don't delete them unless they are just really bad. Don't forget that you can change color and even fix dark pictures in adobe.


Rename files

Now open file renamer and rename the files starting at 0001 and as jpg Make sure they are sorted by filename and not by anything else. Also make sure there are only pictures in the rename list and not any files named desktop.ini or thumbs.db


Now go to the main dated folder, 2003-05-01 Vegas Vacation, so you can see the Originals folder. Right click on Originals and choose Copy.

Right click right below that folder in a white area and choose Paste.
This will copy the originals to a new folder called Copy of Originals.

Now right click on Copy of Originals and choose rename. Rename the folder to Edited.



From now on, DO NOT CHANGE THE CONTENTS OF THE Originals FOLDER. STAY OUT OF IT.

Open the Edited folder, go through the pictures. Now is when you CROP, Change contrast, brightness, fix red eye and anything else you want to do to them.



Making a web page out of the edited pictures

Open Easy Thumbnails, Navigate to the pictures you are working on. Then into the Edited folder.

Start by making thumbnails, t_ 180 x 180 Smart jpeg quality should be 10-15 Brightness=0, Contrast=0, Sharpness=5, Rotate=0. Now choose Make All.

Now, go to the main folder 2003-05-01 Vegas Vacation and make a new folder below Originals and Edited called 2003-05-01vagasvacation , lowercase and without spaces.
Open the edited folder, Select all the files that start with t_ , and only select these files.
Right click on one of them and choose Cut.

Open the folder named 2003-05-01vagasvacation, once the folder is open, right click in a white area and choose Paste.

Go back to the Easy Thumbnails Program
You will now make the larger, resized pictures.

In Setting, r_ 600 x 600 Smart jpeg quality should be 45-55 Brightness=0, Contrast=0, Sharpness=5, Rotate=0. Now choose Make All.

Close Easy Thumbnails


Now go back to the Edited folder, Select all the files that start with r_ , and only select these files.
Right click on one of them and choose Cut.

Open the folder named 2003-05-01vagasvacation, once the folder is open, right click in a white area and choose Paste.

The folder named 2003-05-01vagasvacation should now only have thumbnails and resized pictures in it.


Go to the templates folder and copy the needed files for the webpage.
Paste the files into the folder named 2003-05-01vagasvacation


Now rename the file named YearEvent.htm to 2003-05-01vagasvacation.htm

Now double click that file to open it.
Edit the rest of the files as you normally do. (Edit right.htm to change the text.) (Edit 01.htm, 02.htm, 03.htm to have certain pictures show or not.)


Once you have finished editing your web page version you can post it on the web.



If you decide to make a scrapbook or have other files then make a new folder Below Originals and Edited called Various, put the scrapbook files and other files into that folder.





The main folder should only contain about 4 Folders.
2003-05-01vagasvacation
Edited
Originals
Various




It should look somewhat like this in the end.




The web page folder only contains r_ , t_ and a few html files. It does not contain any of the full images or other various files.

The Originals folder only contains the originals (AKA Full), it does not contain r_, t_ html or any other files.

The Edited folder is a copy of the Originals folder that has All, Some, or no imgages edited. It does not contain t_, r_, html or any other files.

The Various folder contains Various files such as Scrapbook, Excel, Word, and other Various Files.




After a week or two you may then put the main folder into the READY For CD folder.