How To Keep Photos Organized And Printed With Ease

It’s almost 2019 and it’s never been easier for parents to take pictures of their kids. We could snap 100 photos of our peaceful sleeping infant before breakfast. But, as the shoebox full of photos goes the way of VCRs and cassette players, parents today have to wrestle with what to do with the pile of photos they’ve taken and how to preserve them for the future. If we aren’t methodical about how we maintain these images they can be deleted as easily as they are created.

 

My goal is to preserve my images for future generations. Without a doubt, the ability to look back on childhood memories helps retain those moments in time. I can remember flipping through my parent’s photo albums as a kid, filled with so many memories. Those bulky and sticky pages were covered with plastic sheets, protecting the photos. Most importantly, I remember the images of my parents in their early stages of adulthood. Looking eager and nervous as they held me in their arms, their first child. Keeping these things in mind helps me focus on my goal of organizing and maintaining my photographed memories.

How To Organize Photos

Stay Current

I know if I told you to stop taking pictures so that you could catch up on all of the photos you haven’t organized you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself. It’s like a never-ending game of catch up. Instead of trying to organize all your photos at once, focus on the most recent and create a reminder to do this once a month.

Don’t Collect It All In One Place

God forbid, your collections of photos are destroyed in a house fire or a flood. Or even better, the online service that you’re saving the photos on is shutting down (this has happened to me!). Diversify your options to make certain your images are kept safe for years to come.

Ditch The Worst Photographs

We all have them, whether you’re a blogger that takes a 100 pictures to capture the right shot or a mom that takes a 100 images to catch a non-fuzzy moment of your precious toddler; there are numerous bad pictures in your phone that you should have deleted long ago.

I’m consistently on a photo deleting spree every few weeks. Create the habit now to avoid the overwhelm feelings later.

 

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Check Out: Tips On Photographing Kids

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Create A Digital Back Up

I’ve learned my lesson when counting on just one digital backup. A long-lost service used to be my go-to program to automatically sync all of my images for free. I counted on it to keep all of my memories from college to marriage in a single place. Then, in 2017, I received an email that this service was shutting down and I needed to back up my images before the deadline. Low and behold, I was busy preparing for a new baby, a big move and blogging so I missed the deadline and lost all of my images. It is sad to think about but fortunately, I’ve learned my lesson and now I keep my options diversified. Some of the latest options for digital backups are an external hard drive, iCloud storage, Amazon Photos and more. Just remember that nothing lasts forever.

Create Albums With Ease

One of my favorite parts of going home is being able to flip through my parent’s photo albums to reminisce on memories I may have forgotten or just to look back at where our family began. It’s amazing how I relate to those images of my mother carrying me now that I have my own children. Needless to say, the experience of going through those physical albums cannot be replaced. Great images should enter the world on print for all of us to enjoy. But the task of choosing the best out of several images, ordering them, buying a separate album and putting it together doesn’t have to be tedious. Creating a photo book couldn’t be easier now. I had a chance to finally create Kezie’s birth to 1-year album with Motif.

 

Motif is a native extension for Photos on your Apple computer. They’ve made it so easy to create beautiful photo books, calendars, and cards. I just downloaded Motif from the macOS app store and we were on our way to preserving Kezie’s first year as part of our family.

 

Motif was remarkably easy to use and created a perfect book full of Kezie’s first memories. After picking your theme, Motif actually uses advanced machine learning and image analysis to auto create the layout, centering the subject and cropping them perfectly so you don’t have to spend extra time getting each picture just right. Even better, it removed all the photos I’ve taken that are duplicates and picked the very best one. I’ve ordered other photo books in the past and this one is creating a higher standard for quality in terms of ease of use and the actual prints. I received my photobook in a matter of days and I couldn’t be happier. It is a perfect way to keep these memories of the past year in my home in the end, having both a secure digital and physical form of your photos is necessary to ensure your memories stand the test of time.

You can check out the Motif app yourself by clicking the link below.

 

What’s your favorite way to organize photos? Have you seen how easy creating photobooks can be?