Learn how to organize your photos! Have you ever had a problem finding a photo that is lost somewhere in the endless sea of files and folders on your computer? If so, you’re not alone. When someone first begins taking pictures, it may not seem like a big decision that has to be made right away: “where do you store the images?” But as time passes, the photos add up quickly and tend to clutter all sorts of nooks and crannies in a computer. What at first is a minor nuisance evolves into a frustrating situation where hundreds or even thousands of photos are lost in obscurity and scattered in numerous files and folders never to be seen again. Sound familiar?
Check out the video that I made for you addressing just this problem. The software I mention is free for both PC and Mac created by a guy named Alan Light. It’s called DIM (Digital Image Mover) and you can find it here:
Direct Download Windows or Mac versions here.
Here’s another link with more information: http://www.alanlight.com/dim/Dim.htm
In the video, I’ll go over a step by step procedure on how to get your photos organized!
Do you have any tips / tricks on how you stay organized? As always, comments are welcome and encouraged! Leave yours below!
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I always considered myself an organized person – but not with computer pictures!! Great help in learning how best to organize them so I can find them and get rid of duplicates.
I understand what you mean. Sometimes it just takes getting into a routine / habit to get things organized and keep things organized!
I’m going to have to make this happen on my home computer!! My photos are so disorganized, some by date, some by event, all in different nooks and crannies, just as you said, haha. Thanks for the great ideas re how to easily get them sorted and stored.
Lori,I hope this helps out. I know that once my photos were sorted I had a sense of “peace” knowing that I’d be able to better find / search through them.
Oh boy, you know I needed to hear this one!
This organizational system seems simple enough for me to be successful in keeping my photos organized. Thanks for suggesting the free program to aid in this process. Very helpful!
Autumn, you’re very welcome! I hope it helps!
Oh Boy! I have a “friend” that happens to live in my house that needs this! What happens if you have some photos that are not date stamped? Does it just leave them in the photo collector photo for you to manually move where you want?
If an image file does not have a valid timestamp embedded in its EXIF header, DIM will fallback and use the timestamp on the image file itself (which will always be there).
Thanks Alan!
I went to both sites to download DIM. I both cases I got warnings from McAfee that there was dangerous software contained in the download. Where is that coming from As I do not believe it is something you would do to your end users. Or am I doing something wrong.
Hey Goldie, hmm that’s odd that you’re getting that message. FYI, I’m not the one providing the DIM software, a guy named Alan Light is the programmer. I’ll send him an email and let him know of your concerns. I suggest you also write him. You can contact him here through this page: http://www.alanlight.com/dim/Dim.htm Hope that helps!
I already heard back from Alan Light (he’s very responsive). Here’s his response:
The problem is that the site that hosts DIM, also hosts “download managers” and other AD Ware junk. If you’re using the FIleFactory link, simply go down to the bottom of the page, click “slow download” wait for it to countdown then click the red “start download” button that appears.
If the file you downloadedd is something “downlload.exe” or “download manager” or anything like that, you clicked on the wrong thing and downloaded an adware program.
I am still not sure if it can be done. I have photos inside a folder, say, 2015Jan for all photos taken in January 2015. I want to be able to rename all the photos like yyyymmdd-nn.jpg based on the EXIF data on the photos, so I will end up with 20150101-01 for the first photo taken on 1st of Jan in 2015. Can this be done?
Antonio, if you use this %Y-%M-%D-%3c in the “Rename Pattern” field you’ll get a file that is names like this: 2015-03-25-001
I hope this helps.
Hey Sonny, I’ve started using DIM, cool program. My question is whether you always process your photos using DIM before you use other programs like Lightroom, or do you use Lightroom to organize new photos from your computer or memory card? And one more, does lightroom automatically recognize new photos that show up in your sorted photos folder (bc you have pointed lightroom to your sorted photos folder?) after you use DIM, or do you have to Add new photos to the lightroom library? Thanks!
Hey Andrew, I used to use DIM more than I do now. Every since I started using Lightroom more heavily I rely on that for organization. My process is to use LR to make a COPY of images straight off of my camera. It makes those copies into an organized, file structure that I can then work with. I’ll also tag pictures as they are coming in to help with searching for them later.