MANAGING YOUR DIGITAL PHOTO FILES


The one thing about taking digital photos is that they begin to pile up on your hard drive. If you don’t organize them from the beginning, you’ll find it hard to find the one you want when you want it.

Because digital cameras don’t use film, you’ll probably take more pictures with your digital camera than you ever did with your 35mm camera. That means you’ll begin to stack up an awful lot of images that need to be organized.

Unfortunately, digital images don’t come out of your digital camera named and identified. In fact, files have alpha-numerical names like PDR0014.jpg. With a name like that, you’ll have not idea that it’s a photo of your son with his new car. So you've got 20 or 40 or more photos to name after every photo session. And if you travel and take lots of photos, you can imagine the nightmare awaiting you when you get home.

Image Numbering
Another problem with some digital cameras is that each time you insert your storage media card into your camera and begin taking pictures, it starts at 001 and continues numbering until your card is full. Only a few digital cameras have number sequencing systems–image numbering continues in sequential order from one insertion of the storage media card to the next. If your camera doesn’t have this feature, you’ll have to create a new folder on your hard drive for each photo session (insertion of your storage media card). Otherwise, if you copy or move files from one directory to another and each file has the same numerical designation, the file on the destination directory will be overwritten by the new one, and you’ll lose your older file. It pays to check for this feature when purchasing a camera.

Photo Management Programs
While you probably received a photo editing program on CD with our digital camera, what you will need is a photo management program. Some programs combine both of these features. However, usually a program will either be strong in managing your photos or it will be a strong photo editor, but no program does both equally well.

If your computer uses Microsoft Windows, then you already have a program to use–Windows Picture Editor. While this program lacks features of other programs, it offers enough so that you’ll be able to organize your digital photos.

Another program that offers many more features is Thumbs Plus by Cerius Software. Thumbs not only creates thumbnails of your photos, but also allows you to rename files, do some advanced image adjustment, change resolution, and move and copy files between directories. The program also has a Slide Show feature which enables you to show your photos in a continuous virtual slide show on your computer screen.

You can go one step further and rearrange your photos within a directory by renaming each file so that they appear in the order that you want. It’s a bit tricky, but it can be done. Once complete, you can hook up a laptop to a computer projector and click slide show. This will project images on the screen much like slides in a 35mm projector. With Thumbs, you can either project your images manually by clicking the up and down arrows on your keyboard, or you can set the amount of time a slide appears on the screen before the next one appears.