Tame the Digital Photo Clutter in 5 Minutes a Day
Are you frustrated by searching through your photos library to share that one photo with your friends or family.
Photo Clutter Frustration
By dedicating a short amount of time, perhaps while waiting in line or during travel, you can effectively manage your camera roll. This article will outline simple daily or weekly maintenance tasks that you can perform in small increments to keep your photo collection organized. Before delving into these, I'll provide a few immediate tips for keeping your photos app clean and efficient.
Organized photos, whether in print or digital form, offer numerous benefits. They provide easy access to memories, allowing you to revisit and share your photos with ease. An organized photo collection can significantly reduce stress by eliminating the frustration of searching for specific memories. Moreover, organizing your photos help preserve family history by ensuring that important moments and traditions are well-documented and can be passed down through generations.
To protect your photos and save space do these 3 things now:
These tips are geared toward an iPhone but if you have a different make of phone, there are similar features.
Make sure your phone is synced to the iCloud.
If you are not syncing, your photos only exist on your phone, exposing your precious memories to damage or loss. To sync your iPhone with iCloud: Settings -> Tap Your Name -> iCloud-> Photos, toggle “Sync this iPhone” to on. This will automatically upload and store your photos and videos in iCloud.
2. Turn on optimize storage.
When Optimize Storage is turned on, full-resolution photos and videos are stored in iCloud, and space-saving copies are stored on your device. And as long as you have enough space in iCloud, you can store as many photos and videos as you want. When you share a photo from your iPhone, the full resolution version is shared. To optimize iPhone Storage, go into Settings -> Photos ->Optimize iPhone Storage, toggle “Optimize iPhone Storage” to on.
3. Turn off live photos.
Live photos are a way to capture that 1 amazing moment by having the camera take 1.5 sec before and 1.5 sec after you actually tap the shutter to take the picture. This results in a 3 sec video every time you snap a pic if this feature is set to on. If all your photos are actually 3 second videos, that is taking up a lot of space in your iCloud account that is not necessary. There is a time and a place for a live photo: sports, fireworks, first steps. Then you can pick the best frame out of the 3 sec video. To turn off live photos, Go to Settings > Camera > Preserve Settings and toggle Live Photos off.
Next Up For Phone Maintenance
Once you have set up your photos app for running clean and mean, then you can implement these next tips in just minutes a day. The first tip is to utilize the duplicates utility on you photos app. You will find it under utilities once you open up photos on your phone. Click on it to see how many duplicates or near duplicates you have in your library. It finds and creates an album for duplicates and near duplicates so you can choose to merge them to save space and clean up your library. Near duplicates are photos that are the same but may have different sizes or create dates. The duplicate utility will save the best resolution photo with the associated data from both photos (such as keywords, location, etc.). Here are the steps: Open Photos App > Select Albums > Select Duplicates (scroll to below Utilities), Duplicate photos and videos appear -> Tap Merge to combine the duplicates.
After you have cleared out the duplicates, it is important to review your camera roll from the day, week, or month to remove unnecessary photos. This includes deleting screenshots of QR codes (like tickets), accidental screenshots (we all take them!), and series of photos. For series of photos, keep the best ones and delete the others. Remember, deleting is perfectly okay. Plus, if you accidentally delete a photo you want to keep, it stays in the Recently Deleted Album for 30 days as a safety net.
Favorite the Special Photos
Once you have deleted the photo clutter, favorite the special photos by tapping the heart button. These are the special amazing photos you want to revisit again and perhaps use in a project. If you have a project in mind, such as a vacation photo book or a family yearbook, add those photos to the appropriate album in your app. It is never too late to create a beautiful project with your photos!
Taming digital photo clutter might seem like a daunting task, but with just a few minutes each day, you can transform your chaotic photo library into a well-organized treasure trove of memories. By implementing the tips outlined in this article: syncing with iCloud, optimizing storage, managing duplicates, and reviewing your camera roll, you can create a streamlined and efficient system that makes it easy to access, share, and enjoy your photos. Remember, a clean and organized photo collection not only reduces stress but also preserves your family’s history for future generations. So take a deep breath, start with small steps, and watch as your digital photo chaos turns into a beautifully curated collection.
Rhoda Gordon is a local certified photo manager,
owner of Sunflower Photo Solutions and creator of DIG YOUR PHOTOS!, the only complete photo organizing kit on the market. Rhoda has been helping families and businesses organize and back up their print and digital collection for almost a decade. See more tips, tricks and how-tos on her Youtube channel: Youtube.com/@digyourphotos.
