I’ve spent the past few months going through and organizing my entire iPhoto -> Photos.app collection. It’s been a tedious but wonderful process. I’ve come to a few conclusions:
- Everyone is sitting on tens of thousands of digital images.
- No one can find a damn thing in that giant pile.
- If you can’t find it five or ten years from now you may as well have not taken it in the first place.
- The time to deal with your images is the day you shot them.
- Delete the duds. Bad exposure. Out of focus. Not the best of the set. Delete delete delete. Delete heaps and you’ll still have more keepers than you’ll ever be able to enjoy. Don’t be a hoarder.
- For the keepers, the key is findability.
- Image titles. Album titles. Faces. Keywords. Doesn’t matter. Just make sure one or more keyword exists for search.
- When adding titles, imagine a future version of yourself searching for this image.
- Be disciplined. The longer you wait, the more daunting the task.
- Chip away. Do it now.