How to categorize and index photographs the old-school way

Most of us love taking and keeping photographs. Sorting and properly storing these pictorial memories can be a nightmare -- but it doesn't have to be. The following how-to guide will help you categorize your photographs whether you have a digital or print collection, or a combination of both.

It's important to understand that, in this article, I'm not looking at photo organizing programs. Even though there are a few excellent ones, including Google's Picassa, which is free, it's good for you to think of your photos as either individual pieces of paper (for printed images) or individual files (for digital images).

So, in this article, we're going to do it all by hand.

How are you going to organize your pictures?

Determine whether or not you want to sort your pictures by date (or just year), subject or event. Date order is the best way to categorize pictures of children as it allows you to track their progress over the years. Let's look at organizing a collection of printed photographs first.

Your print collection

Make sure you have a large area on which to work because you will need to spread out your pictures as you sort them. Most people wind up either using a dining room table, a bed, or the floor. Sitting on the floor and sorting photos can be a lot of fun -- just don't eat or drink while you're doing it or that pizza sauce will wind up on Uncle Willie's chin.

Make some date labels like 2000, 2001, 2007, and so on, and stick them on index cards or paper that will form the top of physical sorting columns. Go through your photographs and sort them in date order. Identify the pictures according to date (where possible) and place each under the year that corresponds with that period.

With this method, if you are using a photograph album or scrapbook make date labels for the outside cover or inside cover page. You can use a year, like 2006, or a range of years, like 2006-2007.

If you decide to use subject order, separate the pictures based on the subject, and place in the appropriately named column or envelope depending on how you are sorting your pictures. In this case, instead of placing dates on the albums, use the selected subject titles, like "David's First Year".

Organizing your digital collection

It is easier to determine dates of digital photographs so date order sorting is great for digital picture collections. Make one on-disk folder titled Photograph Collection or whatever works for you. Windows tends to like the My Photos folder name, but you'll probably want to organize your photos in your own folder, so Windows won't muck with the images.

Next, make sub-folders with dates as titles, like 2000, 2001, and 2007. Now just transfer the appropriate pictures to the correct folder. Here's one place where Picassa and the like shine: they automatically sort images by date, simply by getting the data metadata right out of the image file itself. But we're doing it old-school, so let's continue.

Once you have sorted and placed the pictures in the right folders, go through and make sure that the picture titles are appropriate. That is, change the usual titles that most digital photographs are saved with, to something useful such as Fishing Trip, Honeymoon or Boat Ride.

There are some great automated tools that will change an entire folder of photo names automatically. Some of these are also free. Just poke around the Internet (or stay tuned -- we'll probably cover these in a future article).

Record keeping

This is an optional second step in the process. Determine how you plan to list the photographs so that you can easily find what you need when you need it. Once you have sorted and properly labeled your storage medium, that is, album, PC, CD-ROM, or shoebox, you now need to make an index to your collection. You may need to number your album pages, a rather tedious process, but will be well worth it in the end.

You can use a simple Excel spreadsheet for your index, a printed index, index cards or even an Acess database. Once you have gotten your collection in order you can even explore using specialized programs such as Picasa for digital collections.

Indexing

Like an index at the back of a book, the index you create for your photograph collection is aid to finding your pictures. Whichever method you use for your index, you will need to do two things; use a search term and a locator (something that describes the location of the picture). This is why it is important to give your pictures titles/names that make sense.

For a picture filed in a folder or album named 2007 with the name "Fishing Trip - Tom's Big Catch", your index entrie would look like those in Table A.

Likewise, if you're going to hand index your digital collection (those organizer programs are looking better and better, aren't they?), your index entries might look like those in Table B.

So now you know how to take the hassle out of finding your photographs easily and quickly. You also know, if you haven't already, why so many people are moving to digital images. Not only are there no developing costs, but organizing programs mean that most of the work described in this article is unnecessary.

Here's a tip within a tip: Set aside a special time each month or week to sort your photographs if you tend to have lots of pictures taken on a regular basis.