One of the most important parts of digital scrapbooking is to have your photos organized. Start by creating a folder that is labeled with the year the photo was taken. Inside that folder create twelve (12) folders starting with 01_January, 02_February, 03_March, and etc. If your photo was taken on the 16th day in October, place it inside “10_October” and within that folder labeled “16_Birthday” (or which ever event had taken place on that day).

When labeling your individual photos, start with the date and then a small description after. If I have taken a photo on Christmas of 2008 than my photo will have a label like this: “081225_Family” and be placed in the folder path like this: “2008/12_Dec/25_Christmas”. Many times I have taken photos on the same day and at different places. In this case I would have the folders with different descriptions, such as “25_01Mom’s” and “25_02Grandma’s” or something like that so its labeled in order they were taken and where.

 There are two of us in the household taking pictures with different cameras. My daughter has her camera and uploads her photos onto her computer and when she has compiled a bunch of photos I make a backup of her photos and copy them to the home server. Each time that I upload photos to my computer, I immediately label and organize them.

I have taken my photos that I had developed and have scanned them into my computer. I scan them at high resolution and can easily edit them when I am ready to do so. I make sure that I have burned a CD or DVD of the photos as well as having them backed up on my home server in addition to my computer. This gives me more than once place of backup in case something happens to one of the copies. I can either use the original photos for traditional scrapbooking, or simply keep them stored in the many boxes. I prefer to share them with my children for use in traditional scrapbooking. It saves on having to print additional copies, unless more than one child wants a copy, then I simply make a copy as needed.

I hope this has helped you get your photos organized and ready for your digital scrapbooking, and as well as preserving your photos.