Since photos have gone digital, chances are you have a huge library of camera and phone pics that need attention. If the thought of putting hundreds of images into order leaves you cold, we have a solution on how to save your camera and phone pics properly. Sarah and Bo Pinel from Sort Your Photos (part of Tekkie Help), share five common mistakes people make with their pics, and what you can do to regain order.
You don’t have a centralised digital photo hub
A digital photo hub is where all your images can live safely together – every photo you take goes there, and every photo you share (or use for a project) comes out of there. Importantly, a centralised hub can be easily backed up to protect your memories.
The solution: A digital photo hub is a computer with a big enough hard drive capacity to store all of your photos – we recommend at least 1TB of storage for an average-sized photo library. If you don’t have enough space, consider upgrading the hard drive, getting a refurbished computer with a large hard drive, or buying an entirely new and upgraded computer.
Your photos are only in the cloud
While the cloud provides protection from theft, loss and damage, unless you have full-sized copies of your photos (that are not synching with the cloud), your pics are at risk as there is only one set.
The solution: Check if the photos on your computer are stored in full size or optimised for storage. If it’s the latter, the photos on the device are only thumbnail images. If all your photos are only on your phone and on the cloud, take action!
You don’t use photo management software
There’s nothing more frustrating than scrolling through your phone, trying to find images in a hurry. Any good photo management software provides tools to search photos using metadata (information about where, how and when a photo was taken) as well as an amount of facial and object recognition.
The solution: If you’re a Mac user, you have access to Photos, Apple’s native photo management software (which is very powerful). If you’re a Windows user, try Google Photos which is great.
You photos are not future proof
Tech is constantly evolving. If you have photos and videos on CDs, slides, VHS, DV tapes, physical photo albums and so on, and not in your digital photo hub or backed up, they’re at risk of becoming inaccessible and lost forever.
The solution: Don’t ignore this! It’s still relatively easy to copy photos off external hard drives, DVDs and CDs, and deposit them safely into your digital photo hub. Take older media sources to an IT company. You can even scan printed photos into your photo library using apps like Photo Scan by Google. If you’re unsure, Tekkie Help can assist.
You don’t have robust backup
What if your laptop crashes tomorrow? What if you lose your phone? Remember that the cloud is not a robust backup solution; it’s a synchronising software. If you delete photos from one device, the delete will happen on all devices if synchronised.
The solution: Implement a 3-2-1 backup strategy whereby you have three copies of your data, in at least two different formats (for example, on an external hard drive and in the cloud), with one copy in a different “off-site” space (such as in the cloud or in another physical location). Better still, have your backup configured regularly.
For help implementing a photo management strategy, or if you need guidance, Tekkie Help run specific workshops. Checkout tekkiehelp.com/it-training. Tel: 81138682
Email: support@tekkiehelp.com
