Photo editing software / how do you organise your photos on computer.

Hi,

I lost my laptop at the beginning of the year when the hard drive failed. Fortunately most of my photos were backed up and those that weren't were still on my phone as I don't delete suff very often.

I am struggling to find a simple photo editing software. I used to use Picasa and although you haven't been able to update it for ages you could still get it, but I can't find a trustworthy link for it.

I now have a new desktop, my phone has simple softeate built in but i can't find anything that looks easy for my destop. I only want something that will crop photos, that I can can alter brightness, sharpness etc. I don't really want one that I have st subscribe to each month.

Also I am having to start setting up my folders for organising photos again, so Howdon you do yours?

TIA

Jolene, I can answer the second question more easily than the first: In Pictures, I create a folder for each year, and a subfolder in the year for each month. Within each month I have another subfolder called [month]_bestcopies where I copy my favourites that I want to print - I get batches printed by uploading to Photobox. If you print at home as you need photos then you don't need to do that last step. Oh, and I back up on a monthly basis to an external hard drive, and only clear down camera memory cards when they get full - and I always fear there will be that ONE photo I didn't transfer ... :unsure:

Having said that, I find the above 'untidy' when it comes to sorting, if we have a holiday or event that starts in one month and finishes in another. So, as we are about to go away for a roadtrip during which we are staying in several different places, I have set up a 'Holiday Photos' folder, with a subfolder for each place. We'll see how that works out.

As for editing, I use 'Photos' to crop, adjust brightness & colour etc then 'Paint' to resize. Unfortunately I'm fairly sure these are both Microsoft products which I have access to via Microsoft 365, which costs money (long story as to why I pay for this), so I'll be reading with interest to see what other people suggest for you.

I also miss Picasa. I asked on UKS recently about making collages online, and was recommended photocollage.com. I have made a few collages with it but haven't had them printed yet, so it's too early to tell.

Will watch with interest.

I keep very few everyday photos on my phone. I put all my photos on the computer and they are in folders by year and then sub folders by month and also special events. Then I have separate folders for the cats also with sun folders by year and month. Separate folders for holidays, for home, for my art etc.

All of my files are backed up monthly to an external hard drive and to Google drive and then the photos are cleared from my phone and camera

I lost my computer in 2016 due to a complete hard drive failure and thank goodness I only lost less than a month of stuff … I am fanatical about back ups

I use Adobe photoshop for all of my editing and digital scrapping … although I rarely dive into full photoshop. I also have adobe photoshop elements which is way quicker … and cheaper.

Then, because I like to have my photos on my phone which has massive storage but I like them ordered I put the organised best photos from each month/ event into I tunes abs it puts them on my phone but in the order I want them

Good question Jolene, because I think we've all had these problems in one way or another.

I save ALL my memory cards, I never wipe them, that's one lots of storage. Then some are on my phone but I do clear out unwanted photo's and videos others have sent to me. My computer has all my photo's and they are backed up regularly using Time Machine (Mac) to an external hard drive. All my old photo's from my microsoft days are on another external hard drive plus I had them put on my Mac.

All this came about when I decided to clear some photo's off my computer and put them all on an external hard drive. I was told they can always be retrieved even if the EHD goes down. Trust me, they can't and the ones I lost were of people who had died. Fortunately, in those days I was scrapping a lot and I'd printed photo's so I took them out of the LO and scanned them and because I print in high quality they are almost as good as originals if not as good. But I learnt my lesson the hard way. So with the memory cards, phone, Mac and external hard drive, I have at least 3 to 4 forms of back up.

Also, I had photo's I used to back up to CD's in the day. One time I put a disk in and it said it was corrupted so I lost everything on that, so you do need to back up a lot and that's why I keep everything on memory cards, they are cheap to buy, hold a lot and small to store.

I also miss Picasa, I had it on my pc. I use Photo's to do any basic tweaking and everything is stored in date order, although it does come up in geographical areas and face recognition but I still feel I should be making it a better system, it's just finding time.

It's funny, some of the best photo editing software was the cheap or free stuff. Microsoft Picture It! was basic bit of editing software that came free with Microsoft Works I think but I could do anything with that. Again, Picasa was free and very good. I have PSE on my Mac which I bought before they started charging the earth and I have never really learnt how to use it. I have a complete mental block when it comes to it, not sure why.

I keep almost everything on my phone on the cloud.
I do have a Dropbox account for my old photos from pre IPhone days.
I have folders for ‘favourites’ and ‘dogs’ etc but the rest I do a search for, either by month or person. As I have Amazon Prime I have Amazon photos too. Their search facility is great by date.
I also have all my photos backed up to private albums in Facebook. No point in paying for storage if they will store it for free for you. Just make sure they are set to ‘private’ so only you can see them. I have all my photos of my LOs in there too, all in Year order.
I edit all my photos on my iPhone too. If I want a ‘special effect’ I can use Airbrush or PicCollage but I find my phone can do most editing I require.

Thanks everyone, I have just found time to have a read through, we have Amazon prime to, so I might investigate that. I think I’ll also invest in a second hard drive. I have a lot of photos uploaded to Google photos, but my free storage is now full and I am debating the merits of paying for extra or finding an alternative.

I think I have photos on my PC, but it always seems to struggle to find my photos when I plug my phone in, so I don’t find it good for uploading, I haven’t really tried editing on it, perhaps I need to invest some having a play- I don’t find it the most fun part of the hobby though and so far have only found photos frustrating to use. Perhaps there a you tube video with hints and tips.

It’s really very simple Jo. Next time we are at crop I’ll go through the basics with you.