User-friendly Photo-video Storage System on Computer

I use Picasa by Google for all my photos & video from all my equipment.
It organizes everything for you that you have on your computer - regardless of where it actually is - it can find it for you.
You also get a free online photo album that you can share with friends & family - which I find especially convenient due to my family being on east coast - they can print them .

And its free

http://picasa.google.com/#utm_source=en-all-more&utm_... themselves.

HTH

Sure there are a lot of programs out there to organize your photos, but unless you are a photographer or a curator, it is all probably too expensive and not necessary. If you are on a PC, you already have a "My Photos" folder on your computer. That is sufficient. In there you can create additional folders 2006, 2007, 2008, etc. Within each year, you can create additional folders with event names or baby names. If there are more than one date under that event, you may even create more folders within the event.

So for two trips to Disneyland in 2008, you should have paths that look like this:

My photos\2008\Disneyland\March 28 2008
My photos\2008\Disneyland\August 25 2008

The photos will sit in the folder named March 28 2008.

It shouldn't be too hard to clean up. As you find a set of photos, copy them, paste them in their new location, VERIFY their existence in the new location, and then go back to the old location and delete them.

You may want 2 sets of photos. You may want one in the Disneyland folder and one in the L. folder. That is okay to do, just copy and paste the additional image in the My Photos\2008\L.\March 28 2008 folder.

You should be fine with storage space. I am a photographer and keep up to 2 years of photos sitting on the hard drive.

You may want to purchase an external hard drive to back up the photos. They are very easy to use. Plug them into the USB port and copy and past everything in the "My Photos" into the drive you see the external drive sitting in. It is important, but do one thing at a time and get them organized first.

Remember, you computer file system is no different than your physical file cabinet. Look at it if you had to leave someone written instruction as to how find a specific paper in a large file cabinet. You have four drawers in that cabinet, Drawer A, Drawer B, Drawer C, Drawer D. You would instruct that person Open Drawer C, Hanging folder, Autos, folder Mercedes and then instruct them to find the service record from May 28. No different, it is just on your computer.

When you get to the point that you think you have found them all, send me a message and I will show you how to look for all photos on the computer to locate any photos that may be hiding somewhere you didn't look.

I hope you find this helpful and not overload.

Best of luck.
C.

You might want to try something like this to keep everything in one place:

http://www.drobo.com/index.html

We got one and LOOOOOVE it - very easy to install and use. This is more for backup/storage of all our photos and videos. For organization, I also love Flikr.com. Good luck!

I LOVE the Kodak Easyshare for organizing, printing and emailing photos and burning cd's. For video, we just got a new Sony handycam with a program I'm still trying to figure out but so far, so good. Also, I've tried Picasa (from Google) which is good because it will go through your computer and bring all your pics together but I haven't figured out the printing and emailing part.
Good Luck.
M.

There are SOOOOOO many different ways to organize things of this sort, and with all the different types of media people have nowadays.

Unless your Hubby is a "techie".... it would most probably be wise to "hire" say a relative who is a techie... or even a college kid or something.. or a professional.

It can take a LOT of time, just to un-do the organizing mistakes, to find the "lost" folders/files... and then to have another sort of database system or storage system. It would be helpful to have someone walk you through it all....

There are online services which do photo storage..... but you'd have to know where your files are in the first place.

MAIN thing is to BACK-UP all your valuable/precious files... before you try to install anything new.... or add anymore new programs. The reason is... the computer can crash (as many PC's do) and then you will lose everything. It's best to use an "external hard-drive" to save all important documents/photos/files, FIRST before fiddling around with the computer.

But in the end... an organized computer and it's files, is only as "organized" as the "human" does it. Programs CAN indeed file your photos/video etc. by "date" or other means.

One thing I have found, is that for this sort heavy media use...if you are doing lots of video, photo, media downloads and uploading... you would want a stable operating system. A "MAC" computer is GREAT For this. PC's will crash and just slow down with these sort of programs, and is not as stable. PC"s are known to just "stall" as well on uploading and downloading and takes forever. I've worked with both platforms for media work, and PC's drove me nuts.

If you can afford it, I would get a MAC. It is SO user friendly, and easy easy easy to use. My girl, in Kindergarten learned how to use one at school even.

The tips can go on and on... that is why i really recommend someone come in, in person, and help you. Otherwise... it could very well get messed up more, or the computer will crash and you'll lose everything.

All the best,
Susan