Are Your Photo Files a Mess?

The first thing you need to do is decide how you are going to organize them.  There are many methods so I will just share mine as I can find any photo quickly.  I currently have 15,967 photos.  I am aware of some duplicates that I have chosen to leave for now.
You will need to do some of this in Computer/Pictures as Picasa does not have a feature to create a folder. An album in Picasa is NOT a folder on your hard drive.
I have  an 01 and an 02 folder. In  01 are personal (family, trips,etc) photos and in 02 are such things as flowers, birds, barns, etc,

From there I have years going back to before 1987.  So make a folder for each  year you need.   Within  the years is each month.   Within the months may be a special occasion like a party or something.  For a really long trip, I make a separate folder with sub-folders for places on the trip.

Click on the insert below for a larger view

 

I started out with a folder for each child and it became a nightmare.  This works better.

Also in Picasa  are 2 other features: People and tags.  They will bring anything or one from all folders together to see if you want to.

We will get to that in another post.

If you have a lot of photos, don't plan on getting this done in one sitting.

Back to your desktop  press the windows icon (on the keyboard)+E twice. You want 2 Computer Screens like this:

 

 

 

See how the screens overlap? In Vista (I think) and win7,  put your cursor on the bar at the top and depress the left mouse  button & drag the right one to the right, releasing the button  when the it is off to the right.  If you drag slowly, you will see a rectangle line appear. It may take some practice but very useful.  Do the same with the left one, dragging to the left.

On the line with the blue question mark at the right side of the screen, see the little down arrow 2 icons to the left?  Mouse over and it will say more options.  Change it to Large or extra large...whatever suits you. Do the same for both.  The screens will work independently.  I always copy/move from left to right. In the left screen, find a folder with  photos you want to move.   In the right screen find the folder where you want to put them.

Now, click and drag that photo from folder seen on the left screen to the folder where you want it in the right screen.  After you get the hang of it, you can select a group to click and drag.