If you’re like us, that camera roll of yours is anything but organized. Andwhile our phones hold a digital record of our days, we’re sure of one thing:it’s time to make space for what’s to come. Follow along for simplified tips toclean up your camera roll — you’re 10 steps away from an organized photo life.
Tip 01
Select Favorites
Let’s start with identifying the photos that mean the most to you. Set asidetime to press the heart on the bottom of the photos that are most significant.This will automatically filter them into your “favorites folder.” Pro tip: bedecisive. Only save the phots that you know you will want to return to. Makesure you have 1-2 photos of each major event for recording’s sake, but don’t gettied up about each individual image.
Tip 02
Embrace the Delete Button
Set yourself up for success and make the delete button a good friend. Trust us —decluttering can only be achieved by getting rid of the images that areduplicates, blurry, or unnecessary screenshots. If you didn’t put a heart on theimage originally, consider why you are keeping it around. Clean out any photosthat don’t capture your attention or epitomize a moment. Short on time? Pressthe “select button” in the upper right corner to drag over multiple images todelete at once.
Tip 03
Create Albums
Once you’ve simplified your camera roll, create a series of albums under the “MyAlbums” section to categorize your photos. Some of our favorite ways toorganize? By months, people, or events. Take a mental inventory of the photosyou gravitate towards taking, and then create your albums based on what makessense from that.
Tip 04
Make An Edit
If you find yourself always scanning your photo library to select the photos youwant to edit and share, we recommend creating “To Edit” and “Edited” folders inyour albums. Make your way into your “Favorites” folder to select the photosthat you want to edit. Select and copy them into the “To Edit” folder so thatyou have a centralized spot for all of the photos that need to be edited. Protip: select all of the photos at once from your favorites folder by hitting“select all” — transfer them into the folder in bulk. Once you edit a photo,make sure you add it to your “Edited” folder.
Tip 05
Set Priorities
Organize your albums in terms of priority so that you see the most importantones first. (We tend to put the “To Edit,” “Edited,” and the current monthfirst.) To rearrange their order, head to your albums and scroll down to “MyAlbums.” Press “edit” in the upper right hand corner and hold down the album todrag it to where you want.
Tip 06
Set A Routine
To make your organized photo life into a habit, set a recurring event on yourcalendar to remind yourself to pay a bit of attention to the process. Need alittle inspiration to start? Here's how we do it —
- Weekly: Delete photos that don't make your heart skip an extra beat;favorite the ones that do
- Monthly: Categorize photos from the previous month into their correspondingalbums, and then make sure to back them up into Google Photos
- Yearly: Use your organized albums as a compass to create gifts or yearlyphoto projects
Tip 07
Back It Up
Lo and behold, the most crucial (and missed) step. We’ve found Google Photos tobe the simplest, most effective way to back up your photos. Download their appto get started. We recommend “backing up” your library once you’ve gone throughand deleted photos so that it resembles an organized camera roll. If you set thebackup period to manual, you can control when the app backups the photos. (Protip: create a recurring event on your calendar to delete, categorize, and backup your photos every month). This leads us to...
Tip 08
Search and Select
If you find yourself overwhelmed with the sheer quantity of photos, use the“search” and “select” buttons to add specific photos into their correspondingalbums, in bulk! Head to the “photos” tab on your albums, type in what you’relooking to organize into the search icon (like names of cities, dates, etc.) andit will pull any matching pictures. Hit the “select” button and hold and dragdown on the photos to select them all at once. Then, add them into theircorresponding album.
Tip 09
Find Faces
Speaking of people, there's no better way to easily find your favorite facesthan by using the “people” album in your camera roll. The album willautomatically find faces and group them together so that all you have to do isgo in and approve the set of photos it has categorized. Gone are the days ofsearching through the entirety of your photos for that one specific photo ofthat one specific person.
Tip 10
Better When Shared
Another easy way to gather photos in an organized way is by utilizing sharedalbums. These albums are “shared” with your friends and family (think: a folderto which everyone can contribute photos.) Go through this album and add thephotos that you want to keep on your phone by selecting them and pressing “saveimage.”
Now that they're organized...
Let's put them in print.
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