The Digital Shoebox

[James Fee]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.livedigitally.com/2005/02/digital-shoebox.html' target='_blank'>http://www.livedigitally.com/2005/02/digital-shoebox.html</a><br /><br /></div><i>"The pictures of my childhood are in envelopes, and there are piles and piles of them. There are so many of them, that most have never found their way to any album. Baby pictures, toddler Christmases, family vacations, and gatherings comprise but a few themes of the photos; and they are all priceless to me and my family. However, they have yet to be assembled into something organized as it is too overwhelming a project. Enter the digital revolution. Digital cameras are now common worldwide, surpassing film camera sales, and our new memories are being stored digitally. The majority of the pictures I take go from the camera, to the compact flash memory card, and finally to the "My Pictures" folder on my hard drive. Only a handful of pictures ever get printed. Every three megapixel picture is a 500 kilobyte jpeg file stored in a dated folder. And with the unlimited "free film" effect of digital cameras, I now take and save more pictures than ever."</i><br /><br />I try and back all my photos up on DVDs and I do use Photoshop Elements 3 to organize them, but I'm still asking for trouble. I save more than I need to and it is starting to become trouble as I search for photos taken in the past 5 years. It can be a needle and a haystack for some of these memories. :oops:

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

Well, cull some photos. Do a yearly culling. And use Picasa 2 with the backup option, looks handy.

[RWC_Zippy]

Yeah... I really am making use of the keyword tagging feature of Elements. It narrows search times immensely 8)

Problem is - I am the type that takes tonnes of photos. So it takes me a long time to tag things appropriately. I have started doing it by 'virtual roll'. I tag based on the date that the 'roll' was downloaded to my computer and then go throught the pics on that roll and give them some more specific tags.

Just me though.... anybody else have a favorite sorting method?

[Lee Yuan Sheng]

I don't really have a sorting method, or even a tagging method. Years of film discipline generally means that even on digital I'm not a trigger happy kinda guy. That said photos do accumulate, and right now I'm trying to think about useful categories that'll make sense when I search my photos.

It'd really be nice if on day computers can identify the subject in a photo by some alogrithm. That way if I want to get photos of say, meerkats, they'll all come up when I search for them!

[RWC_Zippy]

It'd really be nice if on day computers can identify the subject in a photo by some alogrithm. That way if I want to get photos of say, meerkats, they'll all come up when I search for them!

Great Idea! I did a quick search on the concept and un-earthed an interesting article on photo recognition:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4857

It is possible but someone would have to compile a HUGE depository of composite images of meerkats for the public to access. Or I suppose it could be an open thing like the WiKipedia project...