Photos are a fantastic way to capture memories, but many of us end up with disorganised piles of prints cluttering up cupboards and bookshelves, or a mess of digital photos that nobody ever looks at on a computer hard drive.
Get on top of the clutter and make the most of your precious pics with these tips for displaying, organising and storing both digital and printed photos.
Ideas for displaying digital photos
Get a digital photo frame
Digital photo frames have become popular in recent years, and there are many styles to choose from. Most frames display JPEG images and a limited range of video files. Some frames can be rotated to display vertical images.
Use your pics as a screen-saver or desktop background
A good way to display photos for yourself is to use them as desktop images on your computer. You can also use photos as screen-savers.
Get a photo-book printed
A photo-book is an attractive coffee-table book made from your digital photos. A number of photographic printers offer printing of these books as a service. You can also download software that lets you customise the design and layout of a photo-book yourself.
Ways to display prints
Put photos in an album or scrapbook
Photo albums and scrapbooks are ideal ways to store and display printed photos. There are many designs and sizes to choose from – just make sure that the pages are acid and lignin free so they don’t damage the prints over time.
Display prints on a wall or shelf
Buy photo frames to display your favourite shots on your walls, side tables or mantelpiece. You can also display photos on a pegboard, clip them to a “clothing line” made from colourful string or ribbon or use colourful magnets to display them on your fridge door.
Organising and storing photographic prints
If you have a large number of prints or don’t have the time to spend sticking individual photos down, consider storing your photos in boxes. First, gather all loose photos and group them into categories, based on when or where they were shot. Then package each category separately, for example using clearly labelled envelopes.
When buying boxes, make sure that they’re acid and lignin free. If you’re using multiple photo boxes, label the outside of each with the details of the photos it contains.
Organising and storing digital photos
Keep your digital photos organised by storing them in folders. Start by creating one folder, and then add a subfolder for each year or event. Once you have a logical structure in place, you can use software – such as Apple Photos, Adobe Lightroom and Windows Photo Gallery – to catalogue your photos.
When storing digital photos, make sure you have at least three copies of everything, stored in separate locations. This is to protect against losses in the event of a device failure.
You should keep a copy of your photos on an external storage device such as a USB drive, DVD or external hard drive.
Ideally, one of your backups should be stored off-site. The easiest way to do this is to upload your photos to the cloud. For example, use a cloud-based storage option like Google Photos, Dropbox or iCloud.
Google Photos offers users unlimited photo storage space, Dropbox offers 2 GB of storage for free and iCloud provides 5 GB of storage for free. You can also buy more space from these service providers for a monthly or annual fee.
Two other popular image hosting sites that are worth looking at are Flickr and SmugMug.
Store your albums with XtraSpace
If your photo albums are taking up too much space or you want to protect them while you’re away or moving home, you can make use of our affordable, secure self-storage units. Visit our website to find your nearest branch or to get a self-storage quote.