Photo Management

For our May Story Coaching, Stacy brought an email she received and shared it with our wonderful Live Your Story to garner insight and wisdom with the topics of photo storage/management as well as display and album options for completed Layouts

Live Your Story Member Laurie Cann emailed:

I'm so excited about the number of scrapbook projects I have been able to complete in the last year of Live Your Story. I have limited time as I work full time and have many family obligations. We were in the process of building a house when LYS started. So I was not able to do everything that 1st year or even most of the second year, but this year, beginning with the excitement of project 24 and the idea of doing pages during the month and using the scraps from your favorite photo page, I have made more pages than I have in a very long time. I have 2 issues that are unresolved from Photo Freedom Number one, what program to use to organize my photo library and two how to store my completed projects.

I started out strong at the beginning. My father passed away in May of 2021 and I just stopped.

I watched most of the videos but did little of the actual work. I watched the workflow for April over the weekend and the interest spectrum. Showed me some things. My top 3 interests are my camera roll, images in general to purge and prioritize that should be everyone's interest all the time and then my 4th she said was storytelling. My main focus is the storytelling. I want to complete my projects, but I think the reason for the top 3 is that I need to do those to achieve number 4.

I've never finished the part of photo freedom where we chose a program for our photos. I have them in many different places at this time. I made the decision to use forever then got bogged down in the process of getting photos where they need to be. Now I'm not sure I made the correct choice for me. I have an iphone and a PC. 

My other question is about the photo albums where we keep our pages. I've been making pages all year, but I've never set up these albums. So they are sitting in a stack in my craft room. Should we keep, I think she means pages in order by date in the album or just put them in the album in the order we complete. I would also be curious to know how many people use a creative memories type album versus a 3 ring binder type album and how they like them.

➡️ Be sure to check out the replay for the in depth discussion on the topic of digital photo storage and management as so many of you shared what they have chosen and what works for them. Some of the discussion from the chatroom had some super helpful responses:

Terrie Faber: Using google photos

Vicki McElroy: I’m very interested in this topic, because I have two photo collections - one older one in Adobe Photoshop Elements and one newer collection in Apple Photos. I’m trying to decide whether to combine them or leave them separate.

Kate Holliday: Using Google Photos also

Ann johnson: Photo Software // Forever

Raewyn Aldridge: I have been using Google Photos for over five years and while it doesn't do everything, I find it more than adequate. I can create albums add keywords and favourite and also like the facial recognition part of it

Joelle Bertolet: Apple Photos. It does everything I want to do and it works seamlessly with my MAC computer. I love that they keep improving it, and I don’t have to shop around. It’s also easy to share photos with my extended family.

Brenda Brindle: I have iPhone and MacBook and use Apple Photos.

Kim Willems: All Apple Photos on iPhone and Mac synced to iCloud.  I love that I can see  all photos in all places. I keep everything -  all photos and all family history documents etc in my Digital Photos Library. Yes it’s a lot and I pay for extra storage on every device, but my brain needs everything in one place. My library is huge but I can find anything I need anytime from anywhere

Mary Schatz: Use Apple phone and I-phone software for photos from mid 2016. Rest of my photos are on cd’s and a few memory sticks…this is my problem.  Id like all my photos on apple photos.

Heather Bogaty: I take photos with my iPhone camera, then they flow from Photos app to Lightroom app into Lightroom Classic on my desktop. It’s all automatic.

Pam Shoberg: More reasons I like Lightroom: I can integrate photos from my iPhone, images downloaded from genealogy websites, and scanned photos. Metadata entered using Lightroom stays with the photo when shared with others. Can also use it on iPhone. In my workflow, I like to identify people first, then favorite best ones for each person, delete, curate, etc. Then, I upload only the best to Permanent.org which is like Forever.com. Because I am restoring so many old photos, I really need the editing power of Adobe products.

Penny Grimsley: I use Apple Photos - and am thankful I don’t have to decide that >> but my struggle is do I tag/keyword every photo or just the favorites. It’s all so much to really tackle. Our hobby is such a beautiful mess. ;-)

Layout Display Options

This discussion leaned toward which albums members used to store and display their layouts. While many preferred the look and finished look of Creative Memory type albums with either a strap hinge or post binding, some preferred 3 ring binders, especially while if album was a ongoing work in progress.

💚 Up NEXT!

Project Play Date: Saturday, May 25th at 8AM PT, Register HERE
Bring your BIG project and let’s move it forward together. Story topics for May are Places and Rituals.

A Note from Stacy

REMEMBER: You are NOT behind. You are on a beautiful, bumpy and brilliant journey. Take it one step at a time and commit to learning along the way. I’m so glad you are here with us!