This and That:  Organize and Archive
By Elizabeth B. Wright       November 2005

Those are two great words. All of the latest album and photo-enhancement software programs use them as a mantra. I can just picture the software engineers sitting cross-legged in a circle, heads hrown back chanting “organize and archive, organize and archive” on-and-on. Well, I am here to tell you there is more to it than that. Isn’t there always?

First, it helps if you are already an organized person. Planning ahead, studying your latest program and owning the hardware to achieve your goals would characterize such a person. If you are not organized, then welcome to my world.

Second, you need time, lots of time.
How are you going to get your pictures into your favorite program? Are you going to scan them? Or do you own a nifty new digital camera from which you can download your creations? Or maybe you are going to get pictures from friends via e-mail or one of the popular photo- sharing Websites. Oh, yes, a fast Internet connection also comes into play if you are going to use the latter option.

Third, assuming you have all the necessary hardware and software, you then have to be sure the quality of your pictures meets your standards. The learning curve for many digital cameras is just as intimidating as the curve for software.

If you have enough space on your digital memory cards to enjoy a vacation where taking pictures will be a big part of your trip, then you might come home with an armload of pictures you will never want to print. The good news is, you aren’t going to waste money on prints that might fall into the lousy picture category.

So now, you are at the stage where you are going to organize the images at last. You have scanned or downloaded pictures from some source.

The newer software promises to search your computer for all of the image types commonly used by most of us. So far, using JASC Photo Album 5, I have only been able to make it search the drive on which the program itself is located. It seems to have found over 1200 images on that drive. I am assuming it searched all the folders on that drive. However, I cannot find a way to get the program to search other drives with subfolders other than by searching each folder individually. What a waste of time! I can do that in several programs.

Using the free version of Picasa2, I let it search my entire computer for images. The process took a long time (we went out to dinner while it was doing part of the chore), and when finished it had located every popular type of image stored in a mishmash of folders on my computer and displayed all of them in its thumbnail library. I eliminated many images and whole folders. The result was a way to see what I have, including the many, many versions and duplicates I have made over the years of cherished photos. Now I am in the process of really trying to get my photos stored in folders with meaningful names and transferring them to CDs for archiving.

One side item I found while doing this was the digital EXIF (Exchangeable Image File Format) information stored by my digital camera with EACH image showing all the settings for the camera when the picture was taken. In Adobe PhotoShop 7, there are fields to enter your ownership information for each image. The only problem is, I cannot seem to find a way to print this information. I will keep working on that. On the Web, I found this site and the text following the URL at: www.exif.org. “www.exif.org is an unofficial site dedicated to EXIF and related resources. EXIF is a standard for storing interchange information in image files, especially those using JPEG compression. Most digital cameras now use the EXIF format. The format is part of the DCF standard created by JEITA to encourage interoperability between imaging devices.

Please note that this site is solely here to provide a convenient point of reference for users of the EXIF standard, and is neither owned nor maintained by the creators of EXIF. It is, as such, wholly unofficial.”

Elizabeth Wright is a member of the CCOKC and a regular writer for the eMonitor