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We've all been there, back from our two-week vacation and stuck with a gazillion photos, many of which are either duplicates or so bad they're essentially useless. Or we've simply neglected to keep our hard drive, memory card or phone storage litter-free because … we get it, work and life can get pretty hectic and photos accumulate easily.
The problem now is carving out a couple of hours, possibly more, to sort through everything. You not only need to manually separate out the best shots, but you also have to organize everything, tag all the photos to make searching a breeze and create a backup in case something happens to your original files.
Or you can use a photo organization tool that will do most of the work for you.
These days, photo organizing apps have risen to a new level of sophistication, making sense of your pictures, using intelligent image recognition to automate tagging and duplicate deletion, backing up to your cloud storage and even providing basic photo editing. And they will make your job a whole lot easier.
We've narrowed down your choices by picking out the top options for your smartphone as well as your computer, highlighting their best features and prime uses. You'll be organizing your photos like a pro in no time.
Best tools for your smartphone
Google Photos
In keeping with its tradition of producing web-based programs that are free, streamlined, user-friendly and mind-blowingly efficient, Google released its own photo storage and sharing service in May 2015. Weeks later, it was declared by many to be the best photo-organizing tool out there.
We don't disagree. Google Photos has a number of aces up its sleeves, including unlimited cloud storage, an option for automatic backup and uploading, easy sharing and multi-platform syncing, simple creation of albums and slideshows, multiple photo selection, GIFs creation and duplicate detection.
And that's only the beginning. This is the ultimate photo organization tool, and its top features include highly effective image recognition to automatically apply appropriate tags, which in turn makes searching for specific photos effortless. Google Photos recognizes not just faces, but also photo contents — for example, photos with cats will be assigned the 'cat' tag so the next time you're looking for a specific photo with a cat in it, you can find it simply by searching for 'cat.'
No more scrolling through hundreds of images to find one photo.
Price: Free for Android and iOS
Prime Photos
While Amazon's photo storing and organization feature isn't as comprehensive as Google's — and its unlimited photo storage is only available for Amazon Prime members — the service has a few things going for it. First of all, users have multiple upload options available to them: through the Amazon site, with the Desktop app and with the mobile app.
Another cool feature is the Family Vault, which lets you add up to five people (whether they're Prime members or not) to your vault. Each member (six, including you) can add photos and videos to share with everyone. Best beer brewing app for mac os x. Prime Photos also uses image recognition to tag photos, organize them based on the faces of the people in them and make searches a lot easier.
Obviously, it doesn't come close to Google Photos' intricate system. But Amazon's service is perfect for non-professionals and casual shooters who just need a place to safely store and share their photos.
Price: Free for Amazon Prime members
Slidebox
You can't help but appreciate the ease of using Slidebox, which is essentially what it sounds like. It doesn't have its own storage — it uses your smartphone's — but it does make it simple to delete photos you don't like. Download free version of pages for mac. If you're looking for a quick way to clear up some space, this might be the photo-organizing tool for you.
Slidebox displays every photo in your library so you can scrutinize each image individually. Then you can swipe left or right to navigate through photos, swipe up to delete one, tap 'Sort to Album' to add a photo to a specific album, tap to create an album or hold a photo to share.
The fact that you have to intentionally swipe up to 'delete' (instead of just mindlessly swiping left/right) means that accidental deletion is minimized. And even if you do accidentally delete a photo, it's still retrievable. It merely goes into Slidebox's trash folder, which you can go into to restore photos you've changed your mind about.
Price: Free for Android and iOS
F-Stop Gallery
Here's an app that's great for Android users looking for some basic help. Though F-Stop Gallery isn't as powerful as Google Photos — it doesn't, for instance, use image recognition, automatic tagging and duplicate detection/deletion — it does provide a venue for organizing photos with ease. If you aren't comfortable with automated sorting and prefer the more hands-on approach, this tool is perfect for you.
To start using the app, however, you must let it do a deep scan, which can be a long process because it parses every photo and gathers all the information available, including tags, date taken and ratings. But once the scan is done, you're good to go. You can organize photos into albums, add more tags and create nested folders.
F-Stop Gallery's best feature yet is the Smart Album. It's essentially creating an album based on simple rules you dictate. For example, you can create an album based on the tag 'Africa,' and the app automatically adds all photos and videos with that tag to the album. There's some automation there, but you're in control.
Price: Free for Android but with in-app purchases
Best tools for your computer
ACDSee Photo Studio Standard
In the category of photo organization tools for desktops and laptops, ACDSee takes the lead. This tool is not only powerful — it's also very flexible, offering users several options to organize images so they can choose whatever they're most comfortable with. You can rate photos, color code them, add categories and labels. Best of all, it's intuitive and extremely user-friendly.
At $40, the Standard version is more than worth the price as this is a professional's tool. You can import your photos directly from cameras and memory cards, and it supports 86 file formats. It also allows you to apply ratings, tags or keywords, geotags, color labels and categories. Plus, it lets you process batch images with ease as well as create folders, sub-folders and slideshows.
As for photo handling, ACDSee Photo Studio allows basic photo editing, so you can make fast edits while you're doing some organizing. To speed things up even more, you can edit multiple images at the same time.
Price: Starts at$39.95 fon ACDSee.com, free trial version available
CyberLink PhotoDirector 9
While CyberLink's PhotoDirector 9 is best known as an excellent photo editor, we adore its photo management capabilities. Like Google Photos, this tool automatically identifies faces in photos, then organizes them so you can easily find them later. It also supports color labeling and star rating, slideshow creation and direct upload to Facebook or Flickr.
One of the coolest things about PhotoDirector 9, however, is its Video-to-Photo Face Swap feature, which lets you create the perfect group photos by using the video to create a still image where everyone in the photo is smiling and not blinking awkwardly.
Other cool features include GIF creation and producing motion stills, which are essentially still photos with moving elements. This program starts at $45, but seeing as you also get a myriad of photo editing features, it's a bargain. Once you start using it, it'll be hard to look back.
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Apps to help you choose which photos to keep
One feature that's not always available in many photo organization tools is the automated curation of badly-shot photos and duplicates.
On one hand, the feature can save you the trouble of sorting through photos that are more likely to be bad anyway. On the other, while the photo might contain elements that conventionally make a photo lower-quality (blur, underexposure, etc.), that doesn't necessarily mean that the photo itself is bad. Additionally, even if a photo is blurry, there's still a possibility that it can be fixed.
It's the same case with duplicates. We all take several photos of a single scene to ensure that among them, we get the perfect shot. Many of us would rather decide for ourselves which photos we'd like to keep.
Luckily, there are tools that handle such photos without resorting to deletion … at least, not immediately. Google Photos, for example, let's you long-press a 'bad' photo to archive it and 'hide' it from view until you decide what to do with it. Its Assistant also makes suggestions on which photographs to archive — photos of documents and license plates, for example. And when you’re ready to delete, check out one of these apps with automated curation to help you through the process of discarding photos you don’t need.
Zyl
Zyl is all about managing duplicates. This app studies your smartphone photo library to detect duplicates, displays those duplicates for you to examine, makes suggestions on which photos to delete and which to keep and then lets you decide. You can choose whether to trash the duplicates and keep the best photo, or just ignore the suggestion.
This photo-managing app doesn't have a lot of other features; the only other one it offers is Magic Album, which automatically groups photos together, apparently based on the dates they were taken, and then suggests putting them in an album. It also allows you to name that album or merge it with the album above or below it.
This Magic Album feature is nifty and simple, which many will appreciate. However, it's the managing duplicates feature that's most useful. It also helps that Zyl does a pretty good job at detecting similar images — even if they're not identical — and then picking the best photo of the bunch. It's usually spot on.
Price: Free for Android and iOS
Photoshop Elements
Photoshop Elements 2018 boasts an AI-type functionality that works with the Smart Tag feature and analyzes every photo based on image quality (exposure, composition, sharpness) and subject. It then gives you a considerably shorter list of the images it's deemed the best.
Elements doesn't give you as much control as Zyl does, but it does let you dictate how many photos you'd like to get back in the results. From there, you can manually choose the photos you're happiest with. It makes sorting easier, as it handles the early screening process and gives you fewer photos to examine. Additionally, it lets you merge two similar portraits when one of the subjects in one photo has their eyes closed.
If you're a non-professional looking for help finding your best shots, this tool is incredibly useful. And Elements has great photo editing tools too (see an overview in our story).
Price: $69.99 on Amazon, free trial version available on Adobe.com
[Image credit: camera photo apps via BigstockPhoto, screenshots by Techlicious, Adobe]
If you haven't been organizing and discarding files as you go, it's likely your hard drive is stuffed with downloads, unwanted photos, file copies and other digital dust bunnies. This can reveal itself in slower performance, that unsettling humming noise, and the Mac's dreaded spinning wheel or Windows' spinning circle.
Deep cleaning your computer of unwanted files and streamlining your folder system can not only free up storage space, but improve your computer's performance. From decluttering tips to apps that do your organizing for you, here's how to spruce up your computer and make sure it stays that way.
Cleaning out your computer
1. Find duplicate files
You'd be surprised how much storage is used up by duplicate files, whether they're files you saved twice to different locations or multiple downloads of the same file. If you buy music on iTunes, you may have a few gigabytes of duplicate songs from, say, buying a greatest-hits album that contains tracks you already own.
The easiest way to find those superfluous files is to download a third-party app that will scan your folders for duplicate content, then let you review the dupes to decide if the extras should be deleted.
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After you’ve ensured you’re on the latest version, select File > Library > Show Duplicate Items. Sort the dupes by tapping the Name or Artist tabs in the toolbar. You may see different mixes of the same song marked as duplicates because the matches are initially based on track name and artist; to keep multiple versions – such as versions from different albums – press Option (Mac) or Shift (Windows) and select File > Library > Show exact duplicate items to only flag songs with same name, artist and album.
For clearing other types of duplicate files:
Mac: Head to the App Store on your computer and search for “duplicate cleaner.” We like Duplicate Detective ($4.99), a simple app with a straightforward interface for hunting down duplicates. For free options, Duplicated Cleaner does a similar job, while Duplicate Cleaner For iPhoto is an easy-to-use app for zapping double images, even if they've been edited.
If you fancy doing it manually, you can also click All My Files, order the files by selecting Name from the drop-down sorting icon, then scan for files that have the same name. However, this method is less effective if you've saved the same file under different names.
Windows: There are quite a few good options for free duplicate zappers for Windows, so we'll skate over the manual method, and recommend NirSoft's SearchMyFiles (free). If you want to find and zap similar photos even when they’ve been edited or resized, as well as music files with exact or similar name and other tags, try Duplicate Cleaner ($30, on sale now for $25.45).
2. Delete temporary files
The processes your computer runs through when you use files or programs creates tons of tiny, temporary files that help it retrieve the information you need faster. Clearing your computer of all these can often help speed up its performance.
Mac: Start with Disk Utility (Applications > Utilities), and hit First Aid > Repair to scan and patch up your hard drive. Next, search for “Mac cleaner” apps on the App Store, such as MacPaw's CleanMyMac X ($39.95), to clear your computer's cache of temporary files from browsers and other programs.
Windows: For Windows 10, search for 'Disk Cleanup' in the search box, and for Windows 8, head to the Control Panel and find Disk Clean-up. If you're on older versions of Windows, find it in System Tools. You can then start cleanup for temporary and system files that are no longer needed.
3. Clear the downloads folder of unnecessary files
The Downloads folder can be expunged of detritus such as PDFs of old plane tickets, GIFs and humorous cat pics from emails, torrent links to files you now have, .dmg (Mac) or .exe (Windows) installers of apps you now have, and so on.
Mac and Windows: Open the Downloads folder, and view its contents by file type, then go through each category and drag the unneeded files to the Trash (Mac) or Recycle Bin (Windows) or right click and select Delete (both Mac and Windows). Make sure you Empty the Trash or Recycle Bin when you're done.
Leave the documents, photos, music and videos for now. They can be dealt with when you're ready to start sorting the files you want to keep (see the next section).
4. Delete unused applications
Mac: You can delete unused programs by dragging them from the Applications folder into the Trash, or right-clicking and selecting to send to Trash. This deletes most files associated with the app, such as data generated, but not preference files and support files. Preference files contain info about your settings in the app and are usually only a few kilobytes, while application support files can range from kilobytes to gigabytes when it comes to large media apps such as DVD Studio Pro or GarageBand.
To delete these, head to Finder, click on Macintosh HD (or Home) > Library > Application Support, where the files will be listed by app. You may even find some old files from apps you'd thought you were totally rid of. Dump them in the trash by dragging and dropping. Be careful in here: only delete files from apps you know you deleted, otherwise, you may end up deleting crucial files from, say, Microsoft, which makes the Silverlight video plugin you probably use regardless of whether you have any Microsoft programs. Don’t forget to empty your trash afterward – before that you don’t actually free up any space.
Alternately, try out App Cleaner PRO ($9.99), which lets you delete apps with one click. You'll need to upgrade to the Pro version after downloading the free app to delete programs.
Windows: Windows PCs have a pretty spiffy uninstall feature that removes everything associated with an app, so for all versions of Windows, head to Settings > Apps & Features, select a program and select uninstall.
Although some programs may leave behind settings info in the registry, a database of configuration settings, the data is minimal and Microsoft recommends not modifying the registry unless you really know what you're doing.
5. Should you still defrag your drive?
In the long-ago times of early 2000s computing, most of us incorporated disk defragmentation into our cleaning rituals. Disk fragmentation occurs as a file system loses its ability to keep related data together, causing the hard drive to work harder to bring up data related to current tasks, thus slowing down performance.
In general, Mac computers don't need to be defragged, especially newer Mac laptops that have solid-state drives (SSD), use a different method of maintaining data. Windows 8 and Windows 10 automatically run a disk defrag (now called disk optimization) on a weekly schedule for machines with hard drives.
Windows 8 and 10 users can hasten a defrag (or optimization), type “optimize” in the taskbar, and choose “Defragment and Optimize Drives”. then “Analyze” on the hard drive. You’ll then have the option to “Optimize”, which may improve performance.
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Windows support has the lowdown on doing this for PCs running Windows 7 or older.
6. Zap spyware and trackers
It's possible that in the course of your internet browsing, you acquired some trackers, spyware or even minor viruses (unless, of course, you have been using up-to-date security software). Even so, malware is an ever-evolving beast, so it's a good idea to run a scan of your system with an anti-malware program - such as BitDefender Antivirus Free Edition (PC) or Avast Security for Mac (Mac) – to check for viruses, trojans, trackers and other malware.
7. Finishing touches
Mac: In Finder, if your Favorites column contains links to unused folders, delete them by right-clicking and selecting “Remove from Sidebar.” And don't be afraid to remove applications from your Dock unless you really need daily access to them. Just close the app first, then hold on its icon in the Dock, and drag it to the Trash.
Windows: Minimize the number of programs that get to be in the Start Menu (Windows 10 and Windows 7) or Start Screen (Windows 8) by right-clicking the unwanted app, and selecting “Unpin from Start Menu.”
Organize your computer files
Now that we've cleaned things up a bit, we can get down to gathering all files of a type.
1. Merge duplicate folders
If you have two folders with the same name and they should really be the same folder -- say, two 'Invoices' folders squirreled away in different parent folders (or in my case, two of every important folder) -- you can manually merge them.
Mac and Windows: Choose which folder will be the one you use henceforth, then select all the files from the other folder and drag or Copy/Cut+Paste into the desired folder. If files have the same name – either because you saved twice to different locations, or simply because you accidentally named different things the same – select to “Keep Both” and sort out the naming later.
2. Find a home for photos
First, identify where all your pictures might be – for example, the Downloads folder if you often download from email or Facebook; folders for imports from phones and digital cameras; or a cloud storage service such as Google Photos or iCloud Photo Library where they may have auto-synced from your smartphone.
If you use an iPhone and a Mac, assuming you're on iOS 7 or newer, your most recent 1000 photos will be synced to Photo Stream (if you have it turned on at Settings > Photos > My Photo Stream) and viewable on Photos on the Mac.
If you use an iPhone and a Windows PC, Apple's My Photo Stream automatically downloads the most recent photos to your PC, viewable in C:Users[user name]PicturesiCloud PhotosMy Photo Stream. Make sure you have iCloud installed and that Photo Stream is turned on in Settings > Photos and turn on iCloud Photo Library. If you have a lot of photos, you may find that you'll need to buy more iCloud storage.
If you use an Android phone, your photos may be auto-synced to your Google Photos account (on the phone, open the Google Photos app > Settings > Auto-backup toggle), or you can import them via USB connection to a folder on your computer.
Mac and Windows: Next, create the master collection of photos. You may want to simply download all photos from, say, Photo Stream or Google+ to your computer, but with digital cameras allowing infinite shots of the same scenes, this can quickly fill up your hard drive.
A cloud storage service for your photos can be a handy means of ensuring a backup even if your devices are lost or damaged. We like Google Photos, which can automatically back up photos taken with your phone and its Backup and Sync desktop software will take care of photos stored on your computer. Storage is free for photos up to 20MP.
3. Move all your documents to the Documents folder
Sounds obvious, but I have docs floating on my Mac desktop, in my Users folder and in Downloads. Comb each folder for documents then move them to their rightful home via copy/cut and paste.
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4. Move all songs to the Music folder and all video to the Movies/Videos folder
There are a finite number of file types you use on your computer, and both Macs and Windows PCs come with predefined folders for them: Documents, Movies (Videos in Windows), Music, Pictures. Sort each file type into its appropriate “master” folder, and further sort the files into sub-folders later.
Now that you're free of all digital flotsam, the next step is to build a folder system that will allow you to save files where they should go and incorporate an intuitive naming system so that when you forget where you put things, it's not so hard to find them again.
5. Build a folder system
Make a nest of folders and sub-folders. Take Documents: within this master folder, create sub-folders for major categories. For example, Work and Personal, or more specific folders such as Invoices, House Budget, or Ideas. Browse your Documents folder to get an idea of the types of files you've built up, then create the folders-within-folders you need.
Sort out your photo folders. The task of ordering the volume of photos coming together from your phone, email or social network accounts can overwhelm your best efforts at digital tidying. To keep your photos organized, tag and name digital photos so they’re easily found.
Make sure to download new files to the Downloads folder. Then implement a regular Downloads cleaning schedule where you manually sort files into Documents, Movies, Music, or Pictures. If you have a bit of time to invest in building simple software rules, you can also check out a couple of apps that automate the process.
6. Organize new files as they arrive
Mac:Hazel is an intuitive, easy to use app for monitoring and auto-sorting any folder on your Mac. Setting up rules is extremely simple in an interface with dropdown options for each aspect of a rule (see screenshot). For example, when setting up a rule for moving music files out of downloads, instead of needing to specify file extensions (of which there may be several), you can simply select “Image” as a file type. You specify which folders that your rules apply to at the start of setting up each rule and then Hazel works in the background, popping up notifications when it moves files. It's $32, with a 14-day free trial and works on Mac OS X 10.7 or newer.
Windows:DropIt is a free, open-source app that allows you to set up rules for what to do with particular file types so that you can, for example, dictate that all .jpg files are to be moved to Pictures. To apply that rule to the Downloads folder, you can add a monitoring option so that DropIt scans Downloads for new files to apply the rule to. Other actions include copying, compressing, as well as extracting – handy to apply to downloaded .zip image or music packs that you want unzipped straight into the correct folder. Setting up a rule is a straightforward process: name the rule, select the file type, pick the action from a dropdown menu, then type in the destination folder the file should be sent to afterward -- for example C:Users[Your Name]Pictures.
A similar app with a more novice-friendly interface is File Juggler, which can also scan for phrases to automatically file bills and invoices; rename music files with album and artist data, and automatically extract zipped files when they’re downloaded. It costs $40 and features a 30-day free trial.
7. Back up efficiently
Setting up a backup system is crucial. Better yet, it's a system you've taken the time to automate so that in the event of a computer crash or data loss, your most valuable documents will still be safe. For example, a cloud storage service such as Google Drive or Dropbox is handy for automatically backing up smaller files.
When you sign up for a cloud storage service, it will create a folder on your computer that constantly syncs to the cloud so that anything in the folder is saved online as well as on your computer. You might want to save all insurance applications or a long-term project to the cloud-synced folder. Depending on how much storage you have, you may want to save special photos. Amazon Prime subscribers, for example, get unlimited storage for full-resolution photos. Check out our feature on cloud storage services to see what works best for you.
If you're backing up larger media files, such as songs or videos, you can purchase external hard drives with 1TB or more of storage (A terabyte is 1000GB, which can hold up to 250,000 photos or 1,000 HD movies). We like the Western Digitial My Passport hard drive which comes in 1TB, 2TB, 3TB and 4TB capacities, starting at $59 (check price on Amazon).
Updated on 2/6/2019
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