Take Control of Your Digital Photos, 2nd Edition

Are you drowning in a sea of digital photos? Unable to find the shots you’re looking for, or to stay on top of managing all the photos you’re taking? Digital photography expert Jeff Carlson gives you a plan for tackling this problem, starting with preparing your camera ahead of time, then choosing the right app to manage your photos, judging and organizing your photos, and backing up your photos for safekeeping.

In this book—an expanded and updated version of Take Control of Your Digital Photos on a Mac—Jeff extends his advice to cover both macOS and Windows (along with limited coverage of mobile platforms), and to address a broader range of photo management apps, including Apple Photos, Lightroom, Lightroom Classic, and Exposure X5.

With this book, you’ll learn how to:

• Get started with the minimum amount of work: Take advantage of software intelligence to do some of the categorizing work for you, and find out how you can accomplish some tasks even if you have little time.

• Prep your camera: Learn four actions you can take before you head out the door that will make things easier after you return with new pictures.

• Get your app together: Decide which app you’ll use to organize your digital photos, compare popular choices, and find out Jeff’s recommended application.

• Import the right way: Learn how to assign valuable metadata to all images that come in during the import stage.

• Pick winners and losers: Assign ratings to your photos, and remove or hide unwanted photos.

• Apply keywords and metadata: Take a second pass on applying keywords to individual shots (after starting the process during import), learn how to apply geotags using GPS data from external devices (like an iPhone), and use facial recognition to collect shots of specific friends and family members.

• Search with smart albums: Build smart albums whose contents change depending on criteria you’ve specified, allowing you to find photos more easily. While searching, learn how to remove duplicate photos.

• Go mobile: Find the right online service for making your photos available on mobile devices, based on your needs and which desktop photo management app you use.

• Protect your photos: Learn how to implement a backup strategy that will preserve all your data, not just your photos, and how to archive photos for the future.