You carry your smartphone everywhere so it’s quite likely it’s your main source of photos. Because of this, your camera roll can get crowded and messy. So we’ve created this simple guide and cherry-picked the top photo storage apps to help you organise your mobile photos.
Step 1 – DELETE!
Go to your phone’s photo gallery and delete all the low quality, blurry, poorly lit, and repetitive images. Be ruthless with this. While you do this you can also start thinking about how you are going to organise your images into folders later.
Step 2 – Choose a storage option
Depending on how much memory your phone has, you can choose to store your photos on your smartphone or in a cloud service.
Choose phone if:
- You don’t have huge volumes of photos to deal with.
- You don’t mind periodically importing photos from your phone to your PC.
- You don’t want to have to deal with cloud technology.
- You’re looking for the cheapest option.
- TIP: If you choose phone, make sure to import all photos to your computer at least once a month and delete the ones on your phone so you won’t run out of space.
- TIP: If you find your phone’s memory gets full quickly, try turning off the media autosave function in WhatsApp and clearing chats (go to the chat that you want to delete, click on the name at the top of the chat and then scroll down and select ‘clear chat’). Make sure to save all the photos you like first.
Choose cloud if:
- You deal with large volumes of photos.
- You don’t want to be periodically importing your photos from your phone to your PC.
- You don’t mind spending a few extra Euros a month for more storage space (for most cloud services).
There are lots of different cloud options to choose from but here are some of our favourites:
iCloud (only for iOS users – up to 5GB of free storage, then a monthly fee is charged)
Google Photos (free, unlimited photo and video storage)
Dropbox (up to 2GB of free storage, then a monthly fee is charged)
Microsoft OneDrive (up to 5GB of free storage, then a monthly fee is charged)
- TIP: If you choose a cloud service, turn on the automatic backup function and delete photos on your phone as you go along to avoid taking up storage space on your phone.
Step 3 – Organise
Once you’ve chosen where to store them, organise your photos into folders (often referred to as albums in smartphones and cloud services).
Putting your photos in order will make it easier to find them when you start to create photo products. It also makes it easier for you to look back at them when you want to remember something special. Want to see photos of a birthday party or wedding? It’ll be easy to find if it’s in the right folder.
We like to organise our photos as follows:
Year > Month > themed subfolders
We break the themed subfolders into categories like holidays, events, and a “general folder” for any photo that doesn’t belong in any of those subfolders.
- TIP: Create folders for upcoming events ahead of time to save time when it comes to organising them.
- TIP: If you’re planning to give someone a personalised photo product, create a folder for that gift ahead of time (e.g. photo book for your husband, wall art for mum) and add potential photos to it as you go along.
Step 4 – Stay organised
Now that your smartphone photos are organised, you need to keep it that way. Follow these tips for keeping your photos in order:
- TIP: If you take many photos of the same scene or situation delete the unwanted ones as you go.
- TIP: If you choose to store your photos within a cloud service, periodically check how much storage you have to ensure you don’t end up with no storage to add photos.
- TIP: Sorting out your photos into folders as you go is quicker than having to sort out all your photos from the past week or month in one go.
Organising your photos is a surprisingly fun way to spend a rainy weekend as you get to look back on lots of special moments. Keeping your photos in order will also give you peace of mind and make creating photo products easier than ever.
Once you’ve got organised, there is lots more you can do to really make the most out of your photos. Have a browse through our easy photo book creation guide, full of tips, tricks and ideas for you to follow.