When I started reading Heather Greenwood Davis’s “Preserving precious memories” article, I thought I was going to have another piece to add to the “photo overload” fire. Yes and no; the article touches on problems caused by digital photo ubiquity, but it really focuses on how to keep the “keepers” from your digital collection around for continued enjoyment.

But first, the article suggests deleting all the digital photos that don’t make the grade. While that certainly does kill digital clutter at the source, it’s not an approach I would recommend. Certainly, removing “lens cap on” kind of photos is fine, but with the ever-decreasing cost of digital storage these days, I’d say keep even marginal photos. You can always purchase more storage, but you can never go back in time to reshoot a photo. And of course, use software like Photology to manage the ever-growing collection of digital photos!

Heather’s article recommends a digital archiving strategy. This is always sound advice. And wouldn’t you know it, Photology is ready to help you deal with archived data! Here’s what you do:

• Back up your photos to CD/DVD or external drive.
• Make Photology to examine the backup photos.
• Eject/disconnect your backup media and put somewhere safe.

The next time you start up Photology, you’ll see the thumbnails of your backup photos; you can even search for your backup photos using Photology’s filters. But when you go to view a photo that is on ejected/disconnected media, Photology will tell you which disc the backup is on!

It’s easier and better to show you this functionality than to describe it, so I’ll be putting together a video tutorial of the process soon. Stay tuned!

[image courtesy UMN News]

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