My winter project? I am determined to go back through all my digital photos, pick out favorites by year, and make annual photo books.  (I use This Life/Shutterfly because I can upload my photos directly from my phone to This Life and then create books through their partner, Shutterfly. It’s not the easiest interface but I like the simple, black canvas books). Digital photography has changed our lives. We document EVERYTHING. How to sort though the files? We asked Ellen of Ellen Gets It Done.

How can I organize my photos?

This question begs to be answered on an almost constant basis; what’s recommended today can be obsolete tomorrow…welcome to the 21st century, people! You have plenty of choices:

Photos – this is Apple’s somewhat new editing app that has replaced iPhoto. It collects all your photos online in iCloud. You can obtain this free replacement by updating OSX to its latest version. This works the same on your iPhone and your iPad. There are great tools for adjusting light, color and elementary retouching. Your initial upload of ALL your images will take time – days, weeks – this will depend on your internet provider and Apple’s servers. iCloud can be viewed on non-Apple web browsers and you can share your photo gallery links with anyone.  If you decide to break up with Apple, you have the ability to download all your images first.

Shoebox – another app that runs on Android or Windows. The disadvantage? No editing tools. You’ll need a program to do that and then you can load the photos back into Shoebox.

Lyve – this free app is not cloud based; it figures out where your images are and puts thumbnail versions on all of your devices. When you need the original, it copies it from where it is stored. It’s faster than iCloud because you are not uploading to the cloud. It also imports pix from Dropbox, Google Drive and Facebook. Lyve sells drives that are always on your wi-fi network that have a USB port and SD card slot on the back for easy uploading. 2TB will cost you $300.00. Lyve also has Mix, which lets you swap and archive photos with your pals.

Mylio – this service will create a catalog of all your photos from all your different devices (Macs, iPhones, PC’s) and keeps them sync’d everywhere. You can back up original files across many devices also. The current cost is $50.00 annually for three devices and 50,000 images.

Adobe Lightroom – the pros use this, and for those of you who consider yourselves pros, you may want to get yourself a subscription for $10.00/month. Adobe is now offering a Creative Cloud Plan for beginners as well as professionals – organize your pix anywhere: computer, web, iPad, iPhone or Android.

www.ellengetsitdone.com