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Last Updated:
Jan 20th, 2007 - 12:55:03 |
Even with the ability to instantly review digital photographs and delete any that are not quite right, many users tend not to, and download these photographs just in case. After all, photo editing can do wonders in many instances! However most often these poor photographs simply remain on your hard drive taking up valuable space, unlikely to be used for any purpose. Take the time to spring clean your image files just as you would your home!
Step 1: Create a new folder
Create a new folder in which to move the rejected photographs into. There are two reasons for this step. One is to prevent accidental deletion of a precious photograph, and two so that if desired you can create a backup of this folder on CD or DVD or by any other method if you can’t bear to delete the photos entirely. By copying this folder to disk you can safely delete the contents of the folder knowing that you have it on disk should it ever be needed.
I have simply named my folder DiscardPhotos.
Step 2: Choose a folder to begin with
I would recommend choosing a folder that contains the least recent photographs available as you will most likely be find it easiest to be objective in choosing photographs that will not be used and can be removed.
Open the folder of choice and adjust the view to enable you to see thumbnails of your images.
If you find it necessary to view your image at a larger size right click on the thumbnail image and choose Open with … Internet Explorer to preview it in a separate window.
Step 3: Move To
View your photographs one at a time and determine if it is worth keeping for a future project. Some photographs will obviously be to precious to delete others may be characterized by poor focus, too dark or too light, heads cut off, strange facial expressions, poor composition or even the dreaded finger or strap over the lens.
If you think a poor photograph has merit and could be saved for example by judicious cropping or photo editing then you need to make a judgment call. Perhaps open the image in your photo-editing program and make an attempt to salvage it quickly. You should then be able to tell fairly quickly whether the photograph warrants the effort of image correction, simple cropping for example has saved many a poor photograph by giving it a stronger and more appealing composition. Choose the best photograph of a series of similar photographs and remove the others that aren’t quite right.
By all means leave any photograph within its folder but remember if you do remove it then if you are copying the discards to some other media you will be able to access it at a later date.
Once you have identified a photograph that should be discarded, select the thumbnail and use Edit > Move to folder> and browse to your discard folder. Clicking okay will move the file into your discard folder. You can move multiple files at once by holding down CTRL (control) and selecting each file and then selecting Edit>Move to folder.
This method is more convenient than using cut or copy and paste to move files as the Move To Folder command retains the last used information so the folder will not have to be navigated to over and over again.
Repeat this process for each folder that contains your photographs.
Step 4: Check the discard folder
When you have finished going through your photographic files open your discard file. View each photograph to ensure that you have not accidentally moved any precious photographs you wish to keep into the folder. Returning a mismanaged photograph to its original photo folder may be difficult as there is no “restore to original folder” function as there is with the recycle bin so you will need to return the folder manually.
Step 5: Delete or Burn
The last step in this spring-cleaning process is up to you. Once you are sure that the discard folder contains only images you do not wish to keep you can either burn a copy of the discard folder to CD, DVD or other storage device before deleting the folder from your hard drive to free up space or of course you can delete the folder without making any type of copy of the folder. Failing to delete the folder from your hard drive at all defeats the purpose of the spring clean to free up space on your hard drive so this step is crucial.
Step 6: Keeping it clean
The key to this process is undertaking the steps regularly so that a backlog of photographs does not develop. Set aside some time to review each folder of downloaded photographs within a reasonable time frame and weed out those photos that will never be used.
In this way you will free up valuable hard drive space and have a strong selection of photographs easily accessible for scrapping!
***First published in TidBytes March 2004***
© Copyright 2003-2005 by Scrapbook-Bytes; & original creator/s of tutorials/articles
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