Really, there’s steps to all this, depending. There’s the scanning, the organizing, the annotating, the preservation of paper and digital and in each of those areas there are things to know and better of ways of going about it.

All I can do from here is be a bit flippant and suggest some alternatives to Picasa that won’t run you up the wrong tree right off the bat.

No need to apologize for flying over my head, implementation-wise that bar is set pretty low. I’m in the process of looking over the applications you recommended. If I have follow-on questions I hope you will be as receptive to those as you been thus far.

Thanks & Best Wishes,
George
“A Neophyte in DC”

In regards to Kerry’s marks given to Picasa – you know, George, this is the Internet not God’s Gospel Truth. It’s an opinion. And, in my opinion, anyone who uses photo archiving and Picasa in the same sentence is a rank amateur when it comes to anything photo related. And she doesn’t stop there. This post goes on to talk about keeping photo info in spreadsheets and re-saving jpg’s as tif’s. I was almost that lost once myself but as time goes on daylight begins to dawn.

I assumed, since you left your question on a post that’s discussing photo organization and annotation that you’re interested in photo organization and annotation. For photo organization I have very little to say. There’s no software anywhere that’s going to do it for you. That part is your job depending on a variety of factors and whatever makes sense to you. Photo annotation is a whole other thing and once your photos are thoroughly annotated that information can be searched which is a form of organization.

How I hate Picasa, let me count the ways:
1.) The Import options
2.) The Backup options
3.) Everything in between

Here’s the general path that Picasa has set up for you: automatically import the jpg’s from your digital camera, throw some tags, captions, map flags at them, upload them to Picasa Web Albums, done. This has sweet zip all to do with archiving old photos. Maybe you’re not trying to archive old photos. Maybe you’re talking about jpg’s from your digital camera. I could go on and on for days but I don’t know what your question is exactly. You said “organizing my photos”.

What I already told you is the best I can do photo annotation/organization-wise: GeoSetter, XnView, Photo Mechanic, Phil Harvey. It’s too bad that GeoSetter isn’t built for Mac. Everything else listed here is. XnView for Mac in beta.

There’s a huge range of IPTC capability in various software, and even the delightful ones that strip it or parts of it out so, if you’re going to do this, I recommend getting it right from the start. I’ve narrowed it down to these 3 as being safe.

If you’re a little bit tech savvy and have the patience, I might go straight to Phil Harvey’s ExifTool which works through the Command Prompt or the slightly more user-friendly version, ExifToolGUI. There’s a little bit of chit-chat about how to set this up on my site at Writing GPS with ExifTool which is just talking about the GPS but it does it all. If you can master this thing, and Phil runs an excellent forum, you’re home free.

Organizing my photos has been a ongoing project of some duration. Most recently I’ve been using iPhoto, which likewise has a photo recognition option. However, it strikes me that it isn’t flexible, or intuitive enough for ordinary user. Now, finding your three-part series has been a real heaven-send. I’m going to try your endorsement of Picasa and implement some of JL’s and Clobbered’s excellent suggestions. Your reader interaction has been particularly helpful in determining my own skill comfort-zone.

Thanks abound,
George

Storage is CHEAP these days! Some of my scans are 400mb and to archive that off to a CD is CHEAP. You might as well scan that valuable keepsake correctly and taking into account all potential future uses & needs, because repeated scanning can begin to degrade the image (exposure to light and heat). Then store the original in an archival sleeve and in an appropriate environment (not humid, etc.).

As far as scanning being tedious, I am now using a V700 (Epson) and I can put several smaller photos on the scanner bed, select what I want to scan on each (don’t use the scanner’s “automatic” settings, either), and then once I’ve set up each photo, just “select all” and let ‘er rip. I go off and do other things and it scans the photos. Also, always save the raw scan as the archival copy, and work on a copy of it to downsave to JPG, etc. And wow, this scanner is proving to be a FAST little bugger – WAY faster than my older Epson scanner. It does a beautiful job on slides, negatives, and transparencies, too.

And I do like your idea of using a spreadsheet – I do that as well, and for one thing, I can keep track of who I’ve shared it with. I have been struggling with file names, so I love your idea of just numbering them. I would do this for each of my four primary family “branches” with an appropriate sub-number. It’s not a bad idea to work out a metadata scheme to tag into the photo file, but the problem is, you always have to be on the alert for when s/w may begin to not recognize the program you used to tag the photo with that metadata.

I actually add the info directly onto the photo this way: I open the raw scan, downsize it to 150 dpi, and enlarge the canvas area in Photoshop. I type in all my metadata into the blank area under the photo then save it with the exact same filename but adding “data” to the end of the filename. Then I keep those two files (plus any more files I’ve made as I do touchup work to the photos) together in their own folder. And make sure you’re backing up to an external source like an external hard drive as well as a CD or DVD and even look into storage area in the “cloud.” I can post the 150dpi version online and share it, and if someone wants the one I’ve retouched and re-saved after cropping, etc., I can send a CD if they want a large photo to print, or if they want the original archival raw scan. I’m exploring the idea of using DropBox and other sites like this, for sharing high-res photos. Creating a gmail account shared by a few people could work, too – you can attach a file up to 25mb in size, I think, or 28mb, can’t remember right now – to a message and save it as a “draft” and someone else could log in & retrieve it. Free. And this would work if someone just wants a file with enough data to print a 5×7, for instance.

I am a Project Archivist now for a university Special Collections, and have a long career working in color science & digitizing (Eastman Kodak, among others) as well as 21 years’ experience with Photoshop. I also have worked on my family history and preserving the keepsakes, for decades. I just started a Facebook Page for “everyday Joe” with ideas for preserving, digitizing, photographing, sharing, etc. your family keepsakes. I will draw on my digitizing experience and what I’ve found helpful working with my own family keepsakes, plus info I’ve learned while working at Special Collections over the past two years. I also just started working on a huge new project (Gordon Parks’ personal papers collection) so I am just beginning to get content on my Page – but if you’re interested, here it is: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Future-Archivist-Saving-Our-Past-for-Our-Future/140166576048129

My goal is to share ideas that people who aren’t particularly archivally trained and who don’t have a lot of money, can use to save their keepsakes. Anyone who wants to preserve their keepsakes deserves to be helped!