Saving and Organizing Photos

Sorry I have been such a bag blogger lately. I have been working on a Fancy Nancy birthday party for my daughter. I will post pictures later. I think it would be fun to be a children's birthday party planner in another life...I just need a la carte budgets. ; )

I was asked a really two great questions the other day. What process do I use for downloading and saving my photos from my camera? And, what did I use to create the playlist on the layout I showed in this post.

Here are my answers:

1. My camera came with a program to download and organize photos. I LOVE how it automatically saves the files into folders by the date the pictures were taken. I create a new Windows folder for each month, inside a new folder for each year. I save the folders created by the camera's system into those month folders. Jessica Sprague, an expert in the technology side of scrapbooking, has another great organization system. She explains it well here.

I upload my pictures to scrapbookpictures.com and picassaweb.google.com. Both services allow me to keep them organized by folder. I order pictures from scrapbook pictures because they offer a HUGE variety of sizes and special services. Picassa is great because I can give a link directly to my site for my friends and family to visit It is great for the grandparents to view photos of the kids. It give me piece of mind to know I have my pictures backed up and protected.

For editing my pictures, I use Photoshop Elements. It is an AMAZING program, but can be complicated for a first time user. Jessica Sprague offers free video tutorials on her sites here and here. The latter also offers paid online classes in using Photoshop as well as photography. View a free online video because she does a great job with them.

2. I created the playlist on my layout using iTunes. I download music from iTunes and rip (copy) songs from my CDs as well. I have an extensive collection of music as a result. iTunes lets you easily set up a playlist. Once you have your playlist set up, you simply go to print and you get the image you saw on my layout - an array of album cover pictures and a list of the songs.

Hope this information helps you in organizing your scrapbook pictures.