Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Chapter 5. Organizing Photos on Your PC

You can shoot tons of pictures with digital cameras at virtually no cost. Blissfully snap away, offload the pics onto your PC, and then go snap some more. Before you know it, your hard drive is bursting with image files. But with good tools and a solid strategy, you can have as much fun viewing and organizing your digital pictures as you did taking them.

Windows XP is more photo-friendly than any previous version, so you can do all your photo organizing without having to resort to a special program. This chapter shows you every organizational tool and trick that Windows has to offer. But that doesn’t mean you have to stick with Windows. This chapter also explores two free programs with slick organizing features—Kodak’s EasyShare and Google’s Picasa. EasyShare (http://www.kodak.com) lives up to its name by providing an easy-to-use environment to organize photos on your PC (and share them with friends and family); coverage starts in Section 5.2. Picasa (http://www.picasa.com) takes a little longer to learn, but it gives you more advanced sorting and searching tools; flip to Section 5.3 to learn more.

Note

If you’re looking for Web sites that let you store your photos online, check out the next chapter. And if you’ve shelled out $100 for Photoshop Elements, you can use it for all your photo organizing needs; Chapter 8 shows you everything you need to know.

Organizing Photos with Windows XP

As far as your computer is concerned, the photos from ...