Declutter Your Photo Life: The Practical Guide to Curating, Preserving, Organizing, and Sharing Your Photos

Turn your photo chaos into precious memories to be enjoyed and shared!

Now more than ever, we hold our photo collections dear. They are often some of our most prized possessions. Wouldn’t it be great to finally have all your photos organized, safe, accessible, findable, and shareable? With Declutter Your Photo Life by your side, you have just what you need to achieve photo bliss.

Photographers and family historians understand the immense power that photographs have to convey meaning, emotion, and memory. We cherish both old film photos that were handed down by previous generations and our latest digital photos captured on the newest smartphone. But when those priceless memories are unorganized and scattered every which way--on a smartphone, on a laptop, on memory cards and flash drives, on two or three photo sharing websites, in photo albums, and in shoeboxes in the attic--the joy of photography becomes an overwhelming burden. What a mess!

Whether you’re a professional photographer, a casual shooter, or the designated family historian, Declutter Your Photo Life will help you organize and enjoy your photos once again. In this book, professional photo organizer, photographer, and author Adam Pratt teaches you his straightforward step-by-step workflow that, along with powerful image-organizing software such as Adobe Lightroom Classic, will have you taking complete control and creating a calming order out of your photo chaos. And once you’ve mastered Adam’s system--Gather, Preserve, Organize, Share, Maintain--you’ll be able to enjoy and share your photos today and for generations to come.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Overwhelmed by Photos

Chapter 2: Workflow Overview

Chapter 3: Software and Hardware

PHASE 1: GATHER

Chapter 4: Gathering Digital Photos

Chapter 5: Deduplicating Photos

Chapter 6: Creating Your Photo Archive

Chapter 7: Gathering Physical Photos

PHASE 2: PRESERVE

Chapter 8: Preserving Photos

Chapter 9: Converting Digital Formats

Chapter 10: Scanning Physical Photos

PHASE 3: ORGANIZE

Chapter 11: Curating Photos

Chapter 12: Organizing Photos

Chapter 13: Dating Photos

PHASE 4: SHARE

Chapter 14: Sharing Photos

Chapter 15: Accessing Your Photo Archive

PHASE 5: MAINTAIN

Chapter 16: Maintaining Your Photo Archive

Resources

Index

Adam Pratt loves people, photography, and a good story! He spent the last 25 years at the intersection of creativity and technology, including 22 years at Adobe, where he worked on the Creative Cloud team. He’s a professional photo organizer, software trainer, and photographer. He’s also the founder of Chaos to Memories, where he helps people enjoy their photos again by turning their photo chaos into precious memories they can enjoy and share.