Organizing Photos in Dropbox: Eliene - Dropbox Community

[Amy]

How we use Dropbox: Eliene 

As we come towards the end of the year, it’s great to look back over the year, and our own Eliene is a big photography fan and part of her hobby includes storing and organizing photos in Dropbox. So, here are some of her tips on how to use Dropbox to organize photos. 

One of my hobbies is analogue photography. I like the feeling of the unknown. Waiting to develop a film is so magical. But sometimes I get ahead of myself and I end up with many rolls of film to develop at once, and then I have tons of photos to be edited and organized.

When I go to a photography store, I have the option to ask them to only develop the film, or to digitize the film in store for me, and that saves me a lot of time. Even when I manually scan in my photos, it’s great to have a digital backup. When I get my photos back, they all come in a batch so I try to organize them ASAP so I can keep track of all my memories. 

When I upload my photos to Dropbox, I have two folders to start with. The first folder is for photos that I haven’t edited yet - so they might need a little work - a crop here, a rotation there, and maybe just a little resizing. Then I move these edited photos into an ‘Edited’ folder. Then I create some subfolders of each batch of photos and I name these with the brand name of the film I used to take them: Kodak Ultramax, LomoChrome Purple, Lomography Berlin Kino, Ilford, Kodak Color Plus, etc., and it helps me to keep track of my photo sessions. This also helps me to know which film I am really enjoying at any one time. Then, if I really want to feel organized, I can go on to split these up even further and name them after the year, the city they were taken in or the event I was at, but usually I leave them in their film folders, so they’re like digital matches of the physical prints too. 

And finally, there is the Favorite Folder. It’s where I add my best shots. When taking photos with film, we never know which ones will turn out super cool, regardless of the time or place, so it’s nice to keep a selection of ones that I love, all in one spot.

Organzing photos in Dropbox really is that simple. I love that Eliene keeps the photos in the order she took them, and relatively unedited - I for one am a fan of the edit button well beyond just resizing and cropping, but then again, I take all my photos on my phone! If you want to learn more about how Dropboxers use Dropbox to organize their photos, you can read about how Emmet used it for a decade before joining the team, and how Sheena keeps her family in touch with online photo albums too.

We want to know how you use Dropbox, so tell us in the comments below!