Organising all your precious photographs is often set aside until later. Luckily, later is now! Olivia Norman, who manages the personal photo collections of her exclusive clients and creates bespoke family picture ablums provides some handy tips.

1. Create A Workspace

-Gather all pictures in one place
-Prepare folders, envelopes or files

Top Tip: Organising can take time, and is a process you may stop and start, so choose somewhere where you can lay out your photos without them being later disrupted

2. Organise In Years

-Number folders, envelopes or files (folded A4 paper if needed)
-Start putting photos inside the matching folder based on the date
-One step further is to categorise pictures by months, events, or whichever categorisation you wish to follow

Top Tip: Set aside any unknowns into a ‘TBC’ folder rather than getting stuck on them

3. Scan & Archive

-Softly mark the back side of the best/most important photos with a biro (non-smudgeable) – remember quality over quantity
-Create a new folder on your desktop for your images
-Always follow this model when naming the folders: Year_Month_Name of Event
-Scan the photos as jpeg, we recommend 300 dpi – 600 dpi resolution for the best quality
-Make sure your scanner is as clean as possible to avoid dust

Top Tip: Once you have scanned a couple of pictures, send them to our team and we will be able to check the quality details for you (there is nothing worse than scanning a hundred of photos that are in a wrong size and format!)

Most scanners these days will do a perfect job, our team works and loves the Epson scanners. Additionally, we provide a scanning service and our designers can Photoshop new life into your old prints by restoring the colour, removing scratches, and much more!

“I had a few years’ worth of loose photos that I wanted to put into albums. Once I organised them, Olivia’s team created the layouts and mounted pictures into beautiful albums for me, it was done quickly and I absolutely treasure them!!! Lovely memories to have.”
–
Natalie Masaood

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If you want professional help organising your photography then Almost Essential highly reccomends Olivia’s service, you can learn more and enquire through her profile page on Almost Essential.