Make Screen Sized Photos a Habit

If you're interested in selling photos, then you need to make a habit of creating versions with proper size and resolution for a computer screen. In a digital world, editors want to see what you have now. Don't clog someone's inbox with an image that will appear large enough to cover the state of North Dakota. Instead, have versions intended to be viewed on a monitor and send them with the explanation that high resolution files are also available for the asking. That way, the recipient can quickly review what you have and call for the big versions for which the person is willing to pay. You'll need some photo editing software, but that can be a minor expense.

File Those Photos

Ever look at your folders of photos and feel despair of getting them organized? Fear not - it's a heck of a lot easier and faster than you might think. First, you need software to really do this well. I use ACDSee Pro (though the regular version is quite capable if you aren't storing everything in the camera's native RAW file format - which, I'd argue, you should do because it's like having the original negative). Adobe Photoshop Elements has an organizer, if you've already got that software. For Mac users, consider something like Shoebox. The imperative thing is to have the ability to work on groups of photos at the same time.

Next, you want to come up with a naming scheme. This was a great tip that I got from nature photographer Ian Macdonald-Smith when I was writing something on this topic for Outdoor. Find something that triggers your memory for related groups of images, like a place and date. You might add the name of an event, like Aunt Sadie's Birthday Bash. The main thing is to replace the automatically generated file names with something that has meaning to you. Use the software's batch naming ability, so you might have the following files:

Aunt Sadie's Birthday Bash, New Orleans, 2-25-97 001
Aunt Sadie's Birthday Bash, New Orleans, 2-25-97 002
Aunt Sadie's Birthday Bash, New Orleans, 2-25-97 003

and so on.

Now you add keywords, photo captions, copyright information, and categories, which the program you've chosen stores in a database and, depending on the file format you choose, tucked inside the image itself. Choose the information for whole groups of photos at the same time and using batching to apply that data to all the photos at the same time.

That's going forward, but you can do the same thing with the images already sitting on your hard drive. When you have a few minutes, pick a group of old photos and apply these same techniques. You'll be getting caught up in no time.