I’ve seen some awesome pictures lately. Rich, textured, color saturated, detailed pictures that make me say, I want to produce pictures like that. I discovered I would need to begin shooting RAW files, and I would need to get serious about editing.
A sample of an enhanced Jpeg picture file
I looked at software and chose Photoshop Elements 13. It has both organizer and editor, will process RAW files, find duplicate (and similar) files; it employs facial recognition, and does batch conversions; exactly the features I was looking for. I waded into it at first, then finally imported all my pictures. Even after deleting hundreds of duplicates (how did I accumulate HUNDREDS of dupes?), the program says I have 96,346 pictures. Is that possible? I think I got my first camera when I was 13. I just turned 63; that would be 50 years of shooting about five pictures a day. But, I didn’t take them all, I’ve been fortunate to have inherited quite a few old, family “shoe box” pictures.
I started transferring my VHS and Hi-8 videos to digital a long time ago, and I’m nearly finished. I scanned all my 35mm slides to digital
A sample of a processed RAW picture file
a few years ago. I back up all but the most recent pictures on an external drive. I’ve previously tried to organize them, but have had very limited success.
I’m sure that I would be scanning, digitizing, sorting, and tagging this media even if I didn’t have Multiple Myeloma. The words printed on the back (and sometimes front) of the old pictures I’ve been given are precious, usually solving the mystery of the unknown image. I don’t know if the five terabyte shoe box of old pictures my grand-kids may find and open one day will be completely organized (does anyone live that long?), but it will hopefully provide far more answers than questions.
