Gather everything into one place
Choose one drive or computer as the home for the photo archive and create a folder called _Inbox. Copy, do not move, photographs from every source on your inventory into it: phones, old laptops, memory cards, cloud exports and shared albums. Copying means a mistake later costs nothing, because the originals remain where they were until you are confident in the new archive.
Cloud services usually offer a bulk export of originals. Ask for the original files rather than compressed versions, and check that the export includes metadata, which some services place in separate sidecar files.
Remove duplicates carefully
Gathering from many places produces duplicates. Use a tool that compares file content, not just names, and review what it proposes before deleting anything. digiKam includes a duplicate finder, and photo managers such as Adobe Lightroom Classic can flag suspected duplicates on import. When in doubt, keep the larger file with the most complete metadata.
Folders that sort themselves
Most photographs carry the moment they were taken inside the file as EXIF data. Software can read that date and file each picture into a matching folder automatically. ExifTool, a free command-line utility, can rename and sort thousands of images by date in one pass; many photo managers offer the same through menus.
Photos/
├── _Inbox/
├── 2008/
│ ├── 2008-05 Lake District/
│ └── 2008-09-14 Wedding/
├── 2023/
│ ├── 2023-01/
│ └── 2023-07-22 Beach day/
└── Scans/
└── 1978-1985 Album 03/
Keep the structure shallow. Year folders, then month or named event folders, is enough. Resist folders by person or theme: a picture with three people and a dog cannot live in four folders, but it can carry four tags.
Let metadata do the describing
Metadata standards exist so that descriptions survive a change of software. EXIF holds technical details and the capture date. IPTC and XMP hold the human information: captions, keywords, people and locations. When you tag a photo, choose a setting that writes these into the file itself or into an XMP sidecar file beside it, rather than only into a program's private database.
- Keywords: a short controlled list such as names, places and occasions. Write it down so everyone uses the same spelling.
- People: face recognition helps, but confirm names before trusting them.
- Captions: one sentence on the best pictures of each event is worth more than tags on every frame.
Fix the dates that lie
Cameras with an unset clock, messaging apps that strip metadata and scanned prints all produce wrong dates. Correct them in batches: select an event, set the right date and let the tool adjust the rest. For scans, set the date to your best estimate and note the uncertainty in the caption, such as "c. 1982".
Cull to find the good ones
Organisation is easier when there is less to organise. After each event, mark favourites and consider deleting obvious failures: blurred shots, accidental pocket photos and near-identical bursts. You do not need to be ruthless, but a curated best-of album per year is what people will actually look at.
Scanning the print albums
Prints and negatives are often the only copy of decades of family history. Scan prints at 600 dpi or higher as TIFF or high-quality JPEG, and negatives and slides at a higher resolution suited to their small size. Scan whole album pages first if time is short; it preserves captions and order and can be refined later. Making a contact sheet of each finished batch gives you a quick visual index.
Protect the result
Once sorted, the photo archive deserves the full 3-2-1 treatment described in plan storage that lasts. Run the inbox-to-folder routine each season, then let your backups catch up.