Why I love keywording my photos and why you should too
Do you use your phone to take photos of things that are important to you?
Do you take screen shots of things you want to reference later – recipes, books, recommendations, websites?
Do you take photos of documents you need to find easily or just don’t want to misplace – vaccine card, insurance card, UPS tracking information?
Do you ever take a photo of one of the above then two weeks later find yourself scrolling back through your camera roll looking for it?
If you answered yes to any of the above, you should be using keywords and/or captions. Keywords and captions allow your photo library to be searchable, after all, what use is your photo if you can’t find it? This is the service that my clients most often contact me about long after I have organized their photo collection. During March Madness, a client reached out to tell me how thrilled she was that in just a few seconds she was able to pull up a photo from her own collection of her attending the event back in 2004.
The idea of adding keywords or captions to your photos might sound daunting if you have a lot of photos (which most of us do) or technologically difficult (it’s not). I don’t suggest that you sit down with your entire photo collection and attempt to keyword it from start to finish. It’s a big job and you will quickly realize how long it can take without the right tools to batch process your photos. Wait to do this when you have a lot of time, or contact me to take care of it for you. Instead, start with the photos you take today, and create the habit of keying them as you go. There are two benefits to this: first, you will be able to find your photos from this point forward, and second, it will make you think about whether you actually want to keep that particular photo.
Many of us use our phones as both a camera and to document certain parts of our day. Looking at my camera roll, yesterday I took 3 photos of my dog, 10 “after” pictures of a current project, a book recommendation I saw on Facebook, and 2 photos of tulips I saw on a walk. When I took a moment to keyword them, I deleted 2 of the photos of my dog, 6 of the project photos, and both of the tulips. I then added keywords to the remaining dog photo, the book recommendation, and the remaining project pictures, because those were the photos that I actually want to keep.
How to add keywords and captions to your photos
Now that you (hopefully) see the benefit of adding keywords to your photos, how do you do it? There are many different programs and methods to use to keyword, some more complicated than others. If you keyword in real time, meaning soon after you take a photo, the easiest way is to use your phone.
On an iPhone, simply open the photo and swipe up. You’ll see a spot right under your photo that says “Add a caption”. Type in a word or short phrase that makes sense to you and you are done. iPhones don’t allow you to add keywords on the phone itself, but in the Apple ecosystem a caption will work just as well for searching purposes.
After you add your keywords and captions, next time you need these photos just click search, type in the word, and up they come. The process is similar for Android phones, but will vary depending on where you store your photo library.
Keywording on your phone works really well for on-the-fly keywording. If you want to bulk keyword, for example after a vacation or kid event, it is much easier to do this on a computer. There are several programs that have this functionality, including the Photos app if you have a Mac, Adobe Bridge (free), and Adobe Lightroom. If you do decide to keyword your entire photo library, take a few moments first to determine what types of photos you want to add keywords to so that you can be consistent. To me, keywording your photo library is one of the best gifts you can give yourself. It allows you to easily call up your photos to relive and share a special memory.
For my clients, keywording is the part of my service they love the most. Contact me today to discuss keywording your library.