So you say you want to organize your photos?

Organizing your digital files is daunting to be sure but if do it now and do it right you will thank yourself in years to come. Believe me, I do this for a living and can't tell you how many times I wish there had been an easy handy dandy guide to help me steer clear of so many mistakes.

Maybe some of the lessons I learned from those mistakes will help you navigate safely and easily around the world of digital asset management. I'll also provide you with some links to valuable online resources and talk about a few of the more handy print references as well.

Whether you're a serious amateur seeking to organize all those family and travel photos or a professional who has been tasked with making sense of a corporate image collection, there are three basic components to any digital asset management (DAM) program: hardware, software and process. We'll talk about these each in turn.

But before we do anything I want you to get out a piece of paper or open a text editor and jot down the answers to the following three questions:

1. Why do I want to organize my photos?
2. How much time can I spend creating my image library?
3. How much money can I spend?

If you're planning to organize a personal photo collection, the necessary tools will probably cost about $500 to set up properly. You will also have to allocate the time necessary to learn any new software as well as the time to actually do the cataloging and tagging of your photos.

A large corporate collection might cost no more than $2000 to set up but the real cost there is maintenance. Corporate entities will most likely have a full time asset manager as part of their print and editorial departments.

Naturally the digital asset managing work-flow you develop will arise out of the what suits you and your needs, not what works for me or anyone else. It's your time and your money. I just want to help you spend them both wisely and efficiently.

The rest is up to you.

Enough twaddle -- let's talk hardware!

Bear with me for a moment

I'm about to get my act together here -- there's lots of information to share so stay tuned!