Don’t let the photos accumulate on your cell phone! So you can classify or delete them

Digital photography and the advent of cell phone cameras have multiplied the number of photos taken and saved on a daily basis.

Only very few amateur photographers erase some of them. And so, the jumble of images in the cloud or on the computer grows inexorably.

However, something can be done about it. “I only take certain photographs and I prefer to produce a few, but all according to my demands and quality standards,” says German photographer Daniel Wollstein. “In my work, I am oriented in the direction of analogue photography,” he asserts.

To keep the number of photos taken and saved under control, you need to maintain strict photographic hygiene. “For snapshots and memories, 200 photos a year are usually enough,” says Thomas Gerwers. “But then, these should be of good quality,” he adds.

To avoid the accumulation of photos from the beginning and having to spend hours classifying them, the editor-in-chief of the German trade magazine Profifoto also advises to think twice before taking the photo.

Christine Bruns, from the German specialist magazine c’t Photograph, advises to view the photos immediately or at least the same day after taking them.

Camera and mobile screens are sufficient for a rough assessment. “I immediately delete the photos that have gone wrong and the ones I don’t like,” Bruns says.

Thomas Gerwers selects his photos based on technical criteria, such as exposure and sharpness, but also on his instinct. “A photo has to like me and say something; So I’ll keep it.” This approach is, of course, highly subjective: “Photos can have a very emotional effect and mean a lot to one viewer, while being meaningless to another,” explains the professional.

The basic rule is of course to keep only the best photos.

Gerwers explains that in the case of portraits, for example, you have to make sure that the person photographed has their eyes open and that they generally look good in the photo. Plus, he adds, evaluation is easier soon after the photo is taken than it is later.

To further structure the photo collection, it is recommended to use metadata that is embedded in the images in the form of a so-called Exif file. This is partly done on the camera or automatically on the mobile, at least as far as the date and time are concerned. The author’s name can also be helpful.

For people who take a lot of photos, Christine Bruns also recommends using a photo program on your computer to write keywords into the image’s metadata. These can be names of people, places, descriptions of motives, or even moods.

Short keywords, such as those used as hashtags on Instagram and other social networks, are sufficient. “By sharing the photos on social platforms, this data is automatically deleted by them,” explains Thomas Gerwers.

Christine Bruns also goes to the trouble of giving each photo file an appropriate name for the occasion and saving it in a folder of the same name. “That makes it easier for me to find the photos even years later,” she says.

Both RAW (unprocessed) images and edited photo files are saved in subfolders. Duplicates are removed just as consistently as blurry or poorly exposed photos.

Procrastination and hesitation are out of the question. “I never regret deleting a photo. A consistent selection is often the best choice,” says photographer Wollstein.

Photo management programs can assist in the selection process and often double as a “digital darkroom” for image enhancement.

With a star system, most programs allow you to gradually filter the best photos. First of all, all the photos that one likes are marked with a star. In the second round, the best photos receive two stars; the rest goes to the digital trash. And so on until in the fifth round only the best photos remain.

“The star system makes work much easier and is a great help in the selection process,” says Thomas Gerwers. Hobbyist photographers will find countless free photo management programs on the market. Adobe Bridge, Ashampoo Photo Commander Free, XNView or the “Photos” programs built into Windows and MacOS are used to view and sort images, and in most cases these can also be edited.

The metadata can also be modified. When looking for specific photos, purchase or subscription programs that recognize content and offer more editing options can also help. These include Adobe Lightroom, Skylum Luminar Neo, Excire Foto, ACDSee Photo Studio, Cyberlink PhotoDirector 365, Zoner Photo Studio or Magix Photo Manager Deluxe.

These programs allow you to recognize faces and assign them to people, for example, so that you can partly dispense with the metadata and instead filter the photos according to certain criteria. The Google Photos service, which is free (up to 15 gigabytes of storage space), can also recognize people.