By Cathy Bennett, Founder of How Fast They Grow, LLC, a digital scrapbooking website and "Home of the 7 Minute Scrapbook Page"
 
If you are like most moms, you don't have a shortage of great digital photos of your children.  Most of us get to the point where we have them uploaded onto our computers, which is a great start.  Here are some tips on where you can go from there...
 
Tip #1.
Delete the photos you'll never use from your hard drive.  We're not talking about the ones where the expressions are slightly off, but the ones with obvious boo boos, like your hair blowing into the lens and the photos your 3 year old took when you weren't looking.  The process of deleting bad photos is actually very quick and will make things much easier when you are actually able to do something with them, in addition to freeing up storage space on your hard drive.
 
Tip #2.
Rename the photo files from their original default names.    A file with the name 'MAY_08_ZOO.jpeg' will be much more relevant than "LD1002008.jpeg', and you'll instantly be able to do the math to your kids' ages a few years from now.  Both PCs and Macs have 'batch' renaming tools where you can select an entire folder and then rename the files in it, and it will automatically rename each of the files in the folder and assign a different number, e.g. "MAY-08-PARK(3).jpeg, MAY-08-PARK(4).jpeg," and so on.  Just remember to be consistent, either by date, or name, or both.
 
Tip #3
Create a logical folder structure for your photos.  Unlike your individual photos, try to do everything by month and year, vs. by event name. Two years from now, when you are looking for a group of photos, you can narrow down by date vs. trying to remember an event name.... i.e. 'Alaska Trip' or 'Trip to Alaska'?  Trust me, you won't remember.  I have a folder for every month, e.g. 2008-JUNE, and it works well.  Like files, you can rename folders by right-clicking on the folder and selecting 'rename'
 
Tip #4
Share your Memories!  One of the best things about digital images is they can be used over and over again.  I've got three favorite products for sharing digital memories, and they all make you look like a genius.  The first is a website called www.photoshow.com, where you can upload your photos and create a very fun slideshow with music and then order it on DVD.  It's fabulous for birthday parties to play in the background and you don't have to know how to use editing tools, it does it for you.  The second product is individual photo cards.  For relatives that don't live in the same city, I hardly ever buy cards at the store anymore.  I order cards on www.KodakGallery.com because you can make individual cards for any occasion and put photos of your cute kids on them instead of tucking the photos in the envelope at the last minute.  You don't need a stamp, because Kodak will ship the card for you, so that saves you yet another trip!  They even have accordian-style cards that hold up to 9 separate photographs.  Finally, for a more lasting keepsake, I love of course recommend my website, www.howfasttheygrow.com.  I have become my own best customer because the 12x12 pages are so beautiful and fun to make.  You can create your pages individually instead of an entire book, so you can build your scrapbook over time.