Any tips for organizing photos?

I've got a simple answer...

...Get a Mac. It just about does everything for you (in this case iPhoto does).

Mind you, I'd built and used PC's exclusively for 20+ years. I was always anti-Mac, as I felt real computer people used PC's - I thought Mac's were overly simplified. After having used a Mac, I will never...EVER go back to a PC. I have found nothing I could do on my PC that I can't do on a Mac quicker and without all the crashes and BS of a PC. With some know-how (or simple research), you can even use hardware and software that is not "Mac compatible".

Sorry I must have double clicked

Platforms aside admin, there's no right way to do it. Some people sort by date, some people sort by occasion (IE vacation), some by subject (as in the people in the picture). In iPhoto, they are arranged by 'Event' and the program automatically arranges them for you.

To more specifically address your question (my two cents anyway), it is a pain arranging all of those photos. Before we had a Mac, we spent a lot of time going through pictures and trying to arrange them. We found it to be much easier to upload and sort photos when you get home, that way you don't have a whole mound of photos to work on. The more you have, the harder it's going to be. In the past, DW arranged most of our photos the same way iPhoto does it - by occasion (or 'event').

I think that's what we always fail to do. If we just sorted them right when we got home we'd be fine, but instead we wait until we can barely even remember what half of them are. Meanwhile a pile of 50,000 photos has become insurmountable and it seems hopeless.

I use a combination of sorting by event and by subject.

When I have 100's of photos from a holiday or day out, thats an event, where as when its just a few of the family or pets they are sorted by subject.

Good point, Tony. I hadn't thought of that, but now that you mention it many of ours are that way too. We do still have plenty of 'odds and ends' but for the most part ours are sorted that way.

Great ideas, guys. We pretty much upload the pics and name the folders according to the trip we've just been on, what we were celebrating, etc.

Would love to figure out a great system for sorting the same photos into different categories. For example, on photo could be found in the "food" category as well as the "Disney 2010" category...

Something like that would be software specific, unless you wanted to actually have more than one copy of such photos. Aside from software that gives that type of capability, you should be able to achieve similar results with online file storage solutions like Photobucket.

That would be really helpful. I wonder if I'd have to upload each picture multiple times...