This is an article by the team at Pics.io, a company focused on digital asset management (DAM). It covers both basic and more advanced strategies for organizing photo libraries. While it ends with a pitch for their DAM software, most of the article walks through a simple folder-first approach that builds toward more scalable systems using tags and metadata.
Tools mentioned
- Pics.io → Digital Asset Management tool for larger photo libraries
- (other tools are implied, like operating system folders, but not named)
Steps to follow
Gather all your photos into a single master folder
Use a basic folder structure, organized by:
- Year → Month → Event
- Or: Family / Work / Vacation → then Year / Event
Name folders and files consistently:
- Start with date (
yymmdd) - Add keywords (e.g.
GrandmaBirthday) - Avoid special characters like
@,#,$
- Start with date (
Back up your collection to both local and cloud storage
Delete blurry or unwanted photos; move less-used ones to an archive folder
Advice
- Prioritize consistency — inconsistency across folders will make things harder to find later
- Use tags (like “sea” or “friends”) if your system supports it, to avoid cross-folder confusion
- Metadata is helpful — date, time, GPS, camera settings can help you search later
- Folder-only systems have limits: they rely on memory, are vulnerable to loss, and can’t easily handle duplicates
- For large libraries, tools like DAM software can help scale your system
You can read the full article here: https://blog.pics.io/best-folder-structure-for-organizing-photos. It’s a good breakdown of basic folder organization, with a few pointers on where that approach starts to break down.