These days with digital photography, many people never do anything with their files. In the olden days (as in 10 years ago…) people would take their roles of film to a lab and would go back an hour later to printed photos. Those would be added to albums, put in frames or shared with friends. Now people put photos online but often fall behind in actually printing their images. Since I take thousands of photos every year, I have to stay organized so that having photos printed never feels like a daunting chore. Blurb.com is a company that makes the most beautiful photo coffee table books. For my family, I print one book a year and fill it with all the photos I have taken. The key to doing this is not saving all your photos to the end of the year. Blurb has a software called Booksmart that you download to your personal computer. You can design your book any way you like with many page layout options, background colors, fonts, etc. There are a variety of sizes and paper options to choose from. The last book I ordered was over 300 pages (books can be anywhere from 1-440 pages!) The print quality is incredible and the prices are affordable.

Just to make it even easier for you, here is my workflow:

* End of weekend/event/vacation/anything where photos have been taken (could be every Sunday evening): Create folder on my computer and import all photos taken

* Open Booksmart and import the photos from my computer into the software

* Create pages using different layouts. Add text to label events as needed. Save and close.

* This process if done regularly takes about 10 minutes. At the end of the year I order my book and it comes in the mail about a week later. Done, easy easy!

Whether you make photo books or have prints made for your home, don’t let your digital files just sit on your computer. The sooner you get started, the better it will feel to get those images organized in a way that you and your family will enjoy them for years to come!