You thought we were done with photo organizing, didn’t you? Here’s a bonus post.
You are doing a disservice to yourself if you aren’t organizing your cell phone pictures. Think about all those moments where you didn’t have a real camera. Cell phone pictures have stories to tell.
This is part 5 in a series about organizing your photos. Miss earlier parts? Visit Part 1 – Non-Digital Prints, Part 2 – Organize as You Go, Part 3 – Take Control of Your Hard Drive and Part 4 – Advanced Techniques.
The Case for Using Cell Phone Pictures
Quality is less of an issue: Picture quality keeps getting better and better. I can print pictures from my cell phone in small sizes using my photo printer. You also have the option of putting a few of them together and then printing the collage in 4×6.
You can free your pictures: Remember the days when pictures were chained to the phone? No more. With most smart phones, you can email pictures to yourself or plug the phone into the computer. Now would be the time to find that micro-USB cable that came with the phone. Can’t find it? Take your phone to an electronic store like RadioShack or Best Buy and get a replacement. These cords are standard on most phones now.
Important moments without a regular camera: We’ve all had them. Maybe the pictures on your phone aren’t “important” but they represent a very interesting slice of life.
How would I scrapbook these or use them around the house? Use them to compliment larger pictures in a layout. Or, how about a layout showing what’s on your phone? That would be really interesting! I’m working on two wall art projects that use tiny photos and I’m using camera and cell phone pictures together.
Organize Them
Purge: Admit it, you flip through your cell phone pictures when you’re bored. Take the time to delete pictures you don’t need anymore like we discussed in the first post. I take a lot of pictures of products and prices in stores, so it’s good for me to go through and delete them.
Store with your other photos: Every few months, copy pictures off your cell phone and onto your computer. If pictures are from a particular event, I organize them like I explained in this post.
I also create a catch-all folder for each year of cell phone pictures that don’t belong to a particular category.
Don’t forget to tag them!
Have you done anything cool with your cell phone pictures? Please share!
Our series on photo organization is finally concluded. I hope you enjoyed it! We’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming on Thursday.
Almost Never Clever 
A lot of my blog pictures actually come from my cell phone since I don’t always have a regular camera with me. I’d say any smart phone that came out in the last year will actually have enough megapixels that you can have a good sized picture. Even in larger size, I haven’t noticed the lower quality at all. Actually… I think the auto focus is actually much better on my cell phone…
That’s cool! I still trust my camera more than my phone (it takes better low light pictures), but my phone has gotten some really awesome stuff.
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I really do need to transfer my photos from my phone to my computer. I’d be devastated if I lost some of them. Thanks for the tips and advice.
Thanks Narelle! I hope this motivates you to back up your cell phone pictures! I finally realized after a couple years of having a good camera phone that there were some pictures on there that are irreplaceable!
Thank you for sharing this information. I am really looking forward to organizing my cell phone pictures and creating a scrapbook out of them!
Great! I can’t wait to see what it looks like when you’re finished!