Getting years of digital photos back into view

Pulenaz: build a collection people can actually browse

Pulenaz begins with family pictures scattered across a phone, an old computer and a removable drive. In her video she copies them into a working folder, keeping the original sources in place while she checks that the copies open. She starts with one year rather than trying to sort everything at once.

Within that year she makes folders for events, using the year and a short description such as “2016 picnic” instead of a string of camera numbers. Pictures with uncertain dates go into a folder marked “date to check,” not into a guessed year. She adds a short note explaining the folder names and where the remaining unsorted pictures are, so the collection can be continued later.

A relative asks for a picture from the picnic. Pulenaz opens the year, finds the event and sends an agreed selection through a private shared folder. The relative opens it independently and finds the same picture. That small retrieval is the point of the system: someone else can use the names, not just the person who made them.

Decide what counts as a duplicate

The working folder contains two identical copies of one picnic photo and two near-identical frames taken moments apart. Pulenaz compares the files before removing a copy from the working folder. She keeps one full-size copy of the identical picture, but keeps both frames of the group: a different person is looking at the camera in each. She leaves uncertain pairs for later instead of deleting a whole batch on appearance alone.

She copies the organized folder to a separate drive and opens several pictures from that copy. The working archive and its backup have different jobs: one is the place to keep sorting, while the other is a separate copy to return to if something goes wrong.

iJustine: make the archive enjoyable again

iJustine works through her own digital pictures spanning the 2000s, 2010s and 2020s. Her video follows the less glamorous part first: an old folder called “new photos” contains several trips and repeated exports. She separates the trips into dated folders, compares a small group of repeat files and keeps the larger original alongside an edited version she still likes.

Once those folders make sense, she chooses a handful of favorites from different years for a small album. A picture of a rainy street and another of a crowded table sit next to polished shots; the sequence makes her pause and remember the days around them. She shows how she finds the street picture again by its year and trip name, then returns to the album for pleasure rather than opening another unsorted folder.

Pulenaz is the better place to start for a collection relatives need to navigate. iJustine gives the longer personal project an ending that can be enjoyed now, while leaving room to continue sorting later.

A useful foundation for the files you keep

The Library of Congress recommends identifying where digital photos are stored, giving selected pictures descriptive names and keeping copies on separate media in different locations. Its guide also recommends checking that saved pictures remain readable.

References: Library of Congress

Sources and attribution

1. Library of Congress

   Preserving Your Digital MemoriesPublication date not listed · Recorded Oct 30, 2026