In this course, photographer Derrick Story teaches the concepts and techniques behind efficient photo management and backup, which becomes increasingly important as a photo collection grows. The course begins by showing how to transfer and organize photos "by hand"—that is, by copying them from a memory card to a hard drive without using software. In the second portion of the course, discover how to take advantage of the photo-management features provided by programs such as Lightroom and Aperture, by assigning descriptive keywords, by giving photos ratings and color-coded labels, and how smart album features can automatically collect photos that meet certain criteria.

The course concludes with a look at aspects of a good backup and archival strategy, ranging from the best file format for long-term backup to the best hardware options for offline storage.

Topics include:

Removing pictures from a card

Transferring photos to a Windows or Mac computer

Transferring images with Lightoom, Aperture or iPhoto

Assigning ratings to photos and flagging favorites

Filtering photos

Choosing file formats

Backing up to the cloud

Working with multiple hard drives

Recovering from backups