9 Things to do with Your Pictures

9 Things to Do With Your Pictures

Have a ton of photos and don’t know what to do with them? Don’t sweat it. There are so many things you can do with your files – digital or otherwise – that require only the amount of work you want to put into it.

1. Delete them. Seriously. Not all of them of course, but unless you’re the world’s best photographer, not all of your pics have come out well. I know mine don’t always! Going through and deleting the bad ones while I upload them to the computer, or doing a random delete day helps keep my good pictures view-worthy and my computer storage easy to navigate. If you have a lot of paper photos, it can be a good idea to get rid of some of them, too – the blurry ones with your thumb prominently featured, of course.

2. Email them to friends. Share the love. I don’t want pictures of my friend Trey’s party with his friends, but I’d love those shots where my other buddy and I are doing something together.

3. Post them to facebook. You don’t have to let everyone view them – you can set an album so that it is only visible to you or to who you choose. If your friends complain that you spam their feed with too many pictures of your children, you can always set the albums to family only.

4. Make some Christmas gifts. Places like Walgreens.com and Shutterfly.com allow you to do more than just print them out, they let you make calendars, and mugs, and mouse pads, and tote bags… All sorts of cool things. My great grandparents love it when we give them a product that they can use with mine and my sister’s faces on it.

5. Make a scrapbook. You don’t have to be really creative in order to showcase your great snapshots. If you aren’t, just buy a plain 8x8 scrapbook, some photo corners, and place one photo per page. Because you aren’t crowding them, they look more distinguished and elegant, and you don’t have to put much time and energy into creating a beautiful album. On the other hand, if arts and crafts are right up your alley, you can spend hours creating one of a kind masterpieces to showcase your memory collection. Websites such as Creative Memories and Scrapbook.com aid in layout design and supply purchases.

6. Make a flipbook. When I was a kid, I got a real kick out of drawing on paper, stapling them together and flipping through it to make the pictures “move”. I was never that great at it, actually – but there are a few services out there that do the work for you from photos or digital video files. Try flippies.com.

7. Make a cutout. You know those life-size cardboard pieces with images of famous people? You can have those made for yourself. Also, magnets, keychains, cake toppers, etc from photocutouts.com. My little sister used to use a cut out of a racing star for target practice.

8. Stick it in a digital frame. They’re fairly inexpensive to buy now, and you can usually choose to let the pictures revolve or to stay on a single one. That could be a great way to change out the décor for seasonal decorations, or just a pick me up as your awesome memories scroll by on a bad day. I don’t really recommend those digital photo key chains though. They can look sort of cheap and the one I had broke after a week.

9. Print those suckers out. There are so many places that run deals and specials so that you don’t have to pay full price to hang on to your printed memories. One good site that keeps track of them is Freephotocodes. Worth a look!