What to do with all those photos from summer vacation

Whether you spent the summer traveling to far off destinations or just found all kinds of fun to be had in your own backyard, there’s a good chance you were left with more than just the memories of all the good times. For many of us, it also means hard drives full of photos that continued to pile up as you went from one fun activity to the next during the summer.

Now is the perfect time to go through your photos. You can relive summer memories while deciding how to put all your family’s summer fun photos to good use. Here are a few things to consider as you organize your photos.

* Always have a backup. Storing your photos on discs or saving them to a backup hard drive are still good methods for backing up your library. Now you also have another option with the explosion in popularity of cloud services that allow you to store items in a secure offsite location. Cloud services also give you the benefit of being able to access your photos from anywhere as long as you have an Internet connection.

* Start thinking about calendars. If you’ve always enjoyed the idea of seeing your family’s smiling faces on your calendar at work or at home, there’s no better time than now to start picking out the best images for your photo calendar. Since things tend to get busier again around the holidays, take advantage of the downtime after summer to start building your calendar for next year.

* Pick your favorites. As you’re going through your photos, start a file containing your best photos so you don’t have to go searching too far the next time you feel like printing them. This can also save you a lot of trouble when it comes to picking those all-important images for your family’s holiday cards.

* Put it in the books. What better way is there to document a summer of fun than with a customizable photo book? If you’re old school and still like to scrap book, start compiling which photos are fit to print. Photo books that allow you simply to import your favorites into a template provide a simple and fun way to document your summer activities.

The longer you wait to organize your photos, the more overwhelming it can be when you finally tackle the project. That’s why it’s a good idea to take advantage of some down time after the summer before the mad rush of the holidays begins.