With digital cameras  becoming more and more common, taking pictures is cheaper and easier than it has ever been. The flip side is that we have thousands upon thousand of photos and it often becomes a hassle to manage them or to store them. Let’s review some ways to help keep all of them in some sort of an order.

Some people opt to store their photos on social networking or photo storage sites such as Facebook or Flickr. The downsides of doing this is that sometimes these sites are tricky, and if you are not sure of how the site works you may expose your pictures to more people than you may want to.  Additionally,  many of these sites may keep certain rights over your photos.

If you do choose to store your photos in the digital format, don’t just leave them on your hard drive in programs such as iPhoto.  If anything happens to your computer, any pictures on your hard drive could be lost.

The best way to store your photos digitally would be to store them on a picture CD. Picture CD’s are available at virtually all photo labs. The most common type of photo CD is the Kodak picture CD, these disks cost about $4. Many other types of these CDs are also available at lower prices, for example CVS has a CVS photo CD’s for $3.25. These disks can store up to 200 pictures, and if stored correctly can last up to 100 years. You can also buy writable disks for your computer and burn them yourself. The advantage of storing photos on CDs or DVDs is that it’s an expensive way to to create backups that can be stored in outside locations such as a bank safety deposit box.

Photos can also be stored on flash drives, which can hold many photos. Depending on the size of the flash drive, you can store hundreds or thousands of photos.

You can also keep your photos on a digital photo frame. These frames show a variety of photos in one frame. Photos in the frame are usually stored on memory cards like the one in your camera.

If you prefer hard copies of your photos, digital prints can be bought cheep in large quantities on websites such as Snapfish. Many people also like to buy photo printers, which can cost anywhere from $100 and $1000 dollars. You can also buy photo quality paper for your regular printer, these photos are not quite as high quality as those from a photo printer, but are still of acceptable quality.

Proper storage of your printed photos is very important in maintaining their quality. Photos must be kept out of direct sunlight. With any scrapbook or album you choose, you must make sure that it contains acid free paper and is made exclusively for photo storage or photo scrap booking use. Do not apply glue to your photos, or any kind of adhesive not made exclusively for photos. If you do choose to adhere your photos, you must buy a special photo adhesive, or else you could use photo corners, which would be a better choice.   Using old adhesive page photo books is not recommended, since it has been discovered that these books can damage photos.

Many photo labs and websites will allow you to make sealed photo books out of your digital photos. These books can be hard or soft cover and can cost anywhere between  $5 and $30 dollars.

If you decide to store your photos out of an album, try a photo box. Photo boxes are decorative boxes that completely seal out light and moisture to protect your photos.

If you chose to frame your photos, be sure to have them matted. Photos that are put directly into frames can stick to the glass and become damaged.

Whichever method you chose, it is important to keep your photos and digital storage media out of direct sunlight and away from moisture and heat.  Always, have a backup or a set of copies in different locations.