Family reunion photos capture priceless memories. Keeping a record of your gathering is important for documenting the event for posterity. If your reunion has a long history, chances are you have a large collection of both print and digital photographs. Hopefully, you have started a scanning project to save and preserve the prints and have a method for organizing the digital copies on your computer with back-ups using the 3-2-1 system. This means three distinct copies, two different storage media (hard drive + external hard drive) and one copy stored offsite (such as using a cloud storage service or an external drive in a relative’s home or in a safe deposit box). Beyond safe storage, it is important to be able to find that photograph from the final reunion your grandma attended, or the one of your 25th reunion, for sharing with relatives or for viewing during future reunions. There is a simple thing you can do right now that will help you to quickly locate your images: adding Metadata. Metadata is information in or about your image such as title, author, date, copyright info, keywords, or tags (names, places, etc.). Think of it as digitally writing on the back of your photo. For reunions make sure to tag all the people in the photo, and add where the reunion took place, the date, and for keywords comments about the photo (for example, ALAFFFA 25TH Reunion, ALAFFFA Halloween, ALAFFFA Logo).
This process can often seem technically challenging depending on the image editing software you use. However, Vivid-Pix Restore makes it easy with a few steps in its View/Edit Metadata features. For more information see https://www.vivid-pix.com/blog/metadata-why-it-s-important-and-how-you-can-use-it/ and watch the Vivid-Pix RESTORE Metadata Tutorial at https://www.vivid-pix.com/learn-support/restore-tutorials. By adding metadata, it will make it easier to search your computer for your favorite aunt’s high school graduation picture when she needs a digital copy for a special event. Make metadata a habit during the scanning or transfer process and you will ensure that generations to come can continue sharing treasured memories.
