Photo tagging has been around for a long, long time. But even those of us who take and store digital photos for work every day still have questions.  Add that to all the personal ones we take and the biggest question one might have about "tagging" is "why bother?". Here's what we all know.  With tagging, categorizing that sunset picture is much less of a dilemma, you simply tag it with the words sunset and/or Indian Rocks Beach and/or 2013 vacation, and any other words which might be appropriate and you're done.  But really, is it important to keep things in order?  It takes time and keeps you away from actual work. You've heard it at least once..."Only the stupid need organization- the genius controls the chaos".  I think Albert Einstein supposedly said that. So why bother?  Because having everything in order can be a very powerful basis for action.  I struggle with the concept all the time.  I have a conversation with myself that goes like this.  "Do I put in the time upfront to organize or use the time to search for what I need, since what I take time to organize, may never need to be found?"  And storing and retrieving photos is a topic I talk to myself about often.

I try to think about organizing photos (or anything else on the computer for that matter), like this.  If someone other than me is possibly going to need something, then its best I put the time in up front.  And photos for work tend to fall in that category.  We take a lot of images. So we think about photographs like other information and documents we gather they need to be organized and if done right, can be the crucial step that helps us move faster and not spend so much time browsing the thumbnails, which by the way is what most of us do and we think it's fast.  What we forget is that it's a little like cleaning out an attic or an old trunk.  We get caught up in it.  We stop and look at things we weren't actually looking for. 

So a quick tip.  There are three ways to get photos off your camera:

1. Simply copy files from your camera's memory card to a folder on your computer
2. Use your operating system's photo importing features
3. Use a third-party software's import feature

The first option gives you pretty much zero in the way of organizing, so I say "don't do it".  Do an "import".  At least you can tell the importer to name the files with something sort of meaningful instead of those indecipherable names like DSC1223.JPG.  And if you want more than simply tagging, Picasa, iPhoto, and Windows Live Photo Gallery are fairly good at guessing who the people in a photo are once you train the programs a bit. The algorithm isn't perfect, but it beats tagging photos by hand.  And if you really want to have some fun and are willing to spend a little money, test drive Adobe Lightroom.  Bottom line, you haven't been tagging and now you think it's a good idea, these programs can help.

The true power of tags is that you no longer need to remember which folder you might have put something in.  You only need to think of some aspect of the photo that you would have used in a tag. Searching on that tag, will get you all the matching photos associated with that tag.  Ahhh, its photo nirvana.