I already have my photos organized into folders, can I keep that order?

Ponga is a wonderful way to sort through your pictures so that you can get to the fun business of sharing stories. When our members upload their pictures, Ponga automatically organizes them based on the faces of the people in each picture. While that can be useful, sometimes, you may already have pictures in an organization you also want to keep.

Not a problem.

Batches: Albums Created at Upload

Now each time you upload pictures we capture all of the pictures in the upload and add them to a date/time-stamped album. They still go through the Gallery for evaluation and sorting by the people in the picture, but since one picture can be in multiple albums, you now have a quick and easy way to sort through and organize your pictures that provides immediately relevant context.

Keep the Old While Adding the New

Arguments about taxonomical order quickly melt away when you aren't locked into one. If your photos are currently structured based on time, place, or occasion, for example, then keep that order by adding your pictures in batches mapped to the folders of your current structure.

Step 1: Add our pictures to the upload window from the folder

When each upload is complete, Ponga adds all of the pictures into an album named with a date/time stamp.

Step 2: Modify the album name

All you do is change the date/time stamp to the name you want to use. That's it. Ponga will proceed to sort the pictures based on the people photographed. As people you've previously named are detected, (or you name people in the gallery), their pictures will be added to their respective person-albums.

Members can always see all albums any given picture has been included in by viewing the share panel for the picture.

A word about album names: Album names are sorted for you alphabetically with numbers at the top. When you modify the name, you can also give it a catalog number like "Z112K38-1980." You call it anything you like. If decide you want to keep your date/time stamped albums, but have them appear at the bottom of your list of albums, just prepend a symbol like {Name} so that it will sort at the end. This is what we have done with the {Example} album included in your account.

Reference Physical Location

If you've digitized your own pictures either with your own labor or working with professionals like...

• Professional organizers
• Scanning services

...you probably have your originals filed away in a structured archive that maps to the organization of your image files. You can use that order to ensure that you can always find the originals when you're exploring your Ponga pictures.

As described in the procedure above, just add your folders of images to Ponga exactly as you want the structure to appear, then rename albums to your system. Ponga will additionally organize the pictures into albums based on the people in the pictures.

Using the Album Description to Find Your Way Back

You can add a description to your album Ponga albums. Just click on the far left edge of the description field and start typing. (Or, just tab after entering the title.) You can include up to 1,000 characters in this description. It is a useful way to share contextual background or reference external material. An album of photos about a 1912 cruise, for example, might include a link to a journal kept of the voyage even as details are called out in the pictures themselves.

Another nice trick is to use this description to supplement your organizational effort. For example:

• If WHEN each picture was added to Ponga is important to you, then copy the date/time stamp in the album name and add it to the description as a way to reference when the pictures were added to Ponga.

• If your SOURCE is important, you can add that to the description as well. Remember that since any URL you add to the description will be automatically linked, it can be helpful to add links to sites like Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Photos album, Google Drive folder, iCloud, and so on.

Remember, the source and the date/time stamp information do not have to be accessible to everyone you share the picture or album with. The description you add only appears in the album you add it to. You can (and often will) share pictures in an album you upload as individual pictures or in other albums. The description you add in one album doesn't appear in others.

Also, as the owner of the album and the pictures, you can always get to the original album you used in uploading. All you have to do is go to the share panel on any picture, it will always show you all other albums that include that picture. Scroll to your "upload album" and then tap "Modify Album Share Settings." That takes you to the album, close the share panel and you're in the album. (Special keys like «this» can be useful for this, plus they always sort at the bottom.) Convenience for you may be reason enough.

You Can Just Delete the Album

The date/time stamped album created with each upload is a convenience, but you don't have to keep it. You can also always delete albums created this way if it's not helpful. To delete the album,

1. Open the album,
2. Move your cursor over the title of the album
3. Tap delete

You'll then be presented with two options:

• Delete album and all the pictures
• Delete album, but keep the pictures

Choose the second choice to keep the pictures. For more about deleting, see How To Delete Anything.

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Have some ideas? At Ponga, we're privileged to have a number of professional organizers now using the service. We very much welcome your insights and strategies. If you have another suggestion, reach out to our Live Chat at the left. We'd love to hear from you.