# A 15-minute weekly routine that keeps photos organized

> Organising photos is easy in small doses. A weekly routine: import new photos, cull with a few keys, add an album or a keyword, and check the backup.

Source: https://firelet.media/blog/weekly-photo-routine
Published: 2026-09-18 · Updated: 2026-09-18
Applies to: Windows, macOS, Linux

A weekly photo organising routine takes about 15 minutes. Import what's new, pick and reject with two keys, put the keepers in an album or give them a keyword, then check the backup. In firelet.media Gallery each step is a few clicks or keystrokes, and nothing is lost if you skip a week, because the next import simply catches up.

## Why a weekly photo organising routine beats a yearly one

Most photo collections get organised the way attics do: once in a blue moon, in a weekend-long marathon that everyone dreads. By then there are thousands of pictures, the memories behind them have faded, and deciding which of eight near-identical sunsets to keep feels like homework.

A weekly session flips all of that:

- **The batch is small.** A week is usually a few dozen to a few hundred pictures, which is easy to get through.
- **Your memory is fresh.** You know why you took the photo and who's in it, so an album name or a keyword takes seconds.
- **It becomes a habit.** Fifteen minutes on a Sunday evening is easier to keep up than a day every January.

Here's the routine, minute by minute.

## Minute 0–3: import new photos

Start by getting the week's photos onto the PC.

1. Put your camera's memory card in a reader, or connect your phone by USB.
2. Press [[Ctrl]]+[[2]] to open **Imaging**, then choose the **Import** tab.
3. Under **Where from**, pick the card or phone. Click **Look again** if it doesn't show yet.
4. Click **See what is new** to see how many pictures are new and how much space they need.
5. Click **Import**.

The gallery remembers your **Import into** folder, files each picture into a dated folder, verifies every copy and skips anything already in your library. It never deletes anything from the card or phone. A phone connected by USB should appear as a source, although USB phone import hasn't been verified on real hardware yet. The memory card route is dependable.

If new pictures also land straight in your library folders (downloads, scans or screenshots), click **Scan** on the toolbar. It looks for files added or removed since the last scan.

When the free Android companion is available, this step can happen by itself. The Windows app already includes the PC side of the Wi-Fi link, and its auto-sync copies new phone photos whenever the phone is on your home Wi-Fi. See [how to copy new phone photos to your PC automatically](https://firelet.media/help/auto-sync-phone-photos) and [back up phone photos to your PC without the cloud](https://firelet.media/blog/back-up-phone-photos-to-pc-without-cloud).

## Minute 3–8: pick and reject with P and X

Now look at the week's pictures and make quick decisions. Speed matters more than perfection here.

1. Set the date range on the toolbar to **Last 7 days**.
2. Set the sort order to **Oldest first**, so the week plays out in order.
3. Double-click the first picture to open the viewer.
4. Press [[A]] to turn on **Advance after rating**, so every mark moves you to the next picture.
5. Press [[P]] for the keepers and [[X]] for the misses. Leave the in-between ones unmarked.

![The firelet.media Gallery grid of photos with the Library panel on the left](https://firelet.media/help/media/shot-grid-overview.webp "Narrow the grid to the last seven days, then work through it with the keyboard")

These keys cover almost everything:

| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| [[P]] / [[X]] / [[U]] | Pick / reject / clear the flag |
| [[1]] to [[5]] | Stars ([[0]] clears them) |
| [[6]] to [[9]] | Red, yellow, green or blue label |
| [[C]] | Compare 2–6 selected pictures side by side (from the grid) |
| [[Esc]] | Close the viewer |

For a run of similar shots, go back to the grid, select them and press [[C]]. The Compare view puts them side by side, and you can mark each one right there. The full list is in [firelet.media Gallery keyboard shortcuts](https://firelet.media/help/keyboard-shortcuts).

Rejected pictures are dimmed, not deleted. When you're ready, open **Filters** ([[Alt]]+[[2]]), set **Rating & labels** to **Rejected**, press [[Ctrl]]+[[A]], then [[Del]]. They go to the Recycle Bin after a confirmation. Some people do this weekly; others leave the rejects for the monthly session.

## Minute 8–12: albums and keywords

Four minutes is plenty to file the week's keepers.

1. In **Filters**, switch **Rating & labels** to **Picked**, so only your keepers show.
2. Select the pictures that belong together.
3. Press [[Ctrl]]+[[B]] and choose an album, or **New album…** to start one.
4. Press [[Ctrl]]+[[K]], type a keyword such as `Family > Kids` or `Garden`, and press [[Enter]].

Albums are lists inside the library, so no files are copied, and a picture can live in several albums. Keywords work well for things that recur across albums: people's hobbies, places, projects. A `Parent > Child` keyword builds a tidy hierarchy as you go.

If one picture of the week deserves its story, open it, press [[I]] for the info panel, and write a line in **Caption**. It's searchable forever after.

## Minute 12–15: back up

The last three minutes protect everything you just did.

> [!WARNING]
> firelet.media Gallery is not a backup. It organises your photos but never makes extra copies of them, so a failed drive takes the originals with it unless you back them up.

1. Run your backup to an external drive, with File History or whichever backup tool you use.
2. In **Albums & keywords** ([[Alt]]+[[4]]), open **XMP sidecars** and click **Write changed pictures**. This week's stars, labels, keywords and captions are then saved in small `.xmp` files beside the photos, where your backup picks them up too.
3. Once a month, close the gallery and copy its library file, `%LOCALAPPDATA%\PictureGallery\gallery.db`, to the backup drive. It holds your albums, people and edits.

Sidecars carry most of your work, but not everything. Albums, for example, live only in the library file, which is why step 3 matters. [How to back up your photos and your firelet.media library](https://firelet.media/help/back-up-photos-and-library) covers it all.

## The monthly extras

Once a month, give the library ten more minutes for the jobs that run in the background:

- **Index library** in the **AI** panel, so the month's photos can be found by description. It only processes what's new.
- **Find faces** in the **People** panel, then name any new groups under **Who are these?**.
- **Read text** under **Text in photos**, so receipts, signs and screenshots become searchable.
- **Analyse quality**, then **Reject blurry and badly exposed**, to catch the misses you didn't mark. It only sets flags, never over a flag you set yourself.
- **Find identical copies**, in case anything was copied twice.
- **Compact database** in the Library panel, after you've removed folders or done a big clean-up.
- A look at **On this day** in the **Calendar** panel, just for fun.

> [!TIP]
> Save the week's view as a preset. Set the date range to **Last 7 days** and any other filters you use, then open **Presets** ([[Alt]]+[[7]]) and use **Save current filters**. Next week, **Load preset** puts you straight back.

Fifteen minutes a week, ten more once a month, and the collection never gets away from you again. For bigger catch-up sessions, [how to cull hundreds of photos fast](https://firelet.media/blog/cull-hundreds-of-photos-fast) shows the same keys at scale. All of this works in the Windows app today, and in the macOS and Linux builds, which are being finished.

## Questions

### What if I miss a week?

Nothing is lost. Import skips what you already have and Scan catches up with whatever arrived in your folders since, so the next session simply covers two weeks.

### Which keys matter most?

P to pick, X to reject, 1 to 5 for stars and Ctrl+K for keywords. They work in the grid and, apart from Ctrl+K, in the viewer too.