InfoTrends: Photo organizers help consumers with growing collections

Keypoint Intelligence analyst Alan Bullock, writing at the InfoTrends blog, makes the case, after attending the Association of Professional Photo Organizers (APPO) National Conference last week in Raleigh, NC, photo organizers provide a growing and in-demand service for consumers.

US Consumers are amassing huge collections of personal photos. InfoTrends’ latest Personal Photo Activity Forecast estimates the collective total will approach 1 trillion digital images by the end of this year. For most people, that collection is spread across several storage locations. Most newer photos are sitting on users’ smartphones, but some have been uploaded to social media and cloud storage services, or even transferred to a home computer. Digital camera photos may be in all those locations plus an assortment of memory cards, thumb drives, hard drives, or even CDs and DVDs. And then there are the shoeboxes and albums full of old printed photos…

The APPO describes its members as “small businesses who help people tame their photo chaos.” The conference offered education and training sessions covering topics that included scanning printed photos, creating video productions from digital photos, working within the Apple Photo ecosystem, and business strategies. The “Marketplace” featured tabletop displays from a dozen or so suppliers, featuring software, hardware and services for photo organizers and their clients.

One that caught my eye was promoting APPO’s own Metadata Camp, a three-day training session scheduled for Fall of 2018 that will cover best practices for tagging people, places, events, and other relevant information. InfoTrends has long maintained that photo storage and management solutions are only as good as the ability to find a photo when it is needed, so this seems like a skill that will add value for photo organizers’ clients.