Okay, let’s talk about this thing I called my ‘zoooom’ project. It wasn’t anything fancy, really. Just me getting fed up.
For ages, sorting through my digital photos was like wading through mud. Click a folder, wait. Open a picture, wait. Decide where to put it, drag it, wait for the move. Seriously, doing a couple hundred photos could eat up a whole evening. It was driving me nuts, especially after holidays when I had loads to sort.
The final straw came a few weekends back. Had all these great pictures from a trip, really wanted to get them organized to share. Fired up the computer, started the usual slow-motion process. After about 20 minutes and maybe 30 photos sorted, I just slammed my hand on the desk. Enough was enough. There had to be a quicker way. This was ridiculous.
So, I decided right then to figure this out. My little ‘zoooom’ mission began.
My Attack Plan
First, I attacked the obvious stuff. Maybe the computer was just clogged up? I ran all those cleanup tools, deleted old junk I didn’t need, made sure nothing weird was running in the background. Did it help? Yeah, a tiny bit. But photos were still painfully slow to load and move.
Next, I dug into the settings of the photo software I was using. You know, the standard one that came with the system. Found options for ‘cache size’ and ‘previews’. Messed around with those, increased the cache, told it to make bigger previews. Again, maybe a slight improvement, but still felt like I was working in slow motion.
Got a bit frustrated. Started searching online. Typed in stuff like “sorting lots of photos fast” and “speed up image viewing”. Found a ton of advice. Some folks suggested complicated software, others talked about using special commands or scripts. Looked a bit too involved for me, honestly. I just wanted something simple that worked.
Then I saw a couple of simpler tips repeated on different forums:
1. Use keyboard shortcuts more. Less clicking, more tapping keys for things like next/previous photo, rating, or moving files.
2. Organize differently. Instead of dumping everything into one big folder and sorting later, create the destination folders first. Then, as you go through the photos, move them straight into the right place.
3. Try a different viewer. Someone recommended a few super lightweight programs specifically designed just to view images quickly, without all the extra editing bloat.
Decided to give these simpler things a shot first. Focused on using keyboard shortcuts – that definitely felt a bit faster than grabbing the mouse all the time. Setting up folders beforehand also made the sorting logic smoother in my head.
But the real game-changer? Trying one of those lightweight image viewers. Picked one that looked simple, installed it. Opened up my big folder of unsorted photos… and wow. It was instant. Clicking ‘next’ zipped through the photos immediately. No lag, no waiting for previews to render. It just flew.
Zooooom Achieved
Combining that fast viewer with keyboard shortcuts and sorting into pre-made folders… it completely changed the game. What used to take me an hour or more, I could now blast through in maybe 15-20 minutes. It actually felt… well, fast. Like it should be. Zooooom!
It’s kinda funny looking back. I put up with that annoying slowness for so long. Just accepted it as normal. Took a bit of frustration and an afternoon of focused messing around, trying different things, but fixing that one bottleneck made a huge difference to a task I regularly do. Makes you think about what other slow, annoying things we just put up with instead of taking a little time to fix them. Simple stuff sometimes makes the biggest difference.
