Photos & Screenshots

Your phone’s camera roll tells the story of your life — buried under 800 duplicate shots, 300 blurry photos, 500 screenshots of things you’ve already dealt with, and that burst of 47 nearly identical sunset photos from last vacation. AI can separate the meaningful from the noise.

🔄 Quick Recall: In the previous lesson, you organized your files and cloud storage with a naming convention and folder structure. Photos need a different approach — nobody renames photos manually. Instead, you’ll rely on AI tagging and smart albums.

The Photo Cleanup Process

Step 1: Remove the Obvious (30 minutes)

Start with the easiest wins — photos that nobody wants to keep.

Help me create a photo cleanup plan:

Photo library size: [approximate number of photos]
Where they're stored: [iPhone/Android, Google Photos, iCloud, etc.]
Biggest problem: [duplicates, screenshots, blurry photos, sheer volume]

Create a cleanup sequence:
1. Blurry and out-of-focus photos → delete
2. Exact duplicates → delete (keep one copy)
3. Burst sequences → keep best shot, delete rest
4. Screenshots → sort into "process" and "delete" piles
5. Near-duplicates → review and pick the best

For each step, recommend the best tool for my platform.

AI photo cleanup tools:

What to delete without hesitation:

• Blurry or out-of-focus photos (unless they’re the only shot of something important)
• Exact duplicates (same file in multiple albums)
• Accidental pocket/bag shots (dark, blurry, showing nothing)
• Screenshots of temporary information you’ve already used
• Multiple nearly identical shots — keep the best 1-2, delete the rest

✅ Quick Check: AI flags a blurry photo for deletion. You look at it and realize it’s the only photo you have of a meaningful moment — it’s blurry, but irreplaceable. Should you delete it? (Answer: Keep it. This is why AI sorts and you decide. Photo quality is one measure of value; emotional significance is another. A blurry photo of a grandparent is worth more than a sharp photo of yesterday’s lunch. AI can’t judge emotional value — that’s your role.)

Step 2: Process Screenshots (30 minutes)

Screenshots are information captured in the wrong format. The goal is to move that information to the right place.

Step 3: Organize What Remains (1 hour)

After cleaning, organize the keepers.

Help me organize my photo library:

After cleanup, I have approximately [N] photos
spanning [years] years.
I use [Google Photos / Apple Photos / other].

Suggest:
1. Album structure that makes sense for my life
   (travel, family, work, hobbies, etc.)
2. How to use AI-powered smart albums
   (face recognition, location, object detection)
3. A favorites/highlights workflow
   (curating the best photos for easy access)
4. Backup strategy (where should the originals live?)

Practice Exercise

1. Open your camera roll and scroll to the bottom — when does your oldest photo date from?
2. Use your phone’s built-in duplicate detector (iOS: Settings > Photos > Duplicates; Google Photos: Utilities > Review and delete)
3. Process 20 screenshots right now — save the info elsewhere if needed, then delete the screenshots

Key Takeaways

• Start photo cleanup with easy wins: blurry photos, exact duplicates, and accidental shots take 30 minutes to clear
• Screenshots are temporary captures — move the information to its proper home (notes, contacts, files), then delete the screenshot
• Use AI for duplicate and quality detection, but make every delete decision yourself — emotional value isn’t something AI can measure
• Organize with a hybrid approach: AI auto-tags by date/location/face, you create curated event albums
• The goal isn’t fewer photos — it’s a library where every photo is findable and worth keeping

Up Next

In the next lesson, you’ll audit your apps and subscriptions — finding unused apps that waste storage and forgotten subscriptions that waste money.