The Memory Curator with Allison Lee

The Memory Curator with Allison Lee The Memory Curator is an online course for busy mums/moms who want to organise their digital photos

06/09/2026

Understanding iCloud is super important if you are trusting it to protect your precious memories. I spend so much time helping people navigate their iCloud set up.

Questions that always come up:
1. Where is the original photo?
2. Can I safely delete photos from my phone?
3. How can I reduce my storage fees?
4. Do my albums come back to me if I request a copy of my photos?
5. What happens to dates on my photos if I download them?

If you are looking for a less confusing way to manage your photos, but still use your Apple devices, comment SOFTWARE for the link to my free workshop.

The problem with having 50,000 photos isn't that you haven't found enough time to organise them.It's that most people do...
05/09/2026

The problem with having 50,000 photos isn't that you haven't found enough time to organise them.

It's that most people don't really know what their photo collection contains or even where all of their photos are.

Some are on their phone.

Some are in iCloud or Google Photos.

Some are on their computer.

And then there are the old hard drives, USBs and folders of photos downloaded years ago.

So randomly sorting or deleting a few thousand photos might make you feel productive, but it doesn't solve the bigger problem.

I think the first job is to understand what you actually have.

Where are your photos?

Where are the originals?

How many are there?

Then you can bring them together and build a system for sorting the backlog, removing duplicates, protecting your memories and dealing with all the new photos that keep coming in.

And this is the important part.

When **you build the system**, you understand it.

You know where your photos are and how they're organised. And when another 1,000 photos come along, you know exactly what to do with them.

That's what I teach in my free **Photo Organising Software Explained Workshop.**

Comment **SOFTWARE** and I'll send you the details.

Have you tried to use a photo from your phone and it can"t be opened or used to make a photobook?You might be taking HEI...
04/09/2026

Have you tried to use a photo from your phone and it can"t be opened or used to make a photobook?

You might be taking HEIC photos instead of more common jpgs.
While they are supposed to be "better" files as they rake up less space, at this moment in time HEIC files are a bit annoying as they are not easy to use to make projects.

If you have alot of HEIC from your iPhone, there is free software to convert them on the imazing.com website. Lightroom Classic can also read HEIC files most of the time and it converts them when you need to use them for something like a book.

If you want to stop taking HEIC photos and go back to jpgs, you can change the camera setting on your iPhone to "most compatible" under FORMAT on your iPhone.

Now you know what those pesky images are!

If you are new here, I am Allison and I help people get their photos organised so they can protect their memories and use them to tell their family's story.
⭐Follow me .com.au for more tips
📷Attend a free session of my workshop on why you should be using Photo Organising Software to create a master family photo collection, comment SOFT or click the link in my bio

I would love to help you sort out your photo mess.

One of the biggest myths about photo organising is that it takes months or years to make progress.Often, that's because ...
04/09/2026

One of the biggest myths about photo organising is that it takes months or years to make progress.

Often, that's because people are trying to do everything manually.

What I love about this student's story is that she didn't spend days creating folders or sorting photos one by one.

She used the right tools.

In just a few days she:

✅ Imported 40,000+ photos

✅ Removed more than 12,000 duplicate photos

✅ Added people's names to every photo

✅ Started creating a curated collection of her best photos

Most importantly, she stopped feeling stuck.

For years, this project felt too overwhelming to begin.

A few days later, she had almost completed it.

That's what happens when you stop trying to do what a computer can do and focus on the decisions only you can make.

If your photo collection has been sitting on your to-do list for years, you're not alone.

The hardest part is often getting started.

Q: Can I export photos straight from my Mac Photos library (not iCloud) and still keep the metadata?A: Yes - exporting f...
02/09/2026

Q: Can I export photos straight from my Mac Photos library (not iCloud) and still keep the metadata?

A: Yes - exporting from your Photos library keeps most of the metadata like the date. If your photos are syncing down to your Mac, you can export directly from the Photos library and the metadata will come with them. Choose Unmodified Originals and then tick the check box for ITPC as XMP. The main thing is to spot-check that you are exporting the full-size originals - if your internet drops or originals aren’t fully downloaded, you can accidentally export smaller versions.

Apple’s photo ecosytem is tricky to understand. I spend a lot of my time helping people navigate getting their photos free of the Photos App and iCloud. If you are looking for a better way to manage your photos and still use your Apple devices, you are in the right place!

If you are new here, I am Allison and I help people get their photos organised so they can protect their memories and use them to tell their family's story. I would love to help you too!

Comment SOFTWARE and I'll send you the link to my free workshop. Start building your own organised collection.

It is September! How did that happen? Here is your friendly reminder to update your family's photo collection with the ...
01/09/2026

It is September!

How did that happen? Here is your friendly reminder to update your family's photo collection with the photos from last month.

Here is what I recommend.

Set aside about an hour to deal with last month's photos. Follow the simple steps above which should take you less than an hour. If you do, your photo mess won't ever get out of control again.

If you are a student already, there is a copy of this checklist in your course materials.

And if you are still dealing with the backlog or are overwhelmed with a messy photo stockpile, come join my free Photo Organising Software Explained workshop which will teach you how you can use software to get your photo mess sorted out fast.

If you are new here, I am Allison and I help people get their photos organised so they can protect their memories and use them to tell their family's story.

If you are often sent photos via What's App or Messenger, make sure you are on top of this tip! Otherwise you will end o...
31/08/2026

If you are often sent photos via What's App or Messenger, make sure you are on top of this tip! Otherwise you will end of with photos that have the totally wrong date. That makes it super hard to organise them fast - or at all.

Correct dates are the key to sorting out your photos fast because there are tools like software to help you. But don’t despair if you are just now learning this tip. In my six years of teaching people how to organise their photos, 90% of people’s digital collections have good dates on the photos. Even with photos like these. That means you can get 90% of your collection sorted by date super fast.

If you are new here, I am Allison and I help people get their photos organised so they can protect their memories and use them to tell their family's story.

📷Attend a free session of my workshop on how to sort out your photo mess fast with Photo Organising Software by commenting SOFTWARE or clicking the link in my bio

These wedding photos were 40 years old and almost didn't survive.Peggy's were trapped in one of those magnetic albums, t...
30/08/2026

These wedding photos were 40 years old and almost didn't survive.

Peggy's were trapped in one of those magnetic albums, the kind that lose their stickiness over time and slowly damage everything inside. Most people don't realise those albums aren't protecting their photos. They're quietly destroying them.

But Peggy had a goal: every photo she owned, prints included, in one digital library, sorted by date. Her whole life on a single timeline.

So she got to work.

She scanned in every wedding photo and uploaded them. She brought them into Lightroom alongside the rest of her collection. She corrected the capture dates, so 1985 finally sits where it belongs instead of the day she scanned it. Then she ran facial recognition across the lot.

Photos she nearly lost are now protected for good. And their anniversary? It's later this month.

This is what becomes possible when your prints and your digital photos live in one dated library. Nothing lost. Nothing scattered. Your whole story in order.

If you've got old albums and boxes of prints you're scared of losing, you can bring them safely into one place too.

Comment **SOFTWARE** and I'll show you where to start.

New here? I'm Allison and I help people get their photos organised so they can protect their memories and use them to tell their family's story. I'd love to help you too.

It is relatively easy to figure out how much iCloud storage you are paying for.…but most people have absolutely no idea ...
29/08/2026

It is relatively easy to figure out how much iCloud storage you are paying for.

…but most people have absolutely no idea how big their actual photo collection is.

And those are two very different things.

Because when iCloud says you are running out of storage, the obvious answer is...

Buy more storage.

And often you have to do that because you are in a pinch.

But the more important question is - how much storage do I actually need?

Usually that boils down to** how big is my photo collection really?**

How many photos do I have?

How many videos?

How much space do they take up?

Where are the originals?

Do I need to download them to free up space?

Are there duplicates taking up space?

Most people simply don't know.

Because if your photos are living inside a system you don't really understand, buying more storage doesn't give you any more control over them.

It just gives you more storage at a higher cost.

I want you to know what you have, where it is and how big it is.

That is a very different feeling from just hoping you have enough room for it all.

If you would like to learn how to build a photo collection that you understand, comment SOFTWARE and I will send you the link to my free workshop.

28/08/2026

Where are ALL your photos?

Not just the photos on your phone right now.

The ones on old laptops you haven't turned on for years.

External hard drives you kept "just in case."

The Downloads folder on your computer.

USB sticks sitting in a drawer.

Photos sent to an old email address.

CDs you haven't looked at in decades.

Most people have spent a lifetime collecting photos without ever having a system for bringing them all together.

So they stay scattered.

And the longer you leave them, the harder it feels to start.

That is why I always tell people to start with a list.

Make a list of where you have photos stashed. We call this our Photo Inventory.

If would like some help, we will be doing this together in the next session of my free workshop

Comment SOFTWARE and I'll send you the link to register for the next session where I show you how to bring decades of scattered photos together into one organised collection.

If you are new here, I am Allison and I help people get their photos organised so they can protect their memories and use them to tell their family's story. I would love to help you too!

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Sydney, NSW

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