I have so many photos. To the point at times I feel like I am drowning in them.
Sound familiar? Over the years I’ve tried various ideas to get my photos organized and streamlined. I jumped on the digital camera bandwagon early on and, between events, vacations, blogging, kids, etc, have thousands upon thousands of digital photos dating back to 2001. I am getting better about weeding out and deleting the junk or excess because yes, I do believe there is such a thing as too many photos, but I am still keeping thousands. 🙂 Which is why I was excited to learn about and get the opportunity to try a new product – Bevy.
Bevy is a Smart Photo System designed for families by Lineage Labs. It’s a small but powerful little machine (1 or 2TB) plus app that combined can pull ALL of your photos from ALL of your places. When I say all of your places, I mean it – your laptop, your phone, your spouse’s phone, your kids’ phones/tablets, your tablet/iPad, digital camera, etc.
Setup Bevy
Bevy takes just seconds to set up. Plug in and turn on your machine. Install the app on your smartphone (Bevy has apps for both iOS and Android). Then follow the instructions.
It literally took me less than 5 minutes from install of the app on my iPhone to setup completion as pictured in the collage above. That includes taking the time to make the screenshots.
See this video by Bevy to see just how fast setup is.
Add Photos
I started adding photos by simply selecting a few from my iPhone learning my way around the app. Then I downloaded the Bevy Mac app to my laptop, connected an external hard drive and started uploading photos from 2003 – 2005. These are photos I haven’t seen in probably a decade. A fun trip down memory lane just adding them to my Bevy! And it inspired me to show a few via the iPhone app to my son later. He was amused seeing his uncle’s hairstyle in 2005. 😉
You can also connect via USB or putting your camera SD card straight into the card slot on your Bevy.
Instant Photo Organization
Bevy automatically organizes your photos based on metadata within the files. From the moment you add photos, Bevy has them sorted for you by upload (Activity) and date (Timeline).
You can then further organize and find your photos via Favorites and Albums. Create the albums yourself in the app or when adding photos via your computer. For the latter, if you drag & drop an entire folder of photos to the Bevy app on your computer, you will be prompted if you want to use that folder name for an album. I chose “Yes” each time since I had pretty decent order to my photos via folders in the past. It’s especially helpful for those from special events we’ve attended or trips we’ve taken (as pictured above). The folder names from my computer helped label the photos in Bevy for me. If I forget our trip to Nashville was in 2005, I can simply search “Nashville” and find them instantly. I’ve since reorganized a few to slim down the number of albums (i.e., I put all of our cat photos into one album titled ‘Cats’ versus in albums by year as I had them on my external hard drive).
View Your Photos
After adding photos to Bevy, you can view them via the app from anywhere as long as your Bevy has the power turned on and you have internet access.
You can also connect Bevy to your TV using an HDMI cable. This is a great way to share photos with family. Think of it as a modern day slide show. (Surely I’m not the only one remembering the old slide projectors, right?)
Overall, Bevy is a really great system and concept. I would love to see the app for the computer expanded. Currently it can only be used for uploading and downloading photos. I’d like to be able to use it to organize my photos beyond maintaining an album I have established on my MacBook and uploaded. For now, organizing is only possible in the iOS and Android apps for smartphones & tablets. But, the apps are periodically updated so maybe I’ll get my wish in a future version.
My two favorite things about Bevy – the ease of organization and having all of our photos in one place that is accessible from anywhere. No more fumbling for the external hard drive when I want to find an older photo. No more having to grab my husband’s phone to download photos off of it. I now have quick, easy access to all of our photos whenever I want it. A sure win as a mom, a blogger, and a hobby photographer.
Connect with Bevy: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube
This post has been compensated by Bevy. All opinions are mine alone.
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