Photo Albums by Year Versus Albums by Person
Year folders and people folders answer different questions. Pick one as the shelf and use the other as a view.
Families argue about photo folders in a predictable way. One person wants a year, because that is how the camera roll grew. Another wants a person, because that is how they remember. Both are right about the question they are asking, and both will make a mess if they rebuild the entire library around their question. Choose one shelf. Let the other question be a view, a caption, or a small album, not a second full copy of every file.
A year shelf matches how files arrive
Photos show up in time. A folder for each year, with events inside the busy years, accepts new files without a debate about which relative owns a group picture. Dates are already on many files, and a date prefix makes the year honest. A year shelf is weaker when someone asks for every picture of one child. You will search or maintain a separate small set. That weakness is acceptable if you say so. It is not a reason to scatter the originals across a dozen people-folders and then wonder which folder holds the only original of a shared day.
A person shelf matches how families ask
People do ask for a person. A folder of one child, one grandparent, or one household is a kind way to hand someone a slice of the archive. The danger is originals that live only there. A wedding picture belongs to more than one person. If you move the only file into one person's folder, you have chosen a winner. Person folders work better as albums of copies, or as a browsing set, while the originals stay in the year or the event. The event structure in foldering a shoot so a family can browse can sit inside the years. People albums can point back to those events instead of hoarding the masters.
Duplication has a cost you should name
Two full libraries, one by year and one by person, feel complete and drift immediately. An edit lands in one and not the other. A delete removes the blurry frame from the person folder and leaves it in the year. Soon nobody knows which side is true. If you duplicate, duplicate only the browsing set, and decide which side holds masters. Write that decision in the top note. The master side is where you add new originals. The album side is allowed to be incomplete, pretty, and disposable, because you can rebuild it from the masters. An album you are afraid to delete is a second master, and you now have the drift problem.
Captions can answer the person question without a move
You do not have to file a photo under a name to make the name searchable. A caption or a people tag, chosen with the longevity in tags that survive nickname changes, lets a search find a person wherever the file sits. That is often the better person shelf. It fails if you never caption anything. A hybrid that works at home is a year-and-event master, captions for the people you know, and a handful of person albums only for the sets you hand to someone, such as a school-year gift. You are not failing if the whole archive is not sliced both ways.
Switch shelves only when you are willing to finish
Moving from years to people, or the reverse, halfway is the worst arrangement, because new files follow the new rule and old files follow the old one. If you switch, pick a boundary, such as a new year, and leave the past in the old structure with a note that explains the change. Do not rename a decade in one energetic night and abandon the job on March. A partial migration looks like loss. Keep the old folders readable until the new ones are the place you actually add files. The shelf is a promise to your future self. Change it in a way the promise can survive.
Frequently asked questions
What about a folder per camera or phone? Useful as a temporary import folder, not as the long-term shelf. Once the files are copied, file them by event or year and keep the device name in a subfolder or a note if you still need it.
Can one photo live in two event folders? Prefer one master location and a shortcut or a copy in the second album. Two masters of the same frame will be edited differently and you will not notice until it matters.
Which should a small household pick? Start with years and events. Add a person album only when someone asks for one. You can always build a view later. You cannot easily untangle originals that were never in one place.