In an earlier post, I talked about the importance of curating your photos – not just managing them. When you curate your photos, you bring them to life.

Instead of sitting in a Digital Asset Manager, or dying in a social media post that no-one looks at after the first 24 hours, in a digital photo frame your photos can live and breathe.

Hang on a minute. Digital photo frames are expensive, right? Well, yes. But if you have an old Android tablet lying abandoned in a drawer somewhere, almost all of that expense can be avoided. Here’s my workflow.

Step 1

Start curating the photos you want to display in folders. Folders are the key to this process. Not tags. Not star ratings, Not colour labels. Folders. If you come home from a holiday with 800 photos, you will need to pick out the best photos and move them into a folder of their own. This is your curated folder. This is what you are going to display. Think of it as a digital version of a photo album.

Step 2

Create a Dropbox account – free is fine – and copy your folders there.

Step 3

Go to an online electronics store (eBay or Amazon are the most obvious) and buy a right-angled charging cable for your Android tablet. This step is optional – but your tablet is going to be plugged in permanently, and that cable is going to look way more discreet if it just points down to the ground instead of sticking out.

Step 4

Find a stand for your tablet. You might have one already. Most folio stands work perfectly – all you need is to be able the display the tablet in an upright position. like a TV or computer monitor.

Step 5

Go to the Google Play store and install dfolio. Other apps are available, but dfolio is a mature app that works well and is regularly updated. The app will install as a three day free trial, so take advantage of the free trial to make sure it works exactly how you want. Once you’re satisfied, pay the unlock fee ($19.99 lifetime, or $3.99 per month at time of writing).

Step 6

Enjoy your digital photo frame. Your photos are now doing exacly what they’re supposed to do. Being enjoyed.