Saving everything, but losing track of it all
The digital age has given us the ability to back up and save everything from birth certificates to photographs of birthday parties. But, with so many attachments and messages stored online it is difficult to keep track of them all.
Creating folders helps, but if you are anything like me you get in a hurry and inadvertently choose the wrong folder to save things to and still wind up searching for lost items in your email. Now, there is an app that helps you uncover your lost photos.
The new Mac app, aptly called, “Lost Photos,” promises to help you retrieve long-forgotten photos that have been buried in your email accounts.
When you download the app, you will see two boxes, simply enter the email address you want to search and the password for that email and you are ready to start recovering your lost memories.
Underneath those two boxes, there are a couple of options, to narrow or specify your search; you can “ignore images smaller than 8k,” which allows you to skip over icons and logos, “ignore GIF format” allowing you to skip animations, and “ignore specified date” which is helpful if you have a date range you are looking for, such as a conference, vacation, or birthday party.
Once you have finished checking your primary email, you can check as many other accounts as you would like. If you find a great old photo, you can download it to your iPhoto stream, or share via Twitter, Facebook, and email.
It can take time to dig into your archives
Something to note, however, is that if you have used the same email account for many years, it can take quite a while for the app to scan for your photos (read: hours), but that is not too long to retrieve forgotten memories.
Also, you may not want to set your device down and leave it to run, because it will pause in some cases; in order to prevent your email provider from assuming you are “excessively downloading” and thereby disabling your account due to perceived fraudulent activity. As long as you come back to check on the app’s progress, it should be fine.
While there are other ways to search for your lost images, this app offers a simple way to search for them without your constant attention.
