Where do you guys keep your photos? If you edit in adobe lightroom, is that where you store your photos? Or do you save them to a computer desktop? Or do you use a Mac and save it to the photos album??

I don’t really know how to store my photos. Currently it is a mess and photos are just unorganized and some are on the desktop, some are just in Lightroom, some are in Lightroom folders, some are saved into my camera roll, etc.

I really need a solid system/process to do every time. I don’t pay for Lightroom as my school pays for it, but that will be over by the end of the school year so storing all my photos in Lightroom is not an option since I will lose it eventually.

I need both watermarked photos and I watermarked photos because the link I put out for the players is all watermarked photos and then I would also want unwatermarked photos so that I can use them in the future or send them to someone if they purchase an unwatermarked photo. But I know it is a waste of storage to keep all photos in my photos app, so where do you guys keep your photos?? And for context, I put the watermarked photos into a google drive for people to access it. (I edit the photos and add a watermark in Lightroom, then save it to my photos app, then upload those photos into google drive.) but I also want to have unwatermarked photos…. Where do I store them?? Where do you guys save your images to after editing? Or do you just store all your images in Lightroom or smugmug??

Edit: ok I don’t think ppl are getting it because I’m not keeping all the photos I take at a game/practice… that’s hundreds of photos that I don’t need. And im also a student photographer so I think a lot of you are way overcomplicating it and jumping wayyyy too far ahead because I don’t even have my simple process down yet. My question was simply about the process after taking photos at an athletic event. My specific questions are stated above if you’d like to reread what I’m asking. I can’t jump to whatever you’re all saying until I get those things first because I don’t even know where to save my photos TO after editing.