pseudoswede

I have photos in different places (and probably multiple copies), and I'm trying to consolidate them into one hard drive (which will then upload them to CrashPlan).

Basically, looking for some software that will search hard drives and folders for photos, sort and move them to my backup hard drive into appropriate folders (organized by Year/Month) using the EXIF data.

Ideal would be freeware.

Currently using Easy Photo Sorter, but would like something a little more robust.

BeachBum770

I am going to work under the assumption you are using a Windows system, and not a Mac.

First off, the easiest option is Picasa (freeware). It will organize your photos by date taken, but it is NOT going to create year and month sub-folders and automatically place them in there.

Second option is the do it yourself option using Windows Explorer. You create a directory tree that contains the year and month sub-folders. Copy all picture files into one directory. Sorty on "Date Taken" and then highlight and move them to the appropriate sub-folder.

Those are the only two free possibilities I would know about. I use Adobe Lightroom, which allows me to catalog and tag my photos, but this is obviously not freeware.

cordelli

You could try

http://www.yawcam.com/exifsort/

http://www.amok.am/en/freeware/amok_exif_sorter/

and

http://www.qdev.de/?location=mac/exifrenamer

But that one only renames them not puts them in directories, but once they are all named the same way that's an easy move for you.

For duplicates I've had good luck with dup detector

http://prismaticsoftware.com/dupdete...pdetector.html

pseudoswede

Thanks for the recommendations so far. I use Picasa already for photo viewing, light editing, and uploading to Facebook.

I'm going to ask for recommendations for another issue I have.

My camera's date was accidentally set a year in advance for a while, and I took a lot of photos. Any recommendations for a batch EXIF editor to alter the date/time? The one I had used was command line-based and very time consuming.

cordelli

If you don't have that many pictures to change the info of, you can do that in windows explorer, right click, properties, then details and you can edit the date there. But it's a pain to do them one by one. For batch work:


http://www.geosetter.de/en/help/

will allow you to change the date. Tons of editors out there will let you do it, most of them are built for adding gps info to the pictures, but they also let you edit other data.

WillCAD

I applaud your efforts! This can be a daunting task, but it's well worth the effort. You already know the benefits - greater organization means it will be easier to find pics you want, and consolidation means it will be easier to back up all of your pics en masse. Easier backups means you're more likely to backup more often, which means greater protection against disaster.

Having been through several major photo projects myself, I can also tell you that you will enjoy browsing through your photo collection and actually looking at the images. You'll see stuff you forgot you had, and get a lot of satisfaction from viewing all of those pics.

Side note: With all of my pics in a single folder tree, it's easy for me to set up a slide-show screen saver and constantly scroll through all of my pics. I see them WAY more often than I did in the days when I shot film and kept my pics in dust-gathering albums on a book shelf.

I'll second BeachBum's "second option". I organize my pics chronologically, too, and the manual method, using Windows Explorer alone, will get you to 95% of where you want to go, without spending a penny on additional software.

Perhaps you're not aware, as many people aren't, but you can display a lot of standard Exif data directly in Explorer (some special Exif fields proprietary to each camera manufacturer won't display, but things like Date Taken will). This will help you to sort your pics directly in Explorer, while you're consolidating them. Here's how:

1) Open a folder with some pics in it.
2) Click View and select the Details view. You won't see the thumbnail previews any more, but you'll see the file dates.
3) At the top of the list of files, Right-click on the column headings (i.e. Name, Date Modified, Type, etc). Select More.
4) Scroll down the list of available columns. Find Date Taken, and check it. Click Okay.
5) You now have a Date Taken column in Explorer that you can use to sort your pics chronologically.

Once this is done, you can easily move all of your pics into a single huge folder for eventual sorting. If there are duplicates, Explorer will tell you, and ask you whether to over-write. Select Don't Move, and the duplicates will be left in the old folder where you can go through them to see which version you want to keep and which you want to trash.

Once all of your pics are in a single big folder, sort them by Date Taken. At this point, you have an option - you can use a batch rename software to name them all according to their Date Taken, before you move them. This is how I organize my pics; my files names are in this format: 2012-10-11_001.jpg. The three numbers after the underscore are simply a numeric counter.

Whether you choose to rename your files or not, you're now ready to split your pics up into yearly, monthly, or daily folders. Personally, I don't bother with monthly folders; I make a folder for each day under my yearly folders. The max number of folders for any given year will be 365, though I don't actually take pics every single day, so I typically have far fewer than 365.

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When you're done, you'll need to establish good habits so you'll never have to do this again. Whenever you take pics, download them immediately. Whenever you download them, put them directly into the appropriate folder, and back them up as soon as you're done. An extra few minutes each time can save you hours and hours of work down the road.

pseudoswede

I'm trying to get to that point. Slowly, but surely.

Any photo I take with my phone gets automatically uploaded to my Dropbox's Camera Uploads folder as well as my Pogoplug's Uploaded Pictures folder. Any photos I extract off my camera's SDHC card goes directly into the Uploaded Pictures folder.

From there, I usually sort by Date Taken then move them into their appropriate subfolders. Then I've configured CrashPlan to automagically upload new photos to the cloud.

I've fallen behind, so I'm just looking for an easy piece of software to help with the burden.

WillCAD

There are probably things you can do to ease the burden substantially with only the software you already have.

Example: Finding your pics. Do you typically rename your pics when you download them, or leave them with the default file name provided by your camera? If you leave them at the default, you can use the default names to search for pics throughout your hard drives in a single shot. Most cameras name their pics something like IMG_01234.jpg or DCIM_01234.jpg, so if you search for IMG_*.jpg or DCIM*.jpg, you'll find them all and be able to move them in big groups, instead of searching folder by folder.

If you've owned multiple cameras over the years, and they named their pics differently, you might have to do multiple searches, but you'll still be able to move the pics in batches.

On the other hand, if you renamed your pics to something descriptive, then you might have to search for *.jpg and use your judgement to decide whether to move them or leave them be. This will take more time, but again, the search for *.jpg will show you all of the JPGs on your computer and you won't have to do as much folder hopping to find your pics.

And all of this is done with Windows Explorer and the Find (Windows key-F) function, built right into every version of Windows since 95.

sarahbaby

I only share my photos on Facebook , flickr and picasa, sometimes, i make a photo slideshow and share it on YouTube

allset2travel

I've been using Adobe Lightroom for the last few years. Tried many "free wares" to no avail, because I have over 300,000 images. I use it for more than just organizing and sorting.
You can download and try it for free for 30 days.

satman40

Lr sells a student addition, and all student seem to qualify about $59.00/

Adobe email the code to the student, even college students..

GMP is cool also. CNET is full of good software..

bb0bbby

I use adobe bridge & love love love it! It sorts into folders & subfolders by date. I don't know what I did before it.

http://www.adobe.com/products/bridge.html

bb0bbby

I use adobe bridge...no idea what i'd do without it: http://www.adobe.com/products/bridge.html

alfaman

good ideas, thanks

pseudoswede

OP again.

Yes, it has been about two years since I've sorted my photos, and they are all spread across a few massive folders.

Easy Photo Sorter is giving me fatal errors, so I'm looking for alternatives. The exif sorters above didn't work at all (maybe I'm doing it wrong).

Looking for new freeware alternatives to Easy Photo Sorter, if there are any.

Thanks in advance.