photo organizing software

[VJ]

Hello,

I really need to make order in my photos which I took over the years and am looking for a software that would allow me to order files in folders based on date and exif-comment. I usually made good order with the comment field, but transferring the files to computers was not always done in a thought-through matter.

Anyone know of software that allows me to copy/move to a folder structure which I can define e.g. <year>\<exif-comment>\filename.ext ?
It should work for both Nikon raw files and jpgs... Movies are less of an issue as I did not film much; I can do those few manually.

(currently thinking of fooling Nikon Transfer by putting all photos on a removable disk and transferring them again, but I don't think it can use the exif-comment field)

Thanks!

Jörg

[UtwigMU]

The way I went about is:

All photo organizing software goes stale or changes over the course of a lifetime. So it's best to keep storage in files-folders and then give any photo organizing software read only so it can create it's db. There are appliances for that (docker, jail, vm...)

The way I went is:
year / event people trip session name (depends on context, 2018 hardware is example 2018 Bled family is another example). Now I go with /year mm/event

As for exif imagemagic will do the trick.

I once wanted to know which focal length I used on event the most. Youtubers would tell you to use Lightroom but I don't care for that, I wanted an opensource solution.

So I wrote a bash script which using imagemagick pulled focal length and file name and fed them in csv where I could then sort, count and do a nice graph which showed me I use 35 on APSC the most and that I shot at widest end more than at the longest. So I decied to buy 10-16 before 70-200.

Mount drive using smb and write a script that will copy files in new share organized according to your preferences.

Here are some examples.

https://ostechnix.com/how-to-view-image-metadata-on-linux/

[VJ]

Didn't think of ImageMagick... Will take some experimenting to get it right, but I've used it in the past. Should indeed work. Thanks!

I always tried to keep my exif-comment data correct, expecting that organizing would be easier.
My old camera (D100) reused filenames when the card was changed (this was a setting which I forgot to change, I thought at the time it did not matter), so I'll have to decide if to renumber files or not.

Probably I'll now go with
camera\year\exif-comment\
(not sure if to add month or not, although I think it would not matter much for my usage: no so often, but a lot when I do make photos)

I will still check if it is not possible in Nikon Transfer, as it would be convenient to have the direct workflow when transferring files. But of course it is a small thing to run a script afterwards as well.

[UtwigMU]

My workflow for new images:

bring camera, copy files to comp
copy files from comp to NAS, usually it's only 1-3 events / trips - manually /create 2020 02 trip /2020 03 work

Put card in store case

Backup NAS

Format cards in store case, put them in ready cards case

[VJ]

Yes, I also managed to get quite an ok workflow for new photos... but still have this huge mess in my old photos...

Thanks to good tagging, I had no problems reorganizing my music catalog, but could not do the same with photos. Imagemagick should allow me.

[VJ]

ExifTool is also a great candidate...

But of course: neither ImageMagick nor ExifTool show me the field that the user can enter in the camera as comment. It shows me other entered data (artist, copyright, ...), but exactly the one field I would need is not there... :rolleyes.

[VJ]

Ok, the comment is only in the nef files, not in the jpg... Exiftool manages; but of course I have some things just in jpg... Guess I'll just have to set a day out and just do it... small part automated, big part manual...

[UtwigMU]

Ok, the comment is only in the nef files, not in the jpg... Exiftool manages; but of course I have some things just in jpg... Guess I'll just have to set a day out and just do it... small part automated, big part manual...

You could write a bash script that grabs comment from nef and performs same move or copy operation on both IMG0456.RAW and IMG0456.jpg

I'm sorting manually when I have time and I came to around 2009 from past and to around 2012 from the future.

[VJ]

Apparently, imagemagick does that (if you don't specify the extension, it treats the same file with a different extension similarly in the renaming/moving process).

Problem is rather from my side: for some occasions I only have jpgs... not realizing that the exif comment i s not there.