How do I check all photos are in their right date-based folders?

[Laura Smith]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic: version 8.1

Operating System

1. Windows 10

In the process of moving a load of photos to an external disk, I somehow copied a bunch into the wrong places. I was doing some of it within Lr, some of it outside of Lr and resyncing the folders (I know, I know, but the photos didn't have edits and it was the quickest way to tame the chaos!). Somewhere along the way I managed to hold CTRL and drop something in the wrong place. I've dealt with getting rid of the duplicates, but I think I may have finished up with some photos in the wrong folders. Hopefully I haven't, but I'd like to check and get it right before I find I run into a problem a couple of years down the line and can't remember what happened! If there are any in the wrong place, it won't be that many, so I can probably manage the actual moving around by hand.

• All folders are synced up in Lr, so Lr is aware of all the images.
• My folder and filename structure is: \Laura Smith\2019\2019-01\2019-01-29\ls-20190129-114330.cr2
• ALL the photos have the date in the filenames, so any script could just use the filename rather than the metadata if needs be.
• My catalog has 10,000 images, so going through that folder structure by hand is inviable.
• I'm happy to do this in Lr or outside Lr and resync the folders, because I'm confident the photos affected are just old JPEGs with no edits, and I can write the keywords to files before I start.
• I'm on Windows 10, but happy to install Cygwin and do this at a command line if that's the only way to do it. I don't know enough to be able to write a script for it myself, but can tweak and run something that you might suggest.

Any suggestions on how to save me from myself would be appreciated!

 

[clee01l]

Create a custom filter on the filter bar with one column that shows the image dates. Select all of the images of a particular date and drag, then drop them into the same date named folder in the Folder panel.

 

[Laura Smith]

Create a custom filter on the filter bar with one column that shows the image dates. Select all of the images of a particular date and drag, then drop them into the same date named folder in the Folder panel.

Thank you. But that's an excellent answer to a different question, I obviously did a poor job of explaining myself! I have many hundreds of such folders, and I just want to check that the images are in the right folders.

 

[clee01l]

Same process. You need to set up the filter. Pick a date Select all of the images that match that filter date. With all of the images selected for a given date then check the image count for the folder corresponding to that date. If the image counts for both the images in the folder matched the count for that selected date in the filter , then they are all present in the correct folder

Alternately, in the folder panel folder by folder select all of the images in that folder. Next ,one to the All photographs special collection and view the images for that same date. If all are still selected, then that folder is complete. If some are unselected, then invert the selection and move those that were not selected before to the date named folder using drag and drop.

If this all seems tedious it is because it is. My first recommendation will put all images in their proper date named folder and if the images are already in place they won't be moved.

It is not important where a cataloged image resides in the file system . When Imported, images must reside in a folder in the filesystem so that LR can find them. As long as LR can find the path to access the image , it realy does not matter where that image is located.

Ideally, you should be able to hide the folder panel and your LR workflow would not be impacted. Most of the time, I keep my folder panel hidden to make more room on the left for collections and Publish services.

 

[Laura Smith]

Same process [...] If this all seems tedious it is because it is.

Thanks for taking the time to go through all that. But yes, I was hoping for something a little less tedious! I guess it's just not possible within Lr then, and I need to dig more into shell scripting.

Ideally, you should be able to hide the folder panel and your LR workflow would not be impacted. Most of the time, I keep my folder panel hidden to make more room on the left for collections and Publish services.

I have my panels on solo mode, but I must admit I'm always popping the folders panel out to use as a date browser, because I find it more convenient than the date browser in the filters.

Thanks for your help though!

 

[Victoria Bampton]

FWIW, unless you're shooting thousands of photos a month, I might think about consolidating the photos into 1 folder per month. Be much easier to check they're in the right dates that way too!

 

[Laura Smith]

[...] I might think about consolidating the photos into 1 folder per month. [...]

Yes, this has crossed my mind!

 

[Laura Smith]

FWIW, unless you're shooting thousands of photos a month, I might think about consolidating the photos into 1 folder per month. Be much easier to check they're in the right dates that way too!

I've just done a test copying 10,000 raws (300 GB) into a single folder (I don't shoot more than a few hundred in a month normally, but thought it'd be fun to test!). Turns out Windows Explorer didn't flinch at it, I was amazed. So think I'm going to go down the folder-a-month route. It didn't like it when I put 3,000 photos on the desktop though, that sent Explorer into a cycle of crashing and restarting...