• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Stop struggling with Lightroom! There's no need to spend hours hunting for the answers to your Lightroom Classic questions. All the information you need is in Adobe Lightroom Classic - The Missing FAQ!

    To help you get started, there's a series of easy tutorials to guide you through a simple workflow. As you grow in confidence, the book switches to a conversational FAQ format, so you can quickly find answers to advanced questions. And better still, the eBooks are updated for every release, so it's always up to date.
  • 12 February 2025 It's Lightroom update time again! See What’s New in Lightroom Classic 14.2, Mobile & Desktop (February 2025)? for Feature updates, new cameras and lenses, and bug fixes.

Moving photos from Mobile 'Imported Photos': Creating new date folders in catalog

Status
Not open for further replies.
Sashina

Sashina

Member
Joined
Mar 8, 2015
Messages
40
Location
London, UK
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic 8.0; Lightroom Android 4.0.
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
  2. Android
Greetings!

When importing images from an SD card or similar source, I'm fine with how Lightroom creates appropriate dated folders at time of import. That's all working smoothly for me.

But when I import from Mobile (ie moving photos from my 'Samsung XXX' / Imported Photos' folder (photos taken in LR app or imported while out and about) to my main catalog), it seems to be a very manual process. I've been manually adding the appropriate dated folders and then moving the files manually.

Is there a quicker way of doing this?

(As an aside, for mobile images taken oustide of the LR camera, in general I like to import the files into LR on my mobile rather than move them from phone to HD then import that way. Although - pergaps this method would, for those files at least, mean they were imported into automatically generated folders).

Many thanks!

Sashina
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Look at the Classic Preferences >Lightroom Sync tab. There you will find options to change the default target for images synced from LRCC, and to specify one of the standard dated folder schemes. No need to move the images after they've been imported into LR Classic by syncing, set the preferences the way you want them and the images will automatically appear in dated folders.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Thanks Jim!

I can see the 'Use subfolders formatted by capture date' which looks promising... but two questions:
  1. Are these folders created in the main catalog, or in the mobile catalog? (Thought I'd ask rather than try it out... sorry!)
  2. More importantly, I cannot see my format there (YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD)...?
Sashina
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
1. They're created on the hard drive by LR Classic, and so appear in the Classic catalog.
2. The dated folder options are the same as the dated folder options in the standard Import process, which I assumed is what you wanted. YYYY/MM/YYYY-MM-DD is not available in either place.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Okay... thanks.
I'm pretty sure I set up the original dated folder format as recommended by Victoria herself... This is what I have. Can you see something wrong here?
 

Attachments

  • Capture.JPG
    Capture.JPG
    69.3 KB · Views: 433
  • Capture2.JPG
    Capture2.JPG
    100.4 KB · Views: 394
Upvote 0 Downvote
Update: I've tested with a file, and it works... So brilliant... Not sure how I missed this before!

BUT of course I have it in a 'DD' folder rather than a 'YYYY-MM-DD' folder (within the YYYY/MM folder) as per every other folder. Not sure what to do now??

Many thanks for any suggestions/guidance. I have hundreds of photos to import and want to ensure I have a robust workflow!

Many thanks

Sashina
 

Attachments

  • Capture3.JPG
    Capture3.JPG
    68.2 KB · Views: 401
Upvote 0 Downvote
I don't think I can help you there. AFAIK the only option which has yyyy-mm-dd for the day sub-folder is the yyyy/yyyy-mm/yyyy-mm-dd structure (which is what I use). I can only assume that, if you have yyyy/mm/yyyy-mm-dd as your existing import structure, then you must have used the translated.txt hack sometime in the past.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Interesting. I can only imagine what a 'translated.txt hack' is... not something I've heard of or used.

I'll try a few options and see what's the easiest workaround. I think if I keep on top of imports and keep my phone tidy (this is not my 'serious' photography!) it'll be okay to manage as is going forward.
Any other thoughts from anyone on this appreciated!

And for new users, it's worth thinking about this when setting up initial file structure, before you have tens of thousands of photos happily filed!

Sashina
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top